Where Does Our Sense of Purpose Come From?

[heusdens]

Originally posted by Lifegazer
By "choice", it is implied that the entity itself has decided its own future. Whereas the term "no choice" implies that the entity has been forced to behave in a specific manner by other entities/forces.
I'm sure we can agree that particles don't conciously-decide to behave the way that they do. The question is, is the mind forced to behave the way it does?
What possible force can result in sensation; reason; emotion; boundless-imagination; will/choice? Physical-forces result in physical-transformations of structure/composition and position. But how do we account for a force which results in these traits of the mind?

The fact that we don't have precise and exact knowledge of the complex processes going on in our brain, does not exclude the fact that also our choices are bound to some factors/forces, which are already inside us, as well as outside stimuli. When you never learned to calculate, it's impossible for you to calculate a sum, for instance.
Therefore there are of course factors and forces at work within the brain that 'force' us to do or not to do certain things. Which does not contradict the fact that we think of the choices we made as our own choices. The 'choice making process' is of so much complexity, we probably never will find out completely what makes us make certain choices, so for our awareness upon that, it doesn't make any difference.

An an example: try to figure out within yourself, how you are able of speaking a sentence, and consciously think of all the things within your mind that eanbles us to come up with the right wordings, guide all your muscles to form the words, etc. etc. etc.
When you are totally digging into it, it can be stated that as soon as you 'realize yourself' how you can do that (speak a sentence) at the same time you loose the ability to speak the very sentence.

It is clear that a rock cannot. What is not clear, is how a specific arrangement of matter can enable that matter to ~think~ of whatever its imagination allows it to think of. That of course, includes entities which don't actually exist in the material-world (if we adopt your stance, that is). The prime-example is 'God' itself.

Who said and at what point that the image we have of 'God' is not reflecting upon something 'real'. It might very well be that our hardwiring enables us to project within our awareness (a part of our total consciousness thus) an image of our total consciousness, which gives us the illusion of a God... while in fact we are lokking from within upon ourselves. It has been concludeded already for example that certain parts of the brain, when stimulated, cause the effects of 'religious feelings'. All this therefore has to do with 'something' on material basis, residing within us.

 

[ahrkron]

Originally posted by Lifegazer
By "choice", it is implied that the entity itself has decided its own future.

So, it has to be at least able to "make decisions". Whatever decisions are, you must agree that they can only be made by an organism with at least some degree of structure.

Your point is akin to looking for the "essense of clapping": "Since one hand alone cannot clap, we must conclude that clapping cannot be explained by material means".

 

[ahrkron]

Originally posted by Lifegazer
I'm sure we can agree that particles don't conciously-decide to behave the way that they do. The question is, is the mind forced to behave the way it does?

I would say yes, but it is totally irrelevant both for life and for the issue at hand (i.e., if mind needs some sort of supernatural influence in order to take decisions).

What possible force can result in sensation; reason; emotion; boundless-imagination; will/choice?

You are confused. No scientist attributes "thought" (or any behavioral pattern) to a "single force". It is clearly the result of interactions between a huge number of components (with both electrical and chemical properties). The process is not completely understood, but there is a huge amount of experimental evidence that it is indeed produced by the interaction of neural centers. An enormous amount of work is being done on mapping these centers and characterizing the way they relate to behavior.

Your question again is based on a misunderstanding. In this case, it is similar to asking "in a computer, what possible force can result in my pc getting connected to the internet, and selecting the sites and products that I'm most likely to buy".

Soon (probably in 30 years), we will see androids in many places, interacting with people in a primitive, yet surprising, human way. They will react to the environment in ways that were never programmed on them, not because of a "higher power" gave them a "soul", but because what they (and us) do is a result of both our circuitry and the ever-changing environment.

 

[ahrkron]

Originally posted by Lifegazer
It is clear that a rock cannot. What is not clear, is how a specific arrangement of matter can enable that matter to ~think~ of whatever its imagination allows it to think of. That of course, includes entities which don't actually exist in the material-world (if we adopt your stance, that is). The prime-example is 'God' itself.

I think this is extremely clear.

