Does Consciousness Support Theism in Any Way?

[jgh7]

Sometimes I hear claims that the phenomena of consciousness proves religion in some way. It proves somehow that there's a soul, that we continue to stay conscious after we die, and that the spirit which encapsulates this consciousness is immortal.

I'm still not convinced that consciousness is any more than the byproduct of electricity in the brain. Once the brain dies and has zero activity, consciousness dies with it.

[Kenisaw]

[Replying to post 1 by jgh7]

I personally don't believe we have an immortal soul inside of us and no I don't believe that "consciousneess" is proof we do. The question "does consciousness support theism." in other words: "Can the fact that humans (I presume you are speaking about humans) are conscious (as opposed to unconscious?) prove there is a God?" a bit garbled.

That we have a mind/brains, capable of great intelligence, is in my opinion proof we were designed and not a result of random (uncreated "magically" appearing) material exploding and then lying around for billions of years; that would stretch credulity just as the suggestion that the control center of a busy airport came about from an explosion of concrete and metal. In short I think that the support is not in our "consciousness" which is just a byproduct of our functioning brains but in the brain itself.


JW

The existence of something does not prove it was designed or created. Nor does it prove it was a result of so-called randomness either. Existence is not evidence of anything other than that thing actually exists. This has been pointed out before in various threads, please take note and refrain from propogating this recurring logical error.

Your comparison to an airport is not valid. Everything about living things follows the laws of chemistry, physics, and the rest of the laws of the universe. There is nothing about life that is unnatural. An airport full of rebar with stamped heat numbers on it with formed concrete poured around it is not natural. The two are not remotely related to each other.This has been pointed out before in various threads, please take note and refrain from propogating this recurring logical error.

[Kenisaw]

[Replying to post 26 by OpenYourEyes]

I don't see where you've made your point. The fact that the brain can rewire itself is not evidence of duality. Anytime something new is learned, the synapses used for that need to be created and grown stronger in order for the learning to be more permanent. The physical structure of the brain reacts to the repeated data input from our senses. It's a physical phenomena.

[OpenYourEyes]

[Replying to post 26 by OpenYourEyes]

I don't see where you've made your point. The fact that the brain can rewire itself is not evidence of duality. Anytime something new is learned, the synapses used for that need to be created and grown stronger in order for the learning to be more permanent. The physical structure of the brain reacts to the repeated data input from our senses. It's a physical phenomena.

Neuroplasticity is a physical process, but my point is that it can occur because of subjective stimuli. Within that process, the brain is not just merely functioning, but it's also functioning as a product of the mind. Ironically, when the brain is able to effect the mind, many materialist consider that evidence that the mind is physical, but then when evidence is shown that the mind effects the brain, it's somehow waved off as nothing important and not evidence for dualism in some form.

Self-directed neuroplasticity is the stuff that B.F. Skinner (pioneer of behaviorism) would've jumped on since those in his camp dominated psychology for some time and ruled out the mind because it was unobserved.

[Kenisaw]

[Replying to post 26 by OpenYourEyes]

I don't see where you've made your point. The fact that the brain can rewire itself is not evidence of duality. Anytime something new is learned, the synapses used for that need to be created and grown stronger in order for the learning to be more permanent. The physical structure of the brain reacts to the repeated data input from our senses. It's a physical phenomena.

Neuroplasticity is a physical process, but my point is that it can occur because of subjective stimuli. Within that process, the brain is not just merely functioning, but it's also functioning as a product of the mind. Ironically, when the brain is able to effect the mind, many materialist consider that evidence that the mind is physical, but then when evidence is shown that the mind effects the brain, it's somehow waved off as nothing important and not evidence for dualism in some form.

Self-directed neuroplasticity is the stuff that B.F. Skinner (pioneer of behaviorism) would've jumped on since those in his camp dominated psychology for some time and ruled out the mind because it was unobserved.

