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If Free Will exists, then Mind underlies the physical universe.

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  • If Free Will exists, then Mind underlies the physical universe.

    Ok. Let me present to you the Introspective argument first.

    P1: The mind exists.
    P2: Substance Dualism is false.
    P3: The mind does not reduce to matter.
    C : Mind underlies the physical universe.

    Explanation:
    Since the mind exists but cannot be reduced to matter, it must exist as some other substance (along with matter) or must build up matter. Since Substance dualism is false, mind underlies matter (the physical universe).

    P1 is true. Dualism is false due to interaction problems. Hence, P2 is true.

    P3 follows from Free will. If the mind has free will, it cannot be generated by deterministic material interactions. This is because the mind would then be a wholly deterministic system making deterministic decisions, contradicting free will. It can't be generated by random material interactions either, since that would mean that our decisions would always be random, which is false. It cannot be generated by a combination of determinism and randomness, since every decision would be partially determined (which isn't free) and partially random (which isn't free, i.e. You cannot choose or not choose to do something, it merely happens). Therefore, the mind does not reduce to matter.

    Thoughts?
    Last edited by Quantum Weirdness; 12-02-2016, 03:35 PM.
    -The universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine.
    Sir James Jeans

    -This most beautiful system (The Universe) could only proceed from the dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.All variety of created objects which represent order and Life in the Universe could happen only by the willful reasoning of its original Creator, whom I call the Lord God.
    Sir Isaac Newton

  • #2
    I agree with your analysis of P3, but you'd need to establish that free will exists.

    I think you could conclude that there is no physical universe (only mind), but I'm not sure how you get to mind underlying the physical universe.
    I'm not here anymore.

    Comment


    • #3
      The 'mind exists' in P1 represents an assumption that God exists, and makes your argument intensely circular to C : Mind underlies the physical universe.

      How would you define this mind other than God?
      Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
      Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
      But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

      go with the flow the river knows . . .

      Frank

      I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

      Comment


      • #4
        I think the problem is whether intelligence [mind] comes from non-intelligent fundamental principles or fundamental principles from intelligence [God].
        Chaos is contingent on pre-existing order not the other way around. So is intelligence contingent on the pre-existing order or is pre-existing order on intelligence? Is it the order which defines intelligence? Or is it intelligence from which order comes? Or are they really one thing [from God]?

        We humans consider ourselves an intelligence. Where does our intelligence come from?

        To restate the issue: Does intelligence come from non-ingelligence? If so how? Or is it that intelligence can only come from intelligence?
        Last edited by 37818; 12-03-2016, 11:59 AM.
        . . . the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; . . . -- Romans 1:16 KJV

        . . . that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: . . . -- 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 KJV

        Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: . . . -- 1 John 5:1 KJV

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by Carrikature View Post
          I agree with your analysis of P3, but you'd need to establish that free will exists.

          I think you could conclude that there is no physical universe (only mind), but I'm not sure how you get to mind underlying the physical universe.
          Ahhh........
          I wasn't really trying to establish the existence of free will here, just its implications. It's an error on my part for not stating this.
          As to there being no physical universe, I meant physical in the sense that they aren't aware* (i.e. While they are made of mind, they are made of mind that is in a dormant state, and hence, not aware). Mind is that which is able to have a conscious experience.

          *-I'm willing to accept that they have some awareness if it could be shown that a mind must have some conscious experience and cannot be dormant.
          -The universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine.
          Sir James Jeans

          -This most beautiful system (The Universe) could only proceed from the dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.All variety of created objects which represent order and Life in the Universe could happen only by the willful reasoning of its original Creator, whom I call the Lord God.
          Sir Isaac Newton

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by Quantum Weirdness View Post
            Ahhh........
            I wasn't really trying to establish the existence of free will here, just its implications. It's an error on my part for not stating this.
            I figured you weren't.


            Originally posted by Quantum Weirdness View Post
            As to there being no physical universe, I meant physical in the sense that they aren't aware* (i.e. While they are made of mind, they are made of mind that is in a dormant state, and hence, not aware). Mind is that which is able to have a conscious experience.

            *-I'm willing to accept that they have some awareness if it could be shown that a mind must have some conscious experience and cannot be dormant.
            So objects that we don't think are aware actually have minds but they're dormant? Am I understanding that correctly? It seems like we'd be better saying physical objects are, for lack of a better term, figments of imagination. Can you explain the dormant state concept?
            I'm not here anymore.

