We don't know if consciousness is physical, Period.

[AgnosticBoy]

On another thread, one member stated the following regarding consciousness:

Where you are begging the question is when you assume that the mind (i e. Something immaterial) is responsible for that, when the brain (network of neurons plugged to stimulus from the outside world + a bunch of accidents of evolution) can perfectly be pointed as the source of those behavior.

Before assuming something immaterial is responsible for a phenomenon, starts by proving something immaterial exist to begin with.

Not only am I skeptical of this claim, which is a common claim made by atheists, but I also get annoyed by the level of confidence that people have in the above claim. If the researchers that study consciousness acknowledge that it presents a 'hard problem', then why should I believe any claims that explain consciousness as being physical? In my view, there are good reasons to doubt that consciousness is material or physical. The way I look at it is that even if consciousness is physical, it is still unlike any other physical phenomenon in the Universe. The main reason for that is that the presence of subjectivity. As it stands, subjective experiences can only be observed by the subject. Also, they are not measurable nor observable from the third-person point-of-view. Don't all of those characteristics sound familiar to some thing else? Immaterial or non-physical (also being unobservable, not measurable, etc.)?

Please debate:
1. Is it arrogant to claim that consciousness is physical?
2. Are there good reasons to doubt that it is physical? Or do you agree with the point from the post I quoted at the beginning of this post?

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to DrNoGods in post #0]

That is the old and worn out "tornado in a junkyard producing a 747" argument. That is not at all how evolution works, or how consciousness emerges from brain function. Eyes did not randomly evolve many different times in different formats because a bunch of chemicals by pure chance assembled themselves into an eye. The process started with light-sensitive molecules that conferred an advantage to the organism (eg. allowed detection of the shadow of a predator, or prompted movement into sunlight to aquire energy). Then light patches developed that were more capable, then cupped light patches to better capture and focus incoming light and help determine direction, etc. through a large number of incremental steps that resulted in different eye structures and associated nerves, etc. It was anything but random, and driven by natural selection and the mutations that it works with, over thousands of generations of the organism. No "designer" required ... just mutations that natural selection selected (you can call that the "designer") based on benefits to the organism

You are the one that brought up the 747 argument not me, I was just going with what you brought up.
1. I have already shown in another strand that evolution is impossible because there is simply not enough time for that to occur. This is again another faith statement. There has been no evolution experiment to date that shows that evolution could even remotely occur in the time frame needed.

2. I did not even say anything about eyes. But since you mention it there are 3,436 non-redundant proteins identified in the normal human retina. Which do you think is easier to make an alloy of aluminum or a protein group? Do you believe that we can go out and find aluminum 1095 in nature somewhere or did humans have to make aluminum 1095? When new proteins are made they are usually deleterious. But or argument sake let's say that this is possible. If you are speaking of random drift there would be a 1/2N chance of this gene being fixed in the genome and a 2N-1/2N of this gene being lost. https://www.blackwellpublishing.com/rid ... tics14.asp So the smallest survivable population is around 500 so which means that each genetic change has a 1/1000 chance of being fixed in the genome or 0.001. So the probability of all 3400 proteins being produced would be 0.001^3436 it is to the power of because each event must take place or basically zero. How long would it take? The equation for that is 4N so 2000 generations per event so about 7 million generations that is if all of the proteins beat the odds one after the other which is highly doubtful.

3. The human brain consists of 12 billion cells. How many of these "evolved" at one time? The human brain consists of over 120 trillion interconnections how many of these evolved at a time? When did this process start and when did it stop? Because it does not seem to be happening today. There are over 10 million photoreceptors in the eye. How many photo receptors "evolved" per generation? If they did one at a time that would be off-the-chart probability I do not know how much more than zero percent it could be. .001^10 000 000. And again if it beat the probability it would take 20 billion generations.

Another bad analogy. The internet, or computers running AI code, are indeed human inventions. They are useful to society as evidenced by usage and economics (it is very profitable for companies to develop these things because people will pay for them as they find them useful). The internet doesn't need to eat, or mate, or fight off rivals. So the analogy to evolution would be that the selection process for development of the internet (or any product or service) is that it is useful and profitable. And humans do the development.

Evolution of brains progressed because more capability and higher intelligence proved to be advantages for populations allowing them to reproduce and survive against competitors. It was driven by the same process that led to eyes, hearts, lungs, etc. There is no need for an intelligent designer for any of this ... it is why evolution has been such a successful theory despite denials by creationists who simply can't accept that complex life forms could arise via the process.