The brain is basically a modeling tool. It allows frogs to extrapolate the flight of a fly, and to snap them in the position towards which the fly was moving. It allows rats to learn how to get through labyrinths, and allows dogs to store that a relation exists between a bell and their food.

Think of this dog, for example. Its brain was able to respond just as if there was a relation between bells and food, but such relation was actually non existent. It was faked by the circumstances (which included a lab and a human). It is a model of an inexistent relation.

Similarly, it seems clear that the idea of "god" is an extrapolation of the idea of a caring father, and actually not a very imaginative one.

Anyway, imagination is basically extrapolation and combination of known objects, concepts and relations, all of which were stored from what you perceive. No magical elements are needed.

Can a computer, for example, think in terms and contexts beyond our own input?[/CLOSE]

Once you provide a computer with the means to obtain information about the environment, and ways of modifying its own code, we don't need to give it input anymore. Actually, if you go a step further, and allow it to move by itself, so that it can get its own input, its responses will be quite unpredictable to the original programmer.

Neural networks, for instance, give a beautiful exammple of this. When you prepare a NN, you program into it the ability to change its connection strengths according to its input, but not the specific response it will have to each and every possible input. Then you present it with examples of what it should classify, or recognize, and you give it some guidance about whether its responses are fine or not. After a while, you can see how it learns to classify the input patterns.

Once you know it is doing a good job at classifying, you can present to it patterns that you yourself don't know how to classify, and it will give you an answer. No matter what the answer is, you have right there a system that gives you an answer that you, as a programmer, never put into the code.

 

[Lifegazer]

Originally posted by ahrkron
I would say yes, but it is totally irrelevant both for life and for the issue at hand (i.e., if mind needs some sort of supernatural influence in order to take decisions).

It is not irrelevant that the Mind has a distinct existence, apart from the matter it perceives. I'm surprised you would say that.

You are confused. No scientist attributes "thought" (or any behavioral pattern) to a "single force". It is clearly the result of interactions between a huge number of components (with both electrical and chemical properties).

From my second post in this thread: "Most materialists like to hide behind complexity when it comes to this crunch question. They hide behind the complexity of the brain, and hope the question will dissolve-away. But not this time. For no matter how complex the brain is, at the end of the day it's just a "lump of matter" that can only act in accordance with physical-law [and with physical-attributes].
All of it. No matter how complex."
The point being that 'matter' has physical-attributes and it changes structurally and attributably. But to acquire the attributes of the mind, it must change and produce abstract-attributes of existence, purely from physical processes. And at the end of the day, the complexity of the brain does not affect the significance of this realisation.

The process is not completely understood, but there is a huge amount of experimental evidence that it is indeed produced by the interaction of neural centers. An enormous amount of work is being done on mapping these centers and characterizing the way they relate to behavior.

I advocate that the brain is the tool of the mind. To turn-left, the cyclist must turn the handle-bar, so to speak. In other words, the behaviour of the brain is expected to be consistent with the activity of the mind.

Your question again is based on a misunderstanding. In this case, it is similar to asking "in a computer, what possible force can result in my pc getting connected to the internet, and selecting the sites and products that I'm most likely to buy".

My question was nothing like that. We invented "the internet" and have manipulated physics to produce it for ourselves. My question asked you to ponder a situation whereby we create a computer which creates a new sensation or knowledge for itself - something which the computer understands, but which did not emanate from its input-data. Of course, I was making an anology to the universe not knowing what reason; emotion; will; sensation; imagination, are. Yet 'we' do.

Soon (probably in 30 years), we will see androids in many places, interacting with people in a primitive, yet surprising, human way.

I cannot argue with that. Technology is amazing. What I can argue with, is that a computer should ever become self-aware, and acquire attributes similar to, and beyond, those of our own.

 

[heusdens]

Originally posted by ahrkron
Your point is akin to looking for the "essense of clapping": "Since one hand alone cannot clap, we must conclude that clapping cannot be explained by material means".

I don't know about the motoric capabilities of your hand, but I succeeded in 'clapping' with one hand, and which does make a sound, so it can be called clapping. Just bend your hand (the fingers towards the palm of the hand) in a quick reflex, and you will hear a clapping sound.

It has nothing to do with the discussion thread, but anyways.