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by Carrikature View Post
              I figured you weren't.




              So objects that we don't think are aware actually have minds but they're dormant? Am I understanding that correctly? It seems like we'd be better saying physical objects are, for lack of a better term, figments of imagination. Can you explain the dormant state concept?
              The objects are made of mind. As to the dormant state concept, it is like when you are asleep and are not dreaming, hence dormant. Your mind is still there, just not aware. That's how I understand it.
              -The universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine.
              Sir James Jeans

              -This most beautiful system (The Universe) could only proceed from the dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.All variety of created objects which represent order and Life in the Universe could happen only by the willful reasoning of its original Creator, whom I call the Lord God.
              Sir Isaac Newton

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by Quantum Weirdness View Post
                The objects are made of mind. As to the dormant state concept, it is like when you are asleep and are not dreaming, hence dormant. Your mind is still there, just not aware. That's how I understand it.
                Are you suggesting that life is naught but the dream of an all encompassing mind? If so, how does free will fit in that picture? And in what sense do you make a distinction between the mind and the objects that you say are made of mind?
                Last edited by JimL; 12-06-2016, 04:45 AM.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by JimL View Post
                  Are you suggesting that life is naught but the dream of an all encompassing mind? If so, how does free will fit in that picture? And in what sense do you make a distinction between the mind and the objects that you say are made of mind?
                  First question. The universe is generated by a mind (using mind). So, in a sense, yes. Free will is the property of fundamental mind. I never said that there was only one mind. The distinction I am making is that there is conscious mind (mind that is aware) and dormant mind (mind that is not aware). As I said, mind is that which has the ability to be aware, not necessarily that which is always aware.
                  -The universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine.
                  Sir James Jeans

                  -This most beautiful system (The Universe) could only proceed from the dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.All variety of created objects which represent order and Life in the Universe could happen only by the willful reasoning of its original Creator, whom I call the Lord God.
                  Sir Isaac Newton

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Quantum Weirdness View Post
                    The objects are made of mind. As to the dormant state concept, it is like when you are asleep and are not dreaming, hence dormant. Your mind is still there, just not aware. That's how I understand it.
                    It sounds like you're using two categories when there's really three (using your framework): 1) Made of mind and aware, 2) Made of mind and dormant, and 3) Made of mind but has no mind (neither dormant nor aware).
                    I'm not here anymore.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by Quantum Weirdness View Post
                      Ok. Let me present to you the Introspective argument first.

                      P1: The mind exists.
                      P2: Substance Dualism is false.
                      P3: The mind does not reduce to matter.
                      C : Mind underlies the physical universe.

                      Explanation:
                      Since the mind exists but cannot be reduced to matter, it must exist as some other substance (along with matter) or must build up matter. Since Substance dualism is false, mind underlies matter (the physical universe).

                      P1 is true. Dualism is false due to interaction problems. Hence, P2 is true.

                      P3 follows from Free will. If the mind has free will, it cannot be generated by deterministic material interactions. This is because the mind would then be a wholly deterministic system making deterministic decisions, contradicting free will. It can't be generated by random material interactions either, since that would mean that our decisions would always be random, which is false. It cannot be generated by a combination of determinism and randomness, since every decision would be partially determined (which isn't free) and partially random (which isn't free, i.e. You cannot choose or not choose to do something, it merely happens). Therefore, the mind does not reduce to matter.

                      Thoughts?
                      I haven't been here in a long time because, 1, I am snarky and decided to do things that are more productive and nice, and 2. got tired of people talking about things they hadn't thought about were quite willing to posit that they did know something. lol

                      With the risk of myself falling into category #2, I think I would agree with what say (since my Philosophy graduate work was short and 44 years ago). But I have thought about this issue for a long long time, about 13 years long. My doctor told me in 2003 that I would not likely live 5 years, and then in 2008, I was again told I wouldn't live for another 5 years. And now that it is clear that my cancer is totally out of control, I am beginning to think I won't live another 3 years, so my attention has been focused on this issue for better or worse. Those are my qualifications to address this issue.