If you go this route then you run into Haldane's dilemma. 3446 mutations would take 1 million generations and the 10 million photoreceptors would take 3 billion years. Let alone any the other mutations for the eye. Let alone all of the mutations needed to create the brain. More pantheism.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to Gracchus in post #30]

I previously posted a link to a series of lectures about the biological bases of human behavior. In short, life is an electrochemical gradient across a semipermeable membrane. It is complex, but nothing other is required to explain what is observed. Please follow the link that I posted to the video lectures at Stanford.edu and available on YouTube. Or you could read Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst a 2017 non-fiction book by Robert Sapolsky. It describes how human behavior, including thought, is a biochemical process, and shows the reasons why behavior, as reaction to environment, varies among individuals and across species. No non-physical processes are necessary.
One thing pointed out is that humans often react without first interposing the anterior cingulate cortex of the frontal lobes, and only rationalize their behavior after the fact. Ironically enough, this explains the puzzlement of "Saint Paul" over the fact that he continued to sin.

Yes, I am familiar with the theory. I started with that theory. Man is nothing more than a series of chemical reactions. With that view, man is not responsible for any action he makes because he is nothing but chemical reactions taking place. If humans react without interposing the anterior cigulate cortex of the frontal lobes that simply means that those chemical reactions did not take place. And what's it matter what Saint Paul did according to your theory he was simply following the chemical reactions in his brain. You are typing what you are typing because of the chemical reactions that are occurring in your brain. Unless there is some sort of algorithm to organize, interpret, and produce the chemical reactions, the chemical reactions mean nothing. If you are saying that your thoughts have some sort of meaning to them then you are saying that your brain is running some sort of algorithm to make logical sense of the chemical reactions taking place and also to produce those chemical reactions in a logical sequence or pattern. Where did this algorithm come from? This algorithm has to control 120 trillion connections. How many generations are you saying this took to evolve?

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to EarthScienceguy in post #31]

1. I have already shown in another strand that evolution is impossible because there is simply not enough time for that to occur. This is again another faith statement. There has been no evolution experiment to date that shows that evolution could even remotely occur in the time frame needed.

I won't go there ... this topic has been done to death in other threads and shown to be wrong.

As for eyes, I've posted this paper many times before but it does illustrate more realistic time frames than misrepresenting statistics and probabilities:

http://faculty.jsd.claremont.edu/dmcfar ... c_1994.pdf

3. The human brain consists of 12 billion cells. How many of these "evolved" at one time? The human brain consists of over 120 trillion interconnections how many of these evolved at a time? When did this process start and when did it stop?

Better numbers are something like 100 billion neurons and and 10× more glial cells. But they didn't all have to evolve at one time(!). There are animals without brains, and at some point localized ganglia became centralized brains. One potential candidate for the first animal with a brain is described here:

"The evolution of the vertebrate central nervous system may have begun with free-living flatworms (planaria) that evolved before the divergence of metazoans into invertebrate and chordate branches. The planarian is the simplest animal to develop a body plan of bilateral symmetry and axes of growth with gradients of genetic expression, enabling cephalization, dorsal and ventral surfaces, medial and lateral regions, and an aggregate of neural cells in the head that form a bilobed brain."

I linked to an article earlier in this thread (post 23) on mapping of the 302 cell nematode brain. Clearly, brain evolution started with relatively simple systems that changed over time. You can't start with a fully developed human brain, or eye, and argue that these are too complex to have occurred via evolution and throw how statistics on examples that only arrived after hundreds of millions of years of process. You have to start with the earliest, simplest system and then follow how those evolved over time into more complex systems. But I realize that approach doesn't help your argument, but badly hurts it.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to DrNoGods in post #33]

I won't go there ... this topic has been done to death in other threads and shown to be wrong.

By who? Not by you or anyone else. I know you would like that to be the case but that is not the case. If it has been refuted then what is the correct equation you are referring to calculate the number of generations that a mutation will take? Or what is the correct equation for the probability of a mutation taking place? I have yet for anyone to come up with any type of calculation that makes evolution even plausible.

1/2N is an equation straight out of population genetics!! So is 4N. Those would be your people. I am using your belief's equations. I cannot help it that your theory is not internally sound.

I linked to an article earlier in this thread (post 23) on mapping of the 302 cell nematode brain. Clearly, brain evolution started with relatively simple systems that changed over time. You can't start with a fully developed human brain, or eye, and argue that these are too complex to have occurred via evolution and throw how statistics on examples that only arrived after hundreds of millions of years of process. You have to start with the earliest, simplest system and then follow how those evolved over time into more complex systems. But I realize that approach doesn't help your argument, but badly hurts it.

So how many mutations did that take to go from 302 cells to 12 billion brain cells? Regardless of what you believe this still had to take a certain amount of time.


How many mutations did it take to make the eye? Your paper did not share that point.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to EarthScienceguy in post #34]

By who? Not by you or anyone else.

I believe Barbarian was the main antagonist, but the kinds of arguments you are making have been shot down repeatedly around these parts.

So how many mutations did that take to go from 302 cells to 12 billion brain cells? Regardless of what you believe this still had to take a certain amount of time.

