Materialism (championed by Darwinists) makes reason Impossible.

[SezMe]

Even if that's not the case, I'm absolutely sure I can make all kinds of major decisions without any kind of sensory input.

You can? Wow! Can you give me a couple of examples of major (my emphasis) decisions you can make without any kind (my emphasis) of sensory input?

 

[lemurien]

Self is a process that is going on in the brain.
You can split it in two parts.
The core self is the neural representation of the body and the input from the senses.
This unit is capable of walking, avoiding objects and picking up things.

It is not aware of its personality, goals, likings or history.
You need the extended self or autobiographical self to be who you are, to have your personal history, likings etc.

The extended self cannot exist without the core self.
The core self can function alone, as is the case in epileptic automatism.

The extended self is conscious of me thinking these thoughts, typing this text, looking at the world through my eyes. This is a very central part of our consciousness. Our experience belongs to us, we are the agents of our personal reality.

Self is not the brain, it is something that the brain does.

 

[lemurien]

You can? Wow! Can you give me a couple of examples of major (my emphasis) decisions you can make without any kind (my emphasis) of sensory input?

I told you, he is arguing from ignorance.
Unless you are under deep general anesthesia, you will have a flow of sensory input going on and your body-brain is reacting to it whether you know it or not. Of course, you would not be making any decisions in that state.

 

[PixyMisa]

stop being ridiculous
your brain does not do your flesh or skin or hair or tripes and all that....

If I lose any part of my body except my brain, I am still me.

If I lose my brain, I am gone.

Think about that, just for a moment.

 

[Aitch]

And yes, we are just lumps of matter. Just like my car, the sun, a diamond, my dog, my kid.

Not that I don't generally agree with you, but I think there is more to you (and any other human being). One thing (I use that word fairly loosely) that people seem to ignore is the organization/information aspect of the human being and his/her/its brain. A big bucket of water, calcium, potassium, carbon etc will not be able to have a conversation with you. The individual components have to be organized in a certain way for the emergent system to, er, emerge.

Hope that makes sense.

stop being ridiculous
your brain does not do your flesh or skin or hair or tripes and all that....

No, but some brains don't half come out with some tripe.

Quite possibly. I'm hoping if I hang in here long enough, some of the smart will rub off on me.

Yeah, me too.

 

[PixyMisa]

Self is a process that is going on in the brain.

Funny, that's what I said.

Self is not the brain, it is something that the brain does.

Funny, that's what I said.

I is not my body.

I is self.

 

[joobz]

Let's put it this way: you have a rock, a chair, a pen, and a person (you don't know who they are).

Would you not care which is destroyed? I don't believe you're a sociopath, so I know you would not choose to destroy the person. What makes the person different than the other three objects?

Just because I call them all matter, doesn't mean I value them all equally. I used Diamond and car intentionally. A diamond is a rock just like a lump of coal. But the arrangement makes us value one more than another.

And yes, it is my brain/programming that puts me to value the person over all others. This is true. This doesn't make me feel that any less or apply rational arguments to support this result.

I'm sorry I read it wrong.

No problem.

 

[Plutonium]

Well, at least that is one of the claims in the book "I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist" by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek. Many of you should know of this book as it is the focus of my Evidence thread in the History Forum. The book says this on page 129.

"...if materialism is true, then reason itself is impossible. For if mental processes are nothing but chemical reactions in the brain, then there is no reason to believe that anything is true (including the theory of materialism). Chemicals can't evaluate whether or not a theory is true. Chemicals don't reason, they react.

This is supremely ironic because Darwinists---who claim to champion truth and reason---have made truth and reason impossible by their theory of materialism. So even when Darwinists are right about something, their worldview gives us no reason to believe them---because reason itself is impossible in a world governed only by chemical and physical forces."

I haven't read through this entire thread, so apologies if some of these points have been raised before.

