Posted by Noct on August 03, 19101 at 12:49:46:

In Reply to: Ah. posted by John Tchoe on August 01, 19101 at 16:15:36:

You have several lines of thought going here, but I will attempt to respond to each.

First evolution. Natural selection is the driving mechanism of evolution, but it can only operate on those features of the organism that effect survival, either positively or negatively. Unless consciousness has the power to move atoms, it can’t make the body do anything, and so would not enhance or detract from an organism’s ability to survive. It would be nothing more than an accidental by-product -- a curious glow – given off by complex atomic activity. Consequently, there would be no reason for evolution to adjust thought so as to make it rightly correspond to reality.

Why is conscious phenomena powerless to effect physical changes in the brain? When we examine a living brain, there is no objective evidence of a thought, a feeling, or a perception. These phenomena in themselves have no objective properties that can be measured, weighed, or observed. They are pure abstractions. If they themselves had a power to cause physical action, the cause would appear to come from nowhere, and the effect would appear as a totally spontaneous and un-caused action, thereby violating the law of Conservation of Energy. This is not physically possible.

Being powerless to effect physical matter, conscious phenomena in themselves would have no adaptive advantage or disadvantage, and so play no role in evolution. As far as biological survival is concerned, it would make no difference if consciousness is true, false, or absent. That it should be true, and be true consistently, would be a stroke of luck so fantastically improbable as to defy reason itself.

The problem with your statements is that evidence for your theory must presume that consciousness tells us true facts about the world. Yet the theory, if true, would undermine any reason to believe this, and so makes unbelievable the very evidence on which the theory rests. Unless I exempt myself from the consequences of your theory, what credible reason do I have for believing it?

Second, you ert that only real plane of existence is the physical one, and this in no way implies determinism. No thinking materialist would accept this. Physical laws govern the physical plane. Physical things have no option to choose whether or not to obey these laws. Likewise, a physical process, which is but the interaction of physical things according to physical laws, has no option of choosing either. Only something non-physical and outside of these laws would have a power to choose.

And third, why is the mind non-physical? If the mind were a physical thing, or a physical process, thought would have to obey the same laws as matter and the laws that determine the interaction of matter. Yet the mind can easily conceive of events that the material world cannot produce. Obviously, then, the mind itself is not a physical thing or a physical process.

Follow Ups:

• A boatload of nonsense. John Tchoe 17:28:15 8/04/101 (2)
  • Re: A boatload of nonsense. Noct 11:04:17 8/06/101 (1)
    • Does one need to be a mechanic to be a good driver? John Tchoe 17:18:36 8/15/101 (0)

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