I don't know how many mutations, but we know it took a few hundred million years minimum (and I don't know what brain first hit 12 billion cells as that is a lot less than a human brain has). We also know that encephalization in humans was rapid over just 2-3 million years. This stuff doesn't happen linearly ... it depends on the forcing function.

How many mutations did it take to make the eye? Your paper did not share that point.

They instead gave an estimated number of generations in section 4, and arrived at about 364,000 generations. Other comments in that section may help, but the point is that it isn't that long in the grand scheme of things. Of course, if you believe the universe is only ~6K years old then evolution can't make sense, or geology, or nearly anything else.

[brunumb]

I have already shown in another strand that evolution is impossible because there is simply not enough time for that to occur.

I guess you are going to tell us next that your Nobel prize for such a world shattering revelation is in the mail. Give us a break!

[Gracchus]

[Replying to EarthScienceguy in post #32]
You seem to ignore one of the two principle driving forces of biological evolution. One, with which you seem to be obsessed, is chromosomal mutation. Nearly every organism contains a unique collection of alleles, most of which make no observable phenotypic difference to the body. In other words, some mutations are neutral and in a given environment make no difference at all to an individual organism's chances of survival until reproduction.
The other principle driving force is selection and that is statistical.
Let us do a simple thought experiment: A population of small mammals live in a valley. In this population there is variation of body plan arising from chromosomal differences. Some have longer legs than others. Some have thicker fur. Some carry extra body fat. Some have a slightly higher rate of metabolism. But in the stable environment of the valley, these differences make little or no impact on the rates of survival.
But now the environment changes. Perhaps a new species moves in to compete for food, or perhaps the valley can support no more population growth.
So, in search of food some of the population begins to move into canyons in the bordering mountains. Some of these canyons are more exposed to the sun than others. Those are hotter and the supporting environment differs from that in the less exposed canyons. So, the hotter canyons favor the survival of those organisms with longer legs because there is more surface area to radiate heat, thinner fur and less body fat for the same reason. At the same time conditions in the cooler canyons favor the survival of individuals with shorter legs, thicker fur and more body fat. It takes only a few generations for those in the warmer canyons to show significant bodily differences to those in the original valley and those in the cooler canyons. They have longer legs, thinner fur and less body fat. In contrast the cooler canyons favor the survival of those with shorter legs, thicker fur and more body fat.
The two variations have become reproductively isolated by canyon walls and the bodily differences become more pronounced, with the genomes increasingly differentiated, and other mutations arise independently in each population that are characteristic to each environment, and they also differ from the ancestral species in the valley, which is has evolved to meet the conditions that caused the initial migrations. Now, preferential reproduction inhibits cross-breeding, and speciation is well under way between the reproductively isolated populations. That's one way that evolution is known to work.
Have you any questions about or challenges to this admittedly simplified example?

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to DrNoGods in post #35]

I don't know how many mutations, but we know it took a few hundred million years minimum (and I don't know what brain first hit 12 billion cells as that is a lot less than a human brain has). We also know that encephalization in humans was rapid over just 2-3 million years. This stuff doesn't happen linearly ... it depends on the forcing function.

If it has been shot down in these parts then calculate how long this would take then. You can't is the real point. How does it not happen linearly? How is rapid evolution possible and where do we see rapid evolution today?
Where are you getting your 2-3 million years from? There are 3.5E7 genetic differences between chimps and humans. According to evolution, it would have to be human to chimp. According to evolution chimps would be more evolved than humans. I will not even throw in the genes that chimps have that humans don't. So calculated it however you want to show using mathematics how chimp-to-human evolution can happen. I guarantee you, you cannot. At least no one else has. You should be able to do this then if my idea has been shot down.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to brunumb in post #36]

I guess you are going to tell us next that your Nobel prize for such a world shattering revelation is in the mail. Give us a break!

Show me your calculations then not your words.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to Gracchus in post #0]

You seem to ignore one of the two principle driving forces of biological evolution. One, with which you seem to be obsessed, is chromosomal mutation. Nearly every organism contains a unique collection of alleles, most of which make no observable phenotypic difference to the body. In other words, some mutations are neutral and in a given environment make no difference at all to an individual organism's chances of survival until reproduction.

If you are saying that mutations are neutral then they should follow 1/2N for probability becoming fixed and 4N for the number of generations to become fixed. The equations of population genetics declare that evolution is impossible. I cannot help that evolution is not an internally consistent theory.

How long would it take to create a brain from a worm? 12E9 Genetic changes would take much longer than the time of the universe.

So show me mathematically how evolution is possible in the time frame of the universe. A single-cell bacteria has 5 million nucleotides humans have 3.5E9 nucleotides. Or even the 1% so-called difference between humans' evolution into chimps because chimps actually have more nucleotides than humans.
Humans 3.096E9 base pairs
Chimps 3.231E9 base pairs

Haldane would predict this difference to take 186 billion years
Populations' genetics would predict 12.4 trillion years.

So can you show how the man to ape evolution would only take 6 million years?