First, I don't think this is a new idea. Didn't the writer C.S.Lewis originally bring up this point?

But leaving that aside, the premise is that chemical reactions, no matter how complex, cannot evaluate the truth or falsehood of a proposition. Therefore man must have a soul that does this.

I would note that evolutionary theory does not preclude the existence of a soul. I would also note that term "Darwinist" is strictly incorrect, as modern evolutionary theory is based on neo-darwinism, which joins Darwin's ideas to Mendelian genetics.

But the problem as I see it is this. If man has a soul, when does he acquire it? If, as Christians allege, it is created at the moment of conception, then from that point on we would expect the foetus, and later the baby, to have a fully functioning rational consciousness. In reality, consciousness does not emerge until some time after birth. Clearly it depends on the development of the brain to the point at which it gives the person consciousness. The development continues through childhood and adolescence, and only when we reach adulthood is rational thought fully developed.

That is clear evidence for the basis of rational thought in the brain's physical structure, which takes time to grow, rather than a non-physical soul that appears at conception.

 

[joobz]

I'm neither comfortable nor uncomfortable with it. I don't agree with it because it leads to absurdities. As Lemurien points out, you can eat a sandwich. Your brain can't. At the very least you'll have to refine your statement to: I am my brain and body.

I don't believe I am a brain and body. I can replace all me body parts and still see me as me. The same can't be said about the brain. And for all the talk of being able to "download" us into a computer, I am still not sure that would be "me" in the computer. Mainly due to the intimate relationship between the program and the machine (the brain) that works it. The program can alter the neurons. The neurons alter the code.

Of course it's possible you won't be depressed at all, but rather giddy at the prospect of suing the person who defamed you. That doesn't mean you weren't harmed. The law simply requires you prove that damage occured, not that you were depressed about it.

depression was just an example to show that, YES, hurting my character can alter my brain. You claimed this was absurd, I gave an exact mechanism by which it can happen. I don't need to do anymore to show that your argument was disproven.

So then you're back to square one: the law (and common sense) recognize that non-physical harms to people can occur. That can't happen if "you are your brain". Every harm to you would be a harm to your brain.

Nope. See above.

You just need to soften it so that you claim that "you" are neurological process(es). You wouldn't claim a program was a computer. Why would you claim that what the brain is doing is the same thing as what the brain is?

I've explained myself a bit more above. If your whole point is that I'm the process the brain runs, this is true and I never said otherwise. What I am saying here is that the brain and the process can not (at least not yet) be separated.

 

[Akhenaten]

You can? Wow! Can you give me a couple of examples of major (my emphasis) decisions you can make without any kind (my emphasis) of sensory input?

I think so, but now that you've made me think about it, it seems that I'd have to add a couple of conditions, and doing so now means that my original assertion was wrong.

• I'd certainly have to have had sensory input to have arrived at the position where I was able to make a decision, and
  
  
• I'd probably need some kind of sensory input (or perhaps 'feedback' would be a better word) in order to bring about a result from my decision making.

I'm sort of thinking of a situation where I could be sitting with my finger poised above the 'Blow Up World' button and all I have to do is decide, but I acknowledge that it's a pretty far-fetched hypothetical.

 

[Akhenaten]

You can? Wow! Can you give me a couple of examples of major (my emphasis) decisions you can make without any kind (my emphasis) of sensory input?

I told you, he is arguing from ignorance.
Unless you are under deep general anesthesia, you will have a flow of sensory input going on and your body-brain is reacting to it whether you know it or not. Of course, you would not be making any decisions in that state.

I already acknowledged the ignorance part, mate, and you don't get any extra points for repeating the obvious.

And I'm not really arguing anything; I'm pretty much just filling in time until the thread wanders back into the general vicinity of the topic.

 

[Akhenaten]

Self is a process that is going on in the brain.

Funny, that's what I said.

Self is not the brain, it is something that the brain does.

Funny, that's what I said.

