The Chemical Composition Of Human Conscience -- Anyone Have A Clue??

vanity | 05/23/02 | Self

[F16Fighter]

Can Atheists and supporters of the theo-pseudo-scientific theory of evolution, and of the random cosmic creation of the very first molecule, atom, planet, and cell kindly explain the dervivation and chemical composition of the human conscience?

Furthermore, even if we accelerate the timeline from sheer nothingness to beginning our baseline for life as a rock asteroid or gaseous matter, just how can science explain in all intellectual honesty any mega-quantum leap into life conscienceness, much less a human conscience?

[F16Fighter]

And it was Carl Sagan who once said: "If we must worship a power greater than ourselves, does it not make sense to revere the Sun and stars?"

Ironically, self-proclaimed atheist and scientific "genious" Sagan apparently believed inanimate objects had a "conscienceness" worth worshiping, based on...???

[ko_kyi]

Where does a fist go when you open your hand?

[week 71]

Conscieness has no mass. Without any mass there is no time. Therefore the real you (conscieness) is eternal. That fact maybe a problem for some. It would behoove one to resolve where they may spend eternity now, while it is still called today.

[F16Fighter]

Are you saying fist/hand = brain/conscience?

[F16Fighter]

"Without mass there is no time. Therefore the real you (conscienceness) is eternal..."

I happen to agree with you -- but can any Darwinist explain this non-mass of conscienceness in tangiable evolutionary terms? Without the conscience we nothing more than a carrot or a rock.

[mlo]

Where does a fist go when you open your hand?

Exactly.

[D-fendr]

Science deals with the aspect of reality that can be detected with the senses (and their extensions), and that can be quantified - size and number.

So it is a limited, the most limited, view of reality. It is a wonderful tool; however it is an error to go from "Science cannot detect it" to "Therefore it does not exist.'

[Hebrews 11:6]

You've posed a telling and important question. However, there is a more basic issue. Before attempting to explain conscience, we must explain consciousness--after all, one must be conscious to have a conscience.

It turns out that Roger Penrose studied this in depth, in The Emperor's New Mind. Penrose is the fellow who teamed up with Stephen Hawking to prove that time and space had a beginning, for which they won the Nobel Prize for Physics c. 1982. In New Mind, Penrose examined whether any explanation is possible for consciousness itself (another way to look at it is, can one prove a beginning for consciousness as they did for space and time?).

Penrose concluded that consciousness is inexplicable.

[boris]

"genious"
"conscienceness"
"conscieness"

Something tells me that you gentlemen could not pass the Turing test, let alone possess consciousness.

--Boris

[mlo]

Penrose was wrong.

[F16Fighter]

"It is an error to go from 'Science cannot detect it' to 'Therefore it does not exist'."

And it is this simple equation that lead the Carl Sagans of the world to disbelieve in 'God', yet buy into worshipping their favorite tree or asteroid of the month.

[F16Fighter]

Something tells me you eat a Snickers Bar by first measuring symmetrical pieces via satellite positioning, slicing it with a precision laser, then weighing the pieces on a digital postal scale for exact uniformity ;-)

[boris]

"Something tells me you eat a Snickers Bar by first measuring symmetrical pieces via satellite positioning, slicing it with a precision laser, then weighing the pieces on a digital postal scale for exact uniformity"

No, I use gauge blocks.

--Boris

[mlo]

"It is an error to go from 'Science cannot detect it' to 'Therefore it does not exist'."

And it is this simple equation that lead the Carl Sagans of the world to disbelieve in 'God', yet buy into worshipping their favorite tree or asteroid of the month.

No. Sagan didn't believe in God because he didn't have evidence that God existed. It's not a question of "disbelieving", that's not how science works.

I don't think he worshipped any asteroids either.

[Hebrews 11:6]

You assert Penrose was wrong without saying why. Please explain.

[mlo]

I haven't read Penrose's book, but if his conclusion is that "consciousness is inexplicable" then I disagree, I think he's wrong. I think that because I believe I understand how consciousness arises. Explaining it to someone else is a challenge. Let me see if I can come up with a way to do that and I'll come back and post it.

[Hebrews 11:6]

Glad to see your objection was a serious one and not just irrational. However, I have read Penrose's book, and I'll just say that you have a heck of a hill to climb. But go ahead and take your best shot!

[avg_freeper]

"It turns out that Roger Penrose studied this in depth, in The Emperor's New Mind"

I was very unsatisfied with Penrose's finish in that book. His conclusion left too many questions and seemed rather arbitrary. I prefer Hofstadter's "Godel Escher Bach" coupled with "Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies".

But the book that best handles this subject (embodied mind) is "Philosophy In The Flesh". I forget the authors right now but I'll post them when I get home. It presents how the findings of analytical psychology and neuroscience has changed our view of the mind, away from classical western philosophy and a platonic world view.

Not to summarize the book here but it shows how our thoughts are mostly metaphorical. The metaphors arrive from our bodies interaction with the physical world. I'm feeling up today. We have a long way to go. Stocks are down. How these relations arrive can then be traced to how our nerves develop.

[Hebrews 11:6]

I'm feeling up about God being the sole explanation for consciousness, in the first place, and conscience.

[ko_kyi]

Are you saying fist/hand = brain/conscience?

More accurately fist/hand = Conscience/brain. Your question is loaded so that by answering the responder must buy into the implicit premise - that consciousness has an independent reality and is not just the nominal word for a brain doing what a brain does. I am not trying to convince you that that is the case, but rather that anyone can prove a philosophical point by setting the question up in a clever way. Your question is no different from "Are you still beating your wife?" - you get the answer you want regardless of what the answer is.