NOW I understand Ratty…Material Process + magic = Consciousness…is that right?
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Actually the remark was a generic comment on theistic reasoning in much of the religious apologetics I’ve encountered.
Are you implying you’re omniscient?
So what, this might just as easily be explained by the fact it doesn’t exist as a separate entity from he brain, like a blink existing independently from an eyelid, as has been explained exhaustively to you, one could say the same for an itch or a blink, are you seriously going to suggest this is evidence that they are immaterial in any way?
So are you claiming sight, hearing, touch taste and smell can be weighed? Otherwise by your rationale all our sense are immaterial?
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Well this can of course be amply demonstrated, and by overwhelming objective evidence, it also seems like a falsifiable notion as well. So this alone makes it more compelling than the woo woo claims about consciousness somehow existing separately from the physical brain.
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Agreed. The article @MrDawn cited describes an hypothesis concerning what could be described as “cosmic consciousness”. Fun and imaginative speculation, but so far that’s all it is.
From the article: Thus it seems the answer to the question in this post’s title is “No.” There is no empirically established explanatory framework for understanding how consciousness can exist independently and outside of the brain.
I eagerly await verifiable evidence supporting any “non-brain” consciousness.
Edit: (not holding my breath)
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Consciousness is an emergent property of the brain. The whole brain. Saying it is immaterial subtracts the network that is it.
A building is not a building without the structure. It is an emergent property of that which makes it up (i.e. walls, ceilings, floors, etc.). To say a building is immaterial is ludicrous.
The same is true for consciousness/brain/mind.
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Wow, stop gas lighting him ffs…
Sorry had to pause there as I was laughing so hard, uncool to laugh at your own jokes I know, but fuck it, someone has to.
Oh good post of course, pithy and to the point, I am literally green with envy. Wait, literally? Aw fuck it, I shouldn’t have eaten that pizza out of the bin…
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No, there is no Hell.
Probably not, but there are some adjustments to the evolution of human events.
We can recognize the “rise of fascism,” isolate and fend it off, and the tyrants know it.
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Not all of them know it…or some political races in the U.S. would have turned out quite differently.
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If you believe that fascism or tyranny is possible in the United States then that means you do not trust the reliability of the Three-part Separation Theory.
Really? Are you watching first amendment audits? Are you seeing the fact that police now search cars every time they make a traffic stop? Have you been watching officers pad their path to higher wages and advancements by writing false DUI tickes? Are you aware of the fact that the Supreme Court has ruled, “Police have no duty to protect the citizenry?” (That’s why they can stand at a railing over a river and simply watch a man drown. (That is why they can go to a school shooting and just stand around outside while the shooter runs amok on the inside.) There is no duty to protect. Are you watching police demand ID in violation of the 4th amendment? We recognize fascism? I strongly disagree. Fascism is here. People are more concerned with video games and entertainment. The Police are revenue collectors for the state and the state keeps inventing new laws to limit our freedoms and make us kowtow to the ruling overlords who live on the other side of the ‘Thin Blue Line.’ I completely disagree, we would not recognize Fascism if it jumped up and bit us in the ass. Fascism is here!
Sorry if this is off-topic. There were 24 posts last night, and I’m not reading them all. My response is to the single comment.
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Then the American deployment of the Three-part Separation Theory failed.
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Sadly, yes. And when the legislative branch took control of the judiciary and had the Supreme Court reverse Roe vs Wade, that was the nail in the coffin.
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Sure. Granted. Photons can bend under gravity. In that sense they have relativistic mass. If the same is true of consciousness, then what?
No it doesn’t. Nor does it compare to a brain.
Haven’t made that claim. Not once. I’ve claimed it’s “immaterial”. As immaterial as space.
Sounds like an opinion. And if it is. I don’t care about it.
I’ve provided one piece of very important evidence. Consciousness can not be weighed. As such it is immaterial.
It really doesn’t matter how much you believe or not. That is the state of things. If you wish to boil everything down to a difference of opinions I’d gladly disengage from this tedious experiment.
As to the objective or subjective reality that consciousness is fundamentally weightless, You have provided nothing but personal opinion.
Define a wink. The eye lash? The meeting of the eye lashes? The electrical impulses which drive the unconscious activity of the wink?
Piss poor fucking form my enemy.
Yeah. An itch is immaterial. That is exactly what I am saying.
You cannot reduce the feeling of an itch to any physical process. You can map it to a bunch of different electrical impulses in the brain - but those do not describe “the itch”. The itch itself is a feeling. Beyond physical description.
Misrepresenting me again. I never said consciousness, dreams, or what have you exist independently of the brain. I’m pointing to the quality of the experience. Which remains immaterial. Beyond material explanation. Perhaps reducible to a set of physical reflections. Ultimately unexplainable by those same processes.
So dense. If you don’t GET my meaning that is an absolute function of your fucking snot nosed primary ugliness.
As I’ve said, this exchange would be next to unbearable without the ability to insult you in any way I please. I happily agreed to those terms. And I will exercise the right to make fun of you however I see fit.
Ignored. Going on now.
It is an objective fact of reality that the product of brain activity, ie. consciousness cannot be put on a scale and weighed. It has no weight, no mass, and is immaterial. Perhaps it has relativistic mass. At this point it doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t apply to me. I’m not a theist. And proposing that consciousness is immaterial is a very old philosophical stand point.
You have presented nothing to suggest that consciousness “in and of it self” is material. Not have you been able to do anything similar with perceptions “in and of them selves”.
Only the “feeling” of an itch, the “feeling” of a wink is immaterial. You have provided nothing to suggest otherwise. And you have ignored the perceptual aspect of these things in favour of a naive physical interpretation.
Sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell can be reduced to external stimuli, contact at the physical sense organs, and electrical output from associated brain structures.
The actual feeling and perception of sight, hearing, touch, taste , smell AND awareness is immaterial.
You think the three branches of the U.S. gove are separate? Well, perhaps that’s what’s taught in elementary school but the reality is that those three branches are inextricably linked. I can think of no finer example of this than the Supreme Court stacking by 45.
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It most certainly did.
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[quote=“CyberHiker, post:152, topic:3395”]
Then the American deployment of the Three-part Separation Theory failed.
[/quo
It’s a victim of the Two Party system of politics.
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[quote="CyberLN, post:156, topic:33
I can think of no finer example of this than the Supreme Court stacking by 45.
[/quote]
The complete devaluation of the US Congress. The president no longer pays any attention at all to the Congress. Vietnam was started by the President. Our wars in the Middle East were started by the President. NO Congressional oversight what so ever.
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For what it is worth, Congress did eventually intervene in Vietnam, but it took YEARS. Which isn’t much different than no intervention.
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I concede the point!