No one has answered this yet: "What mechanical processes and conditions do you believe are required in order to spawn a consciousness?"
I actually understand what you're saying, unlike . . . some of the people earlier...
Thankyou
...and I only have one question so far - are you defining God purely as the conscious source of consciousness, or are you using a definition more in-line with the general idea of a deity - that is, a sentient creator who is omniscient/omnibenevolent/omnipotent/omnipresent and such, similar to the Christian God?
Hmm... I guess for this argument I'm just arguing the former: there is a supreme being, independent of the physical world.
Personally, I also think that he's connected to us, so he's omniscient about our thoughts and he's omnipresent with each of us. Also, he probably has a means of knowing what is happening in the physical world (other than his link to us). And I think we should assume he's benevolent, because he gave us life (and because otherwise, there's really no point :P).
Also, I said benevolent, not the God that's in the Bible. No offense to believers, but that person was NOT benevolent. I don't think He is so cruel as to give people reasoning and then demand that they ignore it, or so vain as to demand eternal worship and condemn the non-complicit to fire.
Also, for your argument to be true, there has to be free will in the first place. What is your reasoning behind the idea that free will does, in fact, exist?
Yes, this is a very, very tough one. I guess the basis of my belief in free will is that I feel free. Furthermore, I believe that a consciousness who is simply "taken along for the ride" -- that is, a consciousness who is made to believe he has free will but doesn't -- would not be fooled for long.
Getting further into the core of the issue, to me a consciousness seems to necessitate free will. Think if you made a robot that looked and acted exactly like a human, except all of its behaviors were simulated. Like, instead of loss causing grief, we'd have commands that say "if (someone_close_has_died) then {grieving = true}". Such a robot would not have free will, and would not be conscious. Well, it seems to me that we could very easily have been made that way, but we weren't. We have someone sitting in the driver's seat, experiencing and remembering and choosing, and to me that necessitates an independence from control.
I mean, if we are all just a series of chemical reactions governed by the laws of physics, then why the heck would we be conscious? We'd be no more conscious than a boulder rolling down a hill, where the laws of mechanics determine its path for it. It doesn't make sense that we can be all-physical and conscious.
Well, that was long-winded :P I hope that was a good answer.
It is an influence, clearly, but it does not determine the future. Who is to say it does? I mean. Unless you can accurately predict something that is no obvious in a few years time, and I mean pin-point accuracy, then it goes into a step of evidence.
The laws of physics are not "random", they do not change, and they are always in effect. This means that if A happens then B will certainly happen, and could not have happened any other way. When you claim that our minds are composed of biochemical processes, you claim that our minds are subject to the same rules as every other physical process in the universe. Thus, our actions would happen in a set fashion in accordance with the laws of the universe, and all of our actions would be predictable (ie. predetermined).
Now, given what has been said and the possibiltiy that predeterminism is indeed real, which is a possibility. Would it not be our individual growth that is affected by this predeterminism? Thus stretching furthermore as a result of individual thought?
Not only that, but it is not like you cannot rethink over the same thing, drawing different aspects of it and developing new ideas. Ultimately, people like this appear to change predeterminism, not the other way around.
I honestly don't know what you're asking, but I don't believe in predeterminism, so...
It is possible that consciousness as we understand it is purely derived from physical processes, making sentience/consciousness compatible with determinism, physicalism, reductionism and all of that. However, there would be no free will. Could consciousness exist without free will?
Well, it just seems far too arbitrary. The Universe is about simple, predictable rules. If you try to move matter into other matter, you get a resisting force. If two particles collide and annihilate, 2-or-more photons must be produced to preserve momentum.
To transfer from that into "When electrons and chemical reactions all line up in a certain way so that things change and record events and stuff then a consciousness is created"; that sounds quite bogus to me. Unless someone can discover an elementary definition of the smallest, most irreducible form of consciousness, then the idea of it arbitrarily existing only in these huge complex systems is unbelievable.
Could consciousness exist without free will? I say it is certainly possible, as we could be observing our actions and believing that they are made based upon free will when actually they are predetermined and such, as our minds are bound by the same immutable laws of physics as everything else.
Again, I don't think such a facade would work. Definitely not for any long period of time. The only way to not give someone control while making them feel they have control is if all of their base intentions match perfectly with what happens; that is, their will is actually done, always. I think the fact that we can even evaluate our will is evidence that we can do what we want.
My only question is, again, what is your reasoning that free will exists in the first place?
I hope I gave a good answer earlier
All speculation. No. Part introspection. We are similar as we are humans. Free will can just be chemical. No, as I've stated And what made god since all consciousness must stem from somehwre where does god stem from.I don't know, but then again, whence came the universe?
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