[ExI] Science or Scientism?

[John Clark]

On Wed, Nov 7, 2018 at 11:03 AM Will Steinberg <steinberg.will at gmail.com>
wrote:


On Wed, Nov 7, 2018, 09:39 John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com wrote:
>


> >>...But that sort of argument comes from people who have rejected the
>> idea that God is a intelligent conscious BEING...
>>
>
> Just curious, what do you think makes the matter in our brains conscious?
>

I think there is not a infinite sequence of "why" questions and after a
finite number of them the sequence terminates in a brute fact. I think it's
a brute fact that consciousness is the way data feel when it is being
processed.



> By that logic, let's consider if your brain was without a particular
> module, say Broca's area.  You're still consicous, but aphasic.
>

I have no idea if that's true or not because I still have my Broca's area.
Maybe I wouldn't be conscious if I didn't have a left big toe, but unless I
cut off my toe I'll never know.




>
> Now add in the Broca's area.  Would you not say that this is a more
> expansive consicous entity?
>
> Now add a whole other human Brian you're passing information back and
> forth with.  You mean to tell me this dyad is not a more expansive
> conscious entity than a single brain?  Is the brain a magic special thing
> that is the only unit of consciousness?
>
> I thought we got rid of vitalism last century.
>
>

> > In my humble opinion, given the evidence that the matter in our brains
> is conscious,
>

What's with this "our" business?




> and that is composed of smaller conscious units (cf. corpus callosotomy,)
> and that the universe is made of the same matter of our brains, and that
> everything in the universe is physically contiguous in spacetime because of
> our birth from a singularity, it is quite clear that whatever the universe
> is has consciousness similar to and more expansive than any of its
> constituent parts.  You may say we are too separate in time from the rest
> of the universe to be connected in a consicous manner, but how is that
> different from the nanoseconds it takes to pass information from neuron to
> neuron?
>
> No, I think it is quite rational given overt evidence in the form of
> scientific studies in matter and spacetime, and in the form of observing
> our own consciousness, that the universe itself is indeed consicous.
>


Not only do we not know enough about consicousness to say it only resides
> in brains,
>

I have no way of knowing about your brain I can only know about my own and
I know that when my brain changes my consciousness changes and when my
consciousness changes my brain changes. And I know I am literally not the
man I once was, the atoms that are in my brain today came from last years
mashed potatoes. I know that Evolution produced me and I know Evolution can
see intelligent  behavior but it can't see consciousness any better than we
can directly see consciousness in others, and yet Evolution produced me and
I know from direct experience that I am conscious. My theory to explain
this is that consciousness is a byproduct of intelligence, and that is the
only reason I have for believing that my fellow human beings are conscious
when they take a calculus exam but are not conscious when they are sleeping
or under anesthesia or dead.


> *> Your error is equating 'God' with the childish notion that an
> anthropomorphic bearded male figure,*
>

It's not a error to ask for a definition. I don't think being male or
having a beard is a vital characteristic that defines the word "God", but
being intelligent and conscious seems like a minimum requirement to me.


> > *who thinks like a human,*
>

I don't demand  God think like a human but I do demand God be able to
think, and if He can't think better than me I'm not going to worship Him,
He should be worshiping me.

> *controls the universe and can alter causality. *
>

If God can't do that than He is more like a comic book superhero, or
supervillain, or a Greek god, or a Jupiter Brain.
And it came to pass the supercomputer was asked the question everybody wanted
answered  "Is there a God?" and after a few seconds the supercomputer
replied in a deep sonorous voice "THERE IS NOW!"

John K Clark
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