                      Quantum, I think the one thing that will never be explained by science is the Qualia--the sensation of being a human, experiencing life. That is the unique thing that sets mind apart from a ball bouncing down the stairs in a determined manner. There is zero evidence that it experiences anything. When I bounce another human down the staircase, there us plenty of evidence that he is experiencing what my qualia would expect to experience were he to bounce me down the stairs. Even bouncing a ball of granite, which is a very complex mixture of various elements and chemical structures shows no evidence that complexity alone is the cause of qualia. John Searle, a well known philosopher in this area said

                      Originally posted by John R. Searles, “Francis Crick, the Binding Problem, and the Hypothesis of Forty Hertz,” in John R. Searles, The Mystery of Consciousness, (New York: A New York Review Book, 1997), p. 28
                      “Even for a system of whose qualia I have near-perfect knowledge, myself for example, the problem of qualia is serious. It is this: How is it possible for physical, objective, quantitatively describable neuron firings to cause qualitative, private, subjective experiences? How, to put it naively, does the brain get us over the hump from electrochemistry to feeling? That is the hard part of the mind-body problem that is left over after we see that consciousness must be caused by brain processes and is itself a feature of the brain.”
                      Originally posted by John R. Searles, “Gerald Edelman and Reentry Mapping,” in John R. Searles, The Mystery of Consciousness, (New York: A New York Review Book, 1997), p.48-49
                      How do you get from all these structures and their functions to the qualitative states of sentience or awareness that all of us have-what some philosophers call "qualia"? Our states of awareness when we see the color red or feel warm are qualitatively different from our states of awareness when we see the color black or feel cold. Edelman is well aware of the problem of qualia. His answer to this problem in The Remembered Present seems to me somewhat different from the one in Bright Air, Brilliant Fire, but neither seems to me to be adequate. In The Remembered Present he says that science cannot tell us why warm feels warm and we should not ask it to. But it seems to me that that is exactly what a neuroscience of consciousness should tell us: what anatomical and physiological features of the brain cause us to have consciousness at all, and which features cause which specific forms of conscious states. The perception of the redness of red and the warmth of warm are-among many other things-precisely the conscious states that need explaining.
                      Searle is correct that science can not tell us why we feel warm, or cold, or for that matter angry. No granite or rubber ball as ever reported to me that they are angry.

                      One other point that seems to belie the materialist/determinist view point which says that everything reduces to matter. We only know of matter via our qualia. If we didn't have qualia of our mind, we could not know that matter existed and I use the term know as a qualia we experience when we have that 'aha' moment as scientists. Matter can't be known sans sense qualia. No granite ball KNOWS about matter. Therefore, it seems to me that qualia is logically apriori to matter. No qualia; no knowledge of matter.

                      Now to another point raised by shunya. My qualia thinks it is ridiculous (see I am still snarky) to call the underlying mind, the mind of god. There is no evidence for this. We have experienced nothing indicating that to be the case. My qualia no more experiences God's qualia than I experience Shunya's qualia. My qualia applies only to me. One can believe all sorts of things (including 6 impossible things before breakfast), but one shouldn't assert faith statements as evidence. My body may be a machine which allows my qualia to experience the natural world, but that doesn't mean that the qualia arises from the machine.

                      On to another thing about freewill. From everyone I speak to, everyone will admit that they feel like they have free will. Even Daniel Dennett admits that he feels like he has free will. Their qualia gives them that feeling. But then because that is an unacceptable view, some try to say free will is an illusion only and say it can't exist because the universe is deterministic. But we don't experience the universe except through our qualia. Matter and the universe are only known via our qualia. Matter doesn't sense the qualia; qualia senses the matter. The conundrum is that if our qualia are wrong about the feeling of free will, it seems inconsistent and illogical for someone then to say that our qualia can't be wrong about the existence of matter itself, which is an assumption that must be made in order to hold the position that matter causes the qualia rather than the other way around.

                      I might stick around to see what someone might say to this. But I am still a curmudgeon and proud of it. lol
                      Last edited by grmorton; 12-09-2016, 10:17 PM.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by grmorton View Post
                        I haven't been here in a long time because, 1, I am snarky and decided to do things that are more productive and nice, and 2. got tired of people talking about things they hadn't thought about were quite willing to posit that they did know something. lol

                        With the risk of myself falling into category #2, I think I would agree with what say (since my Philosophy graduate work was short and 44 years ago). But I have thought about this issue for a long long time, about 13 years long. My doctor told me in 2003 that I would not likely live 5 years, and then in 2008, I was again told I wouldn't live for another 5 years. And now that it is clear that my cancer is totally out of control, I am beginning to think I won't live another 3 years, so my attention has been focused on this issue for better or worse. Those are my qualifications to address this issue.

