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Hang on a sec .. the chicken gets added first doesn't it?
No one is proposing a specific answer to "How did life naturally arise from non life."then this is just a superficial discussion. at some point, there was no life, and then there was life but this discussion doesn't go that deep. we can talk about seeds and trees or inanimate converting to animate forever but none of that genuinely bridges the gap of life from a state of no life as they are all based on self-contained processes in a vacuum.
? I thought everybody kept their chickens in the fridge. It calms them down and sedates them a little just before I remove their heads and pluck'em.
OB
I'm not sure, as I said I'm agnostic to the specifics however the supernatural/natural at some point would seem to require to have overlap (if we are to say God caused it). Christianity doesn't really answer this, there are of course non-negotiables like there is a God and he is a source of all things but the how part is not the point but rather the who.So, where I would say that the 'first cause' of life was a chemical process acting on non-living matter, you might say it was God acting on non-living matter?
If I've interpreted you correctly - do you think that God used natural processes or did He do something contrary to what we might expect of a naturalistic explanation?
OB
I'm not sure, as I said I'm agnostic to the specifics however the supernatural/natural at some point would seem to require to have overlap (if we are to say God caused it). Christianity doesn't really answer this, there are of course non-negotiables like there is a God and he is a source of all things but the how part is not the point but rather the who.
Mobile mountain marmots may make master mineralogist miss mindful movement midst marmot motion.Anything on Mustachioed Mountain Marmots? I was sitting on the side of a mountain in Colorado during our filed geology course. Discussing something with a TA. All of a sudden a.marmot appears. It goes underneath the TA's legs and between the two of us and was gone. The marmot probably did not have a mustache.
Don't accuse others of your flaws. You are conflating abiogenesis and spontaneous generation. You should really learn the difference.if I leave a piece of meat out and let it rot to discover it's then covered in maggots where did the maggots come from? did the inanimate meat spontaneously generate the maggots? that's what this argument amounts to. every inanimate to animate conversion is explained through a self-contained process that is dependant upon the animate. your argument demonstrates the conversion in a vacuum where life pre-exists but does not address outside the vacuum. the same logic could be used to point to an outside influence.
Guess what we have on the Earth. An outside "force". It is morning here and that outside force shines in my window and gets in my eyes.how is the reaction produced? by introducing an outside force.
Ok so then technically there isn’t gonna be a physical sequence step #1 when I decide to start hopping on my left leg, because tons of neurons are in a constant freewheel, more like “Several thousand neurons will ‘Change course’ from their idling movements when I decide to hop on my leg”? It still seems like a step #1 to me though (that’s in lockstep with my will) and it’s a step #1 that has no necessity to take place by any physical laws, just a more complex step #1. So a bunch of electrical potentials build up for a series of action events to take place (I hop on my leg), it can’t possibly be predictable!The brain is an incredibly complex system - around 80 billion neurons with trillions of connections between them. When such a complex system is 'idling', not occupied with important everyday matters of survival, it can 'freewheel', in various ways - making plans, combining ideas in new ways, reminiscing, daydreaming, being creative, and releasing tensions by being silly (which may also be a means of social bonding using humour, derived from early play).
This appears to be more than just a side-effect of not being specifically occupied - there is a whole neural system that becomes active when this kind of activity is going on, the Default Mode Network. This suggests that these things play an important role in our success as a species.
I am not sure where I live any longer. Scotland used to be a good analog for my area, but we just had what was almost surely an AGW record heat wave. I have had the heat on in my house on the third of July and earlier this week it hit 102. That is a first for my city.So, you don't live in Scotland?
BC? Don't respond if you'd rather not.I am not sure where I live any longer. Scotland used to be a good analog for my area, but we just had what was almost surely an AGW record heat wave. I have had the heat on in my house on the third of July and earlier this week it hit 102. That is a first for my city.
I'm not at all convinced that some other part of your conscious brain could not predict what your next outwardly unpredictable movement(s) would be (moment by passing moment). Therefore, the 'free will' there, is only what is apparent to external observers but it is still fully predictable to the part of your brain which responded to the original request made by those scientists... The directions that my freewheeling neurons decide to go in would be unpredictable, they could only speak of all the causes & effects of my neurons after the fact, whereas they would be able to predict the future action of every chemical vat with accuracy. My will is the missing ingredient, my will is why my neuron movements were unpredictable.
I'm not quite sure what you're asking here, but we have a whole repertoire of behaviours that can be mixed and matched together with improvisations; the precise causal sequence behind such activities are too complex to track with current technology, or to introspect beyond the initial urge or a sense of boredom perhaps. But that's why we say things like "I just felt like it".Ok so then technically there isn’t gonna be a physical sequence step #1 when I decide to start hopping on my left leg, because tons of neurons are in a constant freewheel, more like “Several thousand neurons will ‘Change course’ from their idling movements when I decide to hop on my leg”? It still seems like a step #1 to me though (that’s in lockstep with my will) and it’s a step #1 that has no necessity to take place by any physical laws, just a more complex step #1. So a bunch of electrical potentials build up for a series of action events to take place (I hop on my leg), it can’t possibly be predictable!
That's not how it's seen in neuroscience. In principle, it would be possible to predict what you would do, given all the data about what was going on in your brain. But in practice, although human behaviour is surprisingly predictable in general, behaviour depends not just on the neurons and their connections, but the patterns of activity between them that a given state produces.So let’s say we have a room full of chemical vats, and in one section of the room was also me with a bunch of electrodes connected to my body, finally we had the greatest scientific minds analyzing all of the complex data (and computer programs showing complex data in real time). Now they told me to just randomly start doing stuff. The directions that my freewheeling neurons decide to go in would be unpredictable, they could only speak of all the causes & effects of my neurons after the fact, whereas they would be able to predict the future action of every chemical vat with accuracy. My will is the missing ingredient, my will is why my neuron movements were unpredictable.