The mind is just the sum working of the physical brain. It is the representation of the chemical and physical goings on in your head. Just like "reason" works because the universe is built a certain way (stable), the mind works because of the physical structure and chemical interactions in the brain (and probably some quantum mechanical stuff that we are still trying to understand).

It's understandable why people think the mind and the brain are separate, but there is no evidence for this. The "mind" doesn't change until the physical brain does.

Marvin Minsky at MIT wrote something called "Minds are simply what brains do". That is a good source that gets what I am driving at.

[OpenYourEyes]

[Replying to post 26 by OpenYourEyes]

I don't see where you've made your point. The fact that the brain can rewire itself is not evidence of duality. Anytime something new is learned, the synapses used for that need to be created and grown stronger in order for the learning to be more permanent. The physical structure of the brain reacts to the repeated data input from our senses. It's a physical phenomena.

Neuroplasticity is a physical process, but my point is that it can occur because of subjective stimuli. Within that process, the brain is not just merely functioning, but it's also functioning as a product of the mind. Ironically, when the brain is able to effect the mind, many materialist consider that evidence that the mind is physical, but then when evidence is shown that the mind effects the brain, it's somehow waved off as nothing important and not evidence for dualism in some form.

Self-directed neuroplasticity is the stuff that B.F. Skinner (pioneer of behaviorism) would've jumped on since those in his camp dominated psychology for some time and ruled out the mind because it was unobserved.

The mind is just the sum working of the physical brain. It is the representation of the chemical and physical goings on in your head.

This sounds nice and reasonable, but can you provide any scientific verifiable evidence to justify your claim. In other words, has your claim been scientifically tested, demonstrated, replicated, and peer-reviewed/published? Even if you can't supply scientific evidence for your theory, but then can you provide evidence for ANY theory that explains how the brain creates consciousness?

Keep in mind also that there are a number of working theories that attempt to explain consciousness. Your theory is not too different from the 'Global Workspace Theory'.

Also, do you believe in near-death experiences? There are many reports of patients having experiences when they should be unconscious, like those patients who have had cardiac arrest. During cardiac arrest, the heart stops supplying blood to the body (brain included), and within seconds you lose consciousness. Within minutes you die if there is no medical intervention. Dr. Eben Alexander's NDE comes to mind. Recent skeptical objections have not focused much on these experiences being false, especially considering that some kids experience them, but rather they are illusions produced by a dying brain. Either way, even if NDEs are not real, they still show the ability of consciousness (or mental activity) to persist during times of physiological impairment that should render anyone unconscious.

[jgh7]

[Replying to Kenisaw]

Does the mind control the brain or does the brain control the mind? Do you decide to raise your hand, or does an electrical/chemical reaction occur in the brain that causes you to decide to raise your hand?

[Bust Nak]

If consciousness was solely a function of the brain, then we wouldn't have the brain acting as a function of the mind. I'm not sure that you're fully acknowledging the implications of my point. When materialists claim that consciousness is a product of the brain, not only are they referring to it being physical, but also that brain effects how consciousness operates, even accounting for its existence.

Much like a personal computer I am using to send this post, I can rewire the hardware by fiddling with the software. The programs I run is a function of the computer, and the computer acting as a function of the programs. There is nothing that require introducing some from of mystical duality with computers.

That is unless you see software/hardware is the duality. In which case, I have no problem with that view. Our brain-mind relationship is the same as that of a hardware/software relationship of a PC, a very mundane form of dualism.

There is a long history of scientists accepting just that and conducting researching under that paradigm. So to show that the mind can effect how the brain operates undermines that long standing view since the brain does not fully control consciousness.

So for instance when someone brings up anesthesia as an argument, they are really just saying that the brain affects consciousness. But what they are leaving out, is that consciousness can also affect the brain. This is clearly a bidirectional causation and shows that the mind is more than the brain in that it is interdependent or correlated rather than being dependent.

Sounds to me like you are dressing up an unexciting point as a revelation. That was what prompted me to ask, is it so surprising? Hardware runs the software, the software controls the hardware.