                        Quantum, I think the one thing that will never be explained by science is the Qualia--the sensation of being a human, experiencing life. That is the unique thing that sets mind apart from a ball bouncing down the stairs in a determined manner. There is zero evidence that it experiences anything. When I bounce another human down the staircase, there us plenty of evidence that he is experiencing what my qualia would expect to experience were he to bounce me down the stairs. Even bouncing a ball of granite, which is a very complex mixture of various elements and chemical structures shows no evidence that complexity alone is the cause of qualia. John Searle, a well known philosopher in this area said





                        Searle is correct that science can not tell us why we feel warm, or cold, or for that matter angry. No granite or rubber ball as ever reported to me that they are angry.

                        One other point that seems to belie the materialist/determinist view point which says that everything reduces to matter. We only know of matter via our qualia. If we didn't have qualia of our mind, we could not know that matter existed and I use the term know as a qualia we experience when we have that 'aha' moment as scientists. Matter can't be known sans sense qualia. No granite ball KNOWS about matter. Therefore, it seems to me that qualia is logically apriori to matter. No qualia; no knowledge of matter.

                        Now to another point raised by shunya. My qualia thinks it is ridiculous (see I am still snarky) to call the underlying mind, the mind of god. There is no evidence for this. We have experienced nothing indicating that to be the case. My qualia no more experiences God's qualia than I experience Shunya's qualia. My qualia applies only to me. One can believe all sorts of things (including 6 impossible things before breakfast), but one shouldn't assert faith statements as evidence. My body may be a machine which allows my qualia to experience the natural world, but that doesn't mean that the qualia arises from the machine.

                        On to another thing about freewill. From everyone I speak to, everyone will admit that they feel like they have free will. Even Daniel Dennett admits that he feels like he has free will. Their qualia gives them that feeling. But then because that is an unacceptable view, some try to say free will is an illusion only and say it can't exist because the universe is deterministic. But we don't experience the universe except through our qualia. Matter and the universe are only known via our qualia. Matter doesn't sense the qualia; qualia senses the matter. The conundrum is that if our qualia are wrong about the feeling of free will, it seems inconsistent and illogical for someone then to say that our qualia can't be wrong about the existence of matter itself, which is an assumption that must be made in order to hold the position that matter causes the qualia rather than the other way around.

                        I might stick around to see what someone might say to this. But I am still a curmudgeon and proud of it. lol
                        Good to see you're still up and about

                        I'm always still in trouble again

                        "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
                        "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
                        "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by grmorton View Post
                          I haven't been here in a long time because, 1, I am snarky and decided to do things that are more productive and nice, and 2. got tired of people talking about things they hadn't thought about were quite willing to posit that they did know something. lol

                          With the risk of myself falling into category #2, I think I would agree with what say (since my Philosophy graduate work was short and 44 years ago). But I have thought about this issue for a long long time, about 13 years long. My doctor told me in 2003 that I would not likely live 5 years, and then in 2008, I was again told I wouldn't live for another 5 years. And now that it is clear that my cancer is totally out of control, I am beginning to think I won't live another 3 years, so my attention has been focused on this issue for better or worse. Those are my qualifications to address this issue.

                          Quantum, I think the one thing that will never be explained by science is the Qualia--the sensation of being a human, experiencing life. That is the unique thing that sets mind apart from a ball bouncing down the stairs in a determined manner. There is zero evidence that it experiences anything. When I bounce another human down the staircase, there us plenty of evidence that he is experiencing what my qualia would expect to experience were he to bounce me down the stairs. Even bouncing a ball of granite, which is a very complex mixture of various elements and chemical structures shows no evidence that complexity alone is the cause of qualia. John Searle, a well known philosopher in this area said





                          Searle is correct that science can not tell us why we feel warm, or cold, or for that matter angry. No granite or rubber ball as ever reported to me that they are angry.

                          One other point that seems to belie the materialist/determinist view point which says that everything reduces to matter. We only know of matter via our qualia. If we didn't have qualia of our mind, we could not know that matter existed and I use the term know as a qualia we experience when we have that 'aha' moment as scientists. Matter can't be known sans sense qualia. No granite ball KNOWS about matter. Therefore, it seems to me that qualia is logically apriori to matter. No qualia; no knowledge of matter.