I’m trying to get to the total beginning, so if we say that some part of the physical brain gave a physical indication that predicts movement #1 then I wouldn’t call that movement #1 I would call it movement #2, and this physical precursor that you’re calling a prediction would itself be movement #1.I'm not at all convinced that some other part of your conscious brain could not predict what your next outwardly unpredictable movement(s) would be (moment by passing moment). Therefore, the 'free will' there, is only what is apparent to external observers but it is still fully predictable to the part of your brain which responded to the original request made by those scientists.
I am assuming an exhaustive scientific knowledge.Also, not all chemical reactions can be predicted with accuracy at all scales of observation. In complex reactions, no two reaction experiments will proceed in exactly the same way, because they are extremely sensitive to the initial conditions (such as concentrations, small temperature fluctuations, etc). The Briggs-Raucher reaction I posted previously belongs to a family of (organic) catalytic reactions which have this unpredictability property.
I too believe in a balancing point, but between automated motions and actions of will. If our actions are in sync with our desires to perform these actions then I don’t know why it would be justified to chalk the desires up as illusoryThere is evidence that (a healthy) brain operates on a finely tuned balancing point, between predictability and chaotic operation, which gives it the property of being entirely capable of giving the outward impression of free will ..
However, the brain process science is talking about, is a continuous process (with feedback). At this level of consciousness, it doesn't necessarily display an awareness 'first' or 'second' (etc) movement. Its described as a continuous loop which produces both predictable and unpredictable actions, for as long as the brain-possessing organism is alive.I’m trying to get to the total beginning, so if we say that some part of the physical brain gave a physical indication that predicts movement #1 then I wouldn’t call that movement #1 I would call it movement #2, and this physical precursor that you’re calling a prediction would itself be movement #1.
Ok .. that's your assumption then (and there is no testable evident basis for the existence of such absolute knowledge).Vap841 said:I am assuming an exhaustive scientific knowledge.
See, I don't believe what you're responding to there .. because I don't have to .. so, I'm unclear about why you're equating your beliefs with my statements of where objective testing takes science(?)Vap841 said:I too believe in a balancing point, but between automated motions and actions of will.
Not a bad definition of 'illusory' you've given there .. I'm not sure about what your point is there, though(?)Vap841 said:If our actions are in sync with our desires to perform these actions then I don’t know why it would be justified to chalk the desires up as illusory
Have you ever seen the movie Fallen where the demon keeps switching bodies? So I believe we have a will, but to agree with what you say here I definitely think that physical composition pulls & pushes at us in certain ways that can most definitely “Test” our will. That there’s an undertow of emotions underneath the surface of consciousness. If we could hop from body to body like in Fallen it would still be “Us” each time, however we would be subject to the mood swings/stresses/carefreeness of each body we hopped into. It wouldn’t be the same exact result for each body like in that movie.I think the systems associated with consciousness may have some influence on the non-conscious processes, but it's a two-way street, feed-forward and feed-back. Most of the impetus or motivation for action seems to originate below conscious awareness, and we become consciously aware of it as it enters/claims the focus of attention, when the conscious self ('we') usually arrogates authorship or agency
I won’t at all disagree with general predictability.But in practice, although human behaviour is surprisingly predictable in general, behaviour depends not just on the neurons and their connections, but the patterns of activity between them that a given state produces.
Ahh ok, interesting. I have a decent bit of material on neuroscience and biochemistry that I have been dragging my feet on and hopefully I will get to it soon. I definitely wanna get a better feel for the technical details and terminology.As far as neuroscience is concerned, your 'will' is the name for (something like) the sort of patterns of activity that represent feelings and the patterns that follow from them that represent decisions about those feelings. It's a bit more complicated than that, of course, but that's the gist of it.
I might be getting confused about what predictability we’re talking about, are we talking about the scientists in the room predicting my future body movements? I don’t understand why the mind would be said to be predicting itself, wouldn’t we instead just call it the brain process that corresponds to the mind willing an action?However, the brain process science is talking about, is a continuous process (with feedback). At this level of consciousness, it doesn't necessarily display an awareness 'first' or 'second' (etc) movement. Its described as a continuous loop which produces both predictable and unpredictable actions, for as long as the brain-possessing organism is alive.
Maybe assumption wasn’t a good word to use, I’m basically just saying “Given a future science of exhaustive knowledge” as opposed to me saying something like “Aha I win since science currently can’t point to it yet.”Ok .. that's your assumption then (and there is no testable evident basis for the existence of such absolute knowledge).
Aka: its your own personal assumption .. and your own personal model (and thus, its up to you to drive it somewhere useful .. or at least, hopefully useful)?
I was only agreeing that we both believe in a balancing point. But they are different, yours is of materialism mine is dualism.See, I don't believe what you're responding to there .. because I don't have to .. so, I'm unclear about why you're equating your beliefs with my statements of where objective testing takes science(?)
We’re not abandoning the belief in free will based actions because it’s counter-intuitive, in fact free will is the most intuitive thing that there is, we’re abandoning the belief in free will to accommodate a closed system of materialism.Not a bad definition of 'illusory' you've given there .. I'm not sure about what your point is there, though(?)
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