Based on the long history of what materialists have led us to believe, I'd say yes, it is surprising. Our brains are not like the fixed hardware of microchips and wiring of a computer...

I think that's where the problem is - microchips and the wiring of a computer isn't as fixed as you seem to be saying, granted not as malleable as biological brain. Programmable chips are a thing you know, and that's before we introduce more exotic stuff like self-building bots.

I can know all that the computer is "thinking", but interestingly scientists can not know what we are thinking in the same way. We don't even need awareness, let alone self-awareness, to operate just as computers don't but yet it's still there, and it would be self-refuting to deny it.

You are saying there is something fundamentally different between mind/brain vs programmes/computers. I think the gap is one of technology. ONe day, with enough understanding of our brains, we can know what you are "thinking" just like we could with computers. With enough understanding of our brains, we can build computers that are aware and self-aware.

[Blastcat]

[Replying to post 36 by jgh7]

Does the mind control the brain or does the brain control the mind? Do you decide to raise your hand, or does an electrical/chemical reaction occur in the brain that causes you to decide to raise your hand?

You seem to have a lot of questions concerning what the mind is, what the brain is and how they relate.

How about this over-simplified explanation?
Maybe it will help clear it up a bit.

The brain is the thing that is in our heads. It's where most of our "thinking" happens. It's an organ like the lungs, where most of our "breathing" happens.

Breathing is what the lungs do... ( I'm simplifying, of course )
Thinking is what the brain does.

The "mind" is just another word for all of our thinking.

The brain doesn't "control" the mind... or vice versa. It basically "IS" the mind... without a brain, I don' think that we can say that we have a mind.

[OpenYourEyes]

[Replying to Kenisaw]

Does the mind control the brain or does the brain control the mind? Do you decide to raise your hand, or does an electrical/chemical reaction occur in the brain that causes you to decide to raise your hand?

I say that both can exert some control over each other, and it just depends on the task. There's already plenty of studies showing how the brain effects the mind but the research on the other side of causation may just be scratching the surface. We may not know yet how much the mind can (or has) effect the brain function.

More specifically to your 2nd question, there are published studies that show brain activity occurring seconds before a decision is made. Scientists like John-Dylan Haynes have tried to use these results to conclude that they can predict choice. The problem is that not all choices are created equally. There are conscious choices and then there are reflexive choices, and when requiring people to repeat a series of repetitive tasks, the subjects may shift from one type of choice to another.

[OpenYourEyes]

[Replying to post 36 by jgh7]

Does the mind control the brain or does the brain control the mind? Do you decide to raise your hand, or does an electrical/chemical reaction occur in the brain that causes you to decide to raise your hand?

You seem to have a lot of questions concerning what the mind is, what the brain is and how they relate.

How about this over-simplified explanation?
Maybe it will help clear it up a bit.

The brain is the thing that is in our heads. It's where most of our "thinking" happens. It's an organ like the lungs, where most of our "breathing" happens.

Breathing is what the lungs do... ( I'm simplifying, of course )
Thinking is what the brain does.

The "mind" is just another word for all of our thinking.

The brain doesn't "control" the mind... or vice versa. It basically "IS" the mind... without a brain, I don' think that we can say that we have a mind.

Your explanation just covers up the issue and begs the question of what the mind is. When we say that the brain causes the mind, we clearly know what that means. We know that certain activities and regions (all of this being physical) of the brain effects consciousness. When we say that the mind effects the brain, we are referring to unobserved 'subjective' stimuli (thought, feelings, or qualia) effecting physical system, ie the brain.

There are centuries worth of philosophical analysis that elucidates the distinction. This is reflected even in the sciences where neuroscientists study the physical structure of the brain. Meanwhile psychologist and social scientist study the "mind" via external behavior AND internal behavior, BUT the latter is done through surveys and questionnaires. There is a reason that surveys are used for internal behavior! Clearly this reflects a distinction between observed phenomena and UNobserved phenomena which you unreasonably explained away as being the same.