                          Now to another point raised by shunya. My qualia thinks it is ridiculous (see I am still snarky) to call the underlying mind, the mind of god. There is no evidence for this. We have experienced nothing indicating that to be the case. My qualia no more experiences God's qualia than I experience Shunya's qualia. My qualia applies only to me. One can believe all sorts of things (including 6 impossible things before breakfast), but one shouldn't assert faith statements as evidence. My body may be a machine which allows my qualia to experience the natural world, but that doesn't mean that the qualia arises from the machine.

                          On to another thing about freewill. From everyone I speak to, everyone will admit that they feel like they have free will. Even Daniel Dennett admits that he feels like he has free will. Their qualia gives them that feeling. But then because that is an unacceptable view, some try to say free will is an illusion only and say it can't exist because the universe is deterministic. But we don't experience the universe except through our qualia. Matter and the universe are only known via our qualia. Matter doesn't sense the qualia; qualia senses the matter. The conundrum is that if our qualia are wrong about the feeling of free will, it seems inconsistent and illogical for someone then to say that our qualia can't be wrong about the existence of matter itself, which is an assumption that must be made in order to hold the position that matter causes the qualia rather than the other way around.

                          I might stick around to see what someone might say to this. But I am still a curmudgeon and proud of it. lol
                          I appreciate your post. This is an issue that, though I knew it existed and have followed along a few threads about, I usually lose interest once it becomes detailed and scholastic beyond my paygrade. But the clear explanation of your thought process on this has raised a question that I would like to ask at the risk of further exhibiting my lack of knowledge on the subject: Could the existence of qualia point to free will and God in this way? Free will exist in a large part in what we allow ourselves to be exposed to via our senses. What we hear, see, feel. What influences us. This in turn will develop our beliefs. Once our beliefs are entrenched we are on a determined course based on them. But we have the free will to change beliefs when exposed to new input and can change course. This, to me is the message of the Bible. What we believe is deterministic.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Thanks Rogue. Since I got the cancer, I have lived in China, been to Antarctica and Tibet, started 4 successful companies and was then ingloriously retired early this year when my last client in the oil business disappeared

                            One thing I would add to the thread. Because knowledge of the qualia comes first to us, and knowledge of the universe, determined or not, and because we can't derive how it is that we feel warm or cold etc and can not derive equations which apply universally to qualia-sensations, it seems to me that this speaks highly of the existence of what was classically known as the Spirit. How would we have an equation to describe how I feel as I write this? Or you as you read this? What are the variables? What outcome equates to what input?

                            One other thought came to me as I went into bed last night, concerns free will. If the universe is determined, as so many secularists proclaim (like it is a religion and it is), then logically this:

                            Universe is deterministic.

                            Everything that happens is predetermined by preceding events.

                            Therefore, the outcome of every scientific experiment was predetermined by preceding events.


                            If you look at the above, there is nothing in the above that proclaims that the outcome of scientific experiments is predetermined to reveal the truth to us about nature. One needs a guarantee that everything is determined to tell us the truth but we know that is patently false. Humans, we know are fantastically subject to illusions and delusions. All our knowledge comes to us via the qualia--what we sense. And we think it is not perfect. to paraphrase St. Paul said, we think through a glass darkly. When I sit at home, alone, I sometimes see someone moving just out of the corner of my eye. I turn my head not to find a ghost but to find nobody. I think everyone has had that experience, so our senses are not perfect and we can not guarantee that they reveal to us what actually happened. Yeah our psychologists and medical people have explanations for these things, but as with our knowledge of matter, all such explanations rest on their qualia first, in order to be explained. A granite head doesn't come up with explanations for illusions.

                            Now if we wish for scientific experiments to tell us the truth, we must add that assumption

                            Universe is deterministic and truthful.

                            Everything that happens is predetermined by preceding events.

                            Therefore, the outcome of every scientific experiment was predetermined by preceding events.

                            Scientific experiments tell us the truth about nature.

                            The problem is that demanding that we live in a universe that answers our queries truthfully is an assumption--an act of faith (something the faithless secularists eschew). Why and how can we know or require that Nature tell us the truth?

                            The upshot of all this is that if the world is deterministic, then the world is unknowable. We can not guarantee that all the experiments we run actually reveal the TRUTH about nature. In a deterministic world, I can think of no postulate that requires scientific experiments to reveal the truth. They might all reveal untruth, or while each experiment is perceived by our qualia to be consistent with that same experiment when run over and over, it is a certitude that consistency doesn't mean TRUTH.