I is not my body.

I is self.

It's what I thought I was saying too, but I must have done it wrong.

 

[Akhenaten]

No, but some brains don't half come out with some tripe.

Yep. Garbage In certainly isn't the only way to arrive at Garbage Out.

 

[lemurien]

If I lose any part of my body except my brain, I am still me.

If I lose my brain, I am gone.

Think about that, just for a moment.

Try living without skin. Or heart. Or Liver. Or intestines.
Bad argument.

True, when somebody is brain dead he is not considered a person any longer.
On the same token, a fetus with an immature nervous system not capable of 'self' function is not considered a human being in medicine.

What I am trying to point out is that our brain is in constant interaction with the body, its state is dependent of the body state. It is getting important value judgements from body states that go unnoticed most of the time.

If you are hungry or horny or going through hormonal cycles, your priorities change. Your stomach, your testicles, your ovaries are resetting your brain state.

If you have taken asthma medications of the Salbutamol family, you will have noticed the slight anxiety that comes along. It is the adrenaline like effect that makes your heart pound. The pounding of your heart gives anxiety. Tail wags dog.

You can elevate your mood by forcing a smile with a pencil in our mouth.
Your brain thinks you are smiling so you have to be glad and acts accordingly.
Try.

 

[Mashuna]

Try living without skin. Or heart. Or Liver. Or intestines.
Bad argument.

True, when somebody is brain dead he is not considered a person any longer.
On the same token, a fetus with an immature nervous system not capable of 'self' function is not considered a human being in medicine.

What I am trying to point out is that our brain is in constant interaction with the body, its state is dependent of the body state. It is getting important value judgements from body states that go unnoticed most of the time.

If you are hungry or horny or going through hormonal cycles, your priorities change. Your stomach, your testicles, your ovaries are resetting your brain state.

If you have taken asthma medications of the Salbutamol family, you will have noticed the slight anxiety that comes along. It is the adrenaline like effect that makes your heart pound. The pounding of your heart gives anxiety. Tail wags dog.

You can elevate your mood by forcing a smile with a pencil in our mouth.
Your brain thinks you are smiling so you have to be glad and acts accordingly.
Try.

So you're certain you're not just a brain in a jar.

 

[lemurien]

Funny, that's what I said.


Funny, that's what I said.

I is not my body.

I is self.

Yes, to you subjectively you are your extended or autobiographical self.
Let's not forget that there are other people as well.
They see our self wrapped in flesh.

Their flesh communicates with your flesh and your flesh sends data to your brain where it is mapped, associated, analyzed and memorized and your brain sends messages to the flesh so it knows how to respond.

This flesh is not you? Other people think so.

 

[lemurien]

So you're certain you're not just a brain in a jar.

Positive.
I am a nightmare a silly deity is having.
I hope he does not wake up any time soon.

 

[PixyMisa]

Try living without skin. Or heart. Or Liver. Or intestines.

These are all perfectly possible. Just technically difficult. And the reason they are required to maintain our self is simply because they work to keep the brain alive.

Bad argument.

Bad counter argument, more like.

We all know that the body both provides data to the brain and produces chemicals that bias its function. We all know that we receive sensory information from multiple sources.

But what integrates it and synthesizes the self is the brain. Everything else is ancillary - while you can't remove everything else, you can certainly remove anything else.

 

[PixyMisa]

Yes, to you subjectively you are your extended or autobiographical self.
Let's not forget that there are other people as well.
They see our self wrapped in flesh.

Mostly they communicate with me electronically, and have no idea what, if any, flesh I may be wrapped in.

Their flesh communicates with your flesh and your flesh sends data to your brain where it is mapped, associated, analyzed and memorized and your brain sends messages to the flesh so it knows how to respond.

Exactly. I am what my brain does.

This flesh is not you?

Obviously not. It's my body.

Other people think so.

No they don't.

 

[lemurien]

I can see your problem.