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?

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to EarthScienceguy in post #49]

So are you trying to say that the larger the brain the smarter someone is?

That's not at all what I said. You ignored this part:

"... and humans have a much higher ratio of neocortex to total brain volume compared to, say, chimps. So brain structure also changed during this period of rapid encephalization ..."

Brain structure, and size, are both important. And we know that cognitive abilities increased along with both of these in humans by the artifacts left behind. There are no great Homo erectus civilizations or architecture, same for Neanderthals although they left evidence of more advanced tool making, jewelry and better clothing, cave paintings, etc. Advanced language development helped Homo sapiens, and we are the only extant species of the genus today. Brain size within the genus is just one of the factors.

But getting back to the OP it appears by the evidence that consciences have more to do with the algorithm the brain works by than it does the size of the brain.

Exactly ... worms are conscious, so are humans.

... it also appears that humans have something in their algorithm that the animal kingdom does not have. Christianity would call it a soul giving a moral aspect to the algorithm that the brain operates under.

That "something" is simply a more capable brain ... we are more intelligent than anything else. This leap in intelligence is exactly the point I'm making with the encephalization argument. It is a matter of degree, not kind. The fact that the intelligence gap is large between the smartest non-human animals, and humans, just shows the huge benefit to having higher intelligence (so far ... if we don't exterminate ourselves in some way in the future), and makes my earlier point that the pace of evolution is influenced by the forcing function(s) and is not always linear. There is no evidence for the existence of a "soul", or that consciousness is anything more than an emergent property of a working brain. Only philosophical and religious claims.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to Gracchus in post #50]

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 300 x 3.5E7 x 20 = 211 billion years
Populations' genetics would predict 4(500)x 3.5E7 x 20 = 1.4 trillion years.

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

[JoeyKnothead]

[Replying to Gracchus in post #50]

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 300 x 3.5E7 x 20 = 211 billion years
Populations' genetics would predict 4(500)x 3.5E7 x 20 = 1.4 trillion years.

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

I'm curious to know the math behind a god creating animals.

Evolution is a fact. If the math doesn't work, the math is wrong.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to EarthScienceguy in post #52]

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

Here's a brief summary description that includes some genetics discussion:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution

The fossil record shows that it did happen over some 6 million years. The explanation for how (that works) is evolution. As JK points out ... if your math is at odds with this then the math (and/or underlying assumptions it is based on) is wrong.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to JoeyKnothead in post #53]

I'm curious to know the math behind a god creating animals.

That is what is called an assumption of the the theory.

• Just like abiogenesis has the assumption that the early earth had a reducing atmosphere. But that is simply not true.
  
  For decades, scientists believed that the atmosphere of early Earth was highly reduced, meaning that oxygen was greatly limited. Such oxygen-poor conditions would have resulted in an atmosphere filled with noxious methane, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide, and ammonia. To date, there remain widely held theories and studies of how life on Earth may have been built out of this deadly atmosphere cocktail.
  
  Now, scientists at Rensselaer are turning these atmospheric assumptions on their heads with findings that prove the conditions on early Earth were simply not conducive to the formation of this type of atmosphere, but rather to an atmosphere dominated by the more oxygen-rich compounds found within our current atmosphere — including water, carbon dioxide, and sulfur dioxide.
  
  “We can now say with some certainty that many scientists studying the origins of life on Earth simply picked the wrong atmosphere,” said Bruce Watson, Institute Professor of Science at Rensselaer. https://news.rpi.edu/luwakkey/2953

Evolution is a fact. If the math doesn't work, the math is wrong.

Blind faith at its best.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to DrNoGods in post #54]

The fossil record shows that it did happen over some 6 million years. The explanation for how (that works) is evolution. As JK points out ... if your math is at odds with this then the math (and/or underlying assumptions it is based on) is wrong.

What you have is someone's fairy tale story. There is no calculation using population genetics of how this is possible. And you will not find one because mathematics has determined this to be impossible. The simple mathematics of how many mutations have to occur each generation makes this impossible from the outset.

The problem is that Kimura's solution to Haldane's dilemma became untenable when it was discovered that the entire genome is functional.

[JoeyKnothead]

[Replying to JoeyKnothead in post #53]

I'm curious to know the math behind a god creating animals.

That is what is called an assumption of the the theory.
...
“We can now say with some certainty that many scientists studying the origins of life on Earth simply picked the wrong atmosphere,” said Bruce Watson, Institute Professor of Science at Rensselaer. [/list]

So we adjust our understanding of how life may have formed, while recognizing the fact of evolution.

Evolution is a fact. If the math doesn't work, the math is wrong.

Blind faith at its best.

Says the "He's up there, I swear it" guy.

I reject the implication I'd take to my position out of "blind" faith.

My faith in my beliefs is clearly dependent on the data I've been presented, and doing my best concludings.

If my faith is blind, yours ain't just blind, it's deaf and dumb to boot.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to EarthScienceguy in post #55]

Just like abiogenesis has the assumption that the early earth had a reducing atmosphere. But that is simply not true.

What is simply not true is that abiogenesis has the requirement of a reducing atmosphere (or is dependent on that assumption). It used to be thought that the early atmosphere was reducing (hence why Miller-Urey used that in their famous 1953 experiment 71 years ago), but abiogenesis is not restricted to a reducing environment. A more recent version of a similar experiment was done by Jeffrey Bada:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... -repeated/

http://www.astro.ulg.ac.be/~mouchet/BIO ... l-2008.pdf

they found lots of amino acids in more realistic conditions, and that was 15 years ago. This stuff continuously gets refined as time marches on.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to EarthScienceguy in post #56]

There is no calculation using population genetics of how this is possible.

And? We have fossil evidence to show that ape to human evolution did occur over some 6-10 million years. If population genetics can't explain this then it needs some tweaking. I'm no population geneticist, but if there were some math that disproved evolution I expect I'd be seeing it on the national news, or in the announcement of a Nobel prize winner. When that happens, I'll pay more attention.

[Gracchus]

[Replying to EarthScienceguy in post #52]
Well, it takes about nine months to generate a human brain from a single cell, and a brain has about three-trillion cells. Tetraploidy, the doubling of already paired chromosomes is not unknown in the plant world, and even individual chromosomes are known to double.
Here is something to consider and add to your understanding of mathematics. Drop a penny on the first square of a chessboard, then drop two pennies on the next, and continue doubling for each square until you have matched all sixty-four. (Surely, you can count to sixty-four!) Now count the pennies on the board. Let me know when you're done. Nature, reality, does not stand in awe of large numbers. (Neither do mathematicians, who are, after all, manifestations of nature, localized fractal vortices of spacetime.)
What we do know, though it seems you do not, quite a lot about consciousness, memory and the reasoning powers of brains, and how all behavior is a neurochemical reaction to stimuli from the environment, which environment includes the organism itself.
I recommend that you familiarize yourself with the Dunning-Kruger effect, which is how ignorant people underestimate their own ignorance. Learn some biology, especially neurobiology, and you may understand just how ignorant you will still be. My own ignorance is far more comprehensive than yours. I am ignorant of some realities of which you are completely unaware.