                            Without knowing the universe is telling us the Truth, it seems to me that if the world is deterministic, knowledge is impossible. The secularists forget today that the early scientists were Christian and that they trusted that their God would not lie to them nor set them in a universe where the outcome of experiment can't be rigged. In my opinion, this theological trust in God is what allowed the Europeans to exceed all other cultures in science. When the Chinese academics at court heard about Newton's theory of Gravitation, they laughed at it. This was not because they were not smart; it was because they knew the issues I raise. Culturally, Huang Di, their highest deity was not the same as the Christian God. In China one had to be loyal to his teacher and never question. Confucius (Gong Fu zi) taught that the heavens would not muddy themselves in the material so no one could trust that experiments on nature gave the correct answer. So when news of Newton reached the ears of the academics, they laughed. (Tony Rothman and George Sudarshan, Doubt and Certainty, (Reading, Mass.: Perseus Books, 1998), p.xv)

                            Problem is, my qualia tells me I spend far too much time on notes like this than I should.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by grmorton View Post
                              I haven't been here in a long time because, 1, I am snarky and decided to do things that are more productive and nice, and 2. got tired of people talking about things they hadn't thought about were quite willing to posit that they did know something. lol

                              With the risk of myself falling into category #2, I think I would agree with what say (since my Philosophy graduate work was short and 44 years ago). But I have thought about this issue for a long long time, about 13 years long. My doctor told me in 2003 that I would not likely live 5 years, and then in 2008, I was again told I wouldn't live for another 5 years. And now that it is clear that my cancer is totally out of control, I am beginning to think I won't live another 3 years, so my attention has been focused on this issue for better or worse. Those are my qualifications to address this issue.

                              Quantum, I think the one thing that will never be explained by science is the Qualia--the sensation of being a human, experiencing life. That is the unique thing that sets mind apart from a ball bouncing down the stairs in a determined manner. There is zero evidence that it experiences anything. When I bounce another human down the staircase, there us plenty of evidence that he is experiencing what my qualia would expect to experience were he to bounce me down the stairs. Even bouncing a ball of granite, which is a very complex mixture of various elements and chemical structures shows no evidence that complexity alone is the cause of qualia. John Searle, a well known philosopher in this area said





                              Searle is correct that science can not tell us why we feel warm, or cold, or for that matter angry. No granite or rubber ball as ever reported to me that they are angry.

                              One other point that seems to belie the materialist/determinist view point which says that everything reduces to matter. We only know of matter via our qualia. If we didn't have qualia of our mind, we could not know that matter existed and I use the term know as a qualia we experience when we have that 'aha' moment as scientists. Matter can't be known sans sense qualia. No granite ball KNOWS about matter. Therefore, it seems to me that qualia is logically apriori to matter. No qualia; no knowledge of matter.

                              Now to another point raised by shunya. My qualia thinks it is ridiculous (see I am still snarky) to call the underlying mind, the mind of god. There is no evidence for this. We have experienced nothing indicating that to be the case. My qualia no more experiences God's qualia than I experience Shunya's qualia. My qualia applies only to me. One can believe all sorts of things (including 6 impossible things before breakfast), but one shouldn't assert faith statements as evidence. My body may be a machine which allows my qualia to experience the natural world, but that doesn't mean that the qualia arises from the machine.

                              On to another thing about freewill. From everyone I speak to, everyone will admit that they feel like they have free will. Even Daniel Dennett admits that he feels like he has free will. Their qualia gives them that feeling. But then because that is an unacceptable view, some try to say free will is an illusion only and say it can't exist because the universe is deterministic. But we don't experience the universe except through our qualia. Matter and the universe are only known via our qualia. Matter doesn't sense the qualia; qualia senses the matter. The conundrum is that if our qualia are wrong about the feeling of free will, it seems inconsistent and illogical for someone then to say that our qualia can't be wrong about the existence of matter itself, which is an assumption that must be made in order to hold the position that matter causes the qualia rather than the other way around.

                              I might stick around to see what someone might say to this. But I am still a curmudgeon and proud of it. lol
                              Welcome back!!!! nice to see the snarky Glenn on a roll. When are you going get into the sticky wicky tar pit of 'Global Warming.' How hot and dry is it these days in August in Texas? I notice October and November were well on the warm side.
                              Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
                              Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
                              But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

                              go with the flow the river knows . . .

                              Frank

                              I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

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