 

[ahrkron]

Originally posted by Lifegazer
It is not irrelevant that the Mind has a distinct existence, apart from the matter it perceives. I'm surprised you would say that.

You misunderstood what I said.

You said:

I'm sure we can agree that particles don't conciously-decide to behave the way that they do. The question is, is the mind forced to behave the way it does?

And I replied:

I would say yes, but it is totally irrelevant both for life and for the issue at hand (i.e., if mind needs some sort of supernatural influence in order to take decisions).

i.e., I would say that yes, the mind is forced to behave the way it does,

but I consider that such thing (i.e., whether the mind is forced or not to behave the way it does) is irrelevant to the issue of deciding if the mind needs a supernatural substrate.

(which is the purpose of the full thread, and of course cannot be irrelevant to the discussion).

 

[ahrkron]

Originally posted by heusdens
I don't know about the motoric capabilities of your hand, but I succeeded in 'clapping' with one hand, and which does make a sound, so it can be called clapping. Just bend your hand (the fingers towards the palm of the hand) in a quick reflex, and you will hear a clapping sound.

A one-handed clap to that.

 

[heusdens]

Originally posted by Lifegazer
From my second post in this thread: "Most materialists like to hide behind complexity when it comes to this crunch question. They hide behind the complexity of the brain, and hope the question will dissolve-away. But not this time. For no matter how complex the brain is, at the end of the day it's just a "lump of matter" that can only act in accordance with physical-law [and with physical-attributes].
All of it. No matter how complex."
The point being that 'matter' has physical-attributes and it changes structurally and attributably. But to acquire the attributes of the mind, it must change and produce abstract-attributes of existence, purely from physical processes. And at the end of the day, the complexity of the brain does not affect the significance of this realisation.

This same kind of reasoning applies to any large scale feature of matter. Free-will is a large scale feature of the material entities and forces that exist within our human body.

If free will contradicts the fact that our human bodies are material entities that have material behaviour (the kind of behaviour we denote as physical law), then all large scale behaviour of matter is contradicting the behaviour of matter on the lower levels.

So large scale behaviour of air molecules, forming a tornado or a hurricane, contradict the fact that a hurricane exist out of air molecules, which behave like molecules. How can then all such molecules behave like a tornado, or hurricane? Since a molecule can't behave like a tornado or hurricane, therefore the behaviour of a tornado or hurricane can not be explained on the basis of the behaviour of air molecules, and other primary physical forces.

That is what you in fact imply.

It is obvious your reasoning is wrong.

 

[quantumdude]

Originally posted by Lifegazer
From my second post in this thread: "Most materialists like to hide behind complexity when it comes to this crunch question. They hide behind the complexity of the brain, and hope the question will dissolve-away. But not this time.

Actually, it is you who likes to hide behind the complexity of human minds when it comes to the proof of the existence of god. That is what you did consistently in the "Argument for the existence of god" thread in PF v2.0. The "supreme order" of humanity was one of your first conclusions, and yet we could never get you do define "order" in any clear, workable way.

Cognitive scientists, on the other hand, devise extremely well-defined models of cognition and the brain.

Your biggest handicap (aside from your stubbornness) is that you never take the time to look outside of PF to get some kind of education. The fact is, PF is not a substitute for personal study.

For no matter how complex the brain is, at the end of the day it's just a "lump of matter" that can only act in accordance with physical-law [and with physical-attributes].
All of it. No matter how complex."

The point being that 'matter' has physical-attributes and it changes structurally and attributably. But to acquire the attributes of the mind, it must change and produce abstract-attributes of existence, purely from physical processes. And at the end of the day, the complexity of the brain does not affect the significance of this realisation.

Heusdens' critiqe of this reasoning is spot-on, and I have offered a similar critique in the past. I said that this basis of arguing against a material nature of consciousness is like arguing that this post that you are reading cannot be composed of pixels. For, not one of the pixels contains the whole post, so how can the post just "emerge" from the pixels?

But the post does emerge from the pixels.

So it must be the reasoning that is bad. Indeed, it is called the fallacy of composition, and I have explained it to you before.

 

[heusdens]

Originally posted by ahrkron
A one-handed clap to that.

That was just easy. Now for the really difficult one: clap with no hands!

LOL