Search results

You are asserting that consciousness (of an observer) is required. I am saying that only a measuring instrument is required. Whether that measuring instrument is eventually in the form of an observer's mind/brain is not the point. The measuring instrument could be something inanimate and the...

I am afraid you lost me. Consciousness in the realm of quantum probabilities? What do you mean?

Not necessarily. The act of measuring is the cause of the collapse, not the act of observation by a consciousness. The act of measuring could be done by something inanimate in an accidental fashion, thereby collapsing the wave function without the need for an observing consciousness.

@ BobX I've heard of Roger Penrose. I'll have to read the book you mentioned to understand him better. You are pro freewill in this discussion. However, I am not too sure what "free" means to you in freewill. If free mean that there should not be any forces of any kind that act on the act...

I don't think that just from the double-slit experiment, you can conclusively say it is the consciousness that causes the so-called collapse of the wave function. It is the act of measuring that resulted in the light behaving as particles. A thought experiment: suppose that you have the...

I feel that physical processes can give rise only to physical "emergent" phenomenon, and not mentalistic "emergent" phenomenon. see http://www.interfaith.org/forum/consciousness-and-string-theory-13590.html Pseudo-random numbers are not random/independent/free. So I don't see the relevancy of...

No, I view the world as deterministic, ie., all non-quantum level processes are deterministic. Therefore whatever methods, choices, knowledge, understandings etc, that you have in mind will be subjected to the same deterministic laws that operates at that level. Quantum level processes on the...

Thanks for this. So are you saying that the brain may have an interface that allows free events in the quantum world to generate an impact at the larger scale deterministic world? If so, could you direct me to articles/links on quantum effects and the brain processes? I would like to find out...

@Gatekeeper Is desire something that exists independently or is it dependent on other forces and factors? If so, desire could also be affected by choices. And therefore, desire is not free and neither are choices. So, no free anything all round.

How would this argue for pro freewill since something is "forcing" a certain action before an actual conscious intention/will?

I was allowing for the possibility of a random event or occurrence. There are random events in nature, like radioactive decay, virtual particles popping in and out of existence, etc.

Hypothetically, what if the mental reaction does not produce any desire whatsoever for either paper, but a choice was made because of a request to make a choice? I don't think that the effect implies only one possible cause, ie. desire. The effect could very well reflect a "non-desire" for want...

I am on the "con" side, but I may have an argument for the "pro" side. Assumption: Freewill exists because one can make random choices. Imagine that you are asked to choose between a red paper and a green paper. Assume that as far as you are aware, you have no preference whatsoever between...

@Saltmeister, You started from the premise that God (whatever he is) exists. I don't. I basically started by asking which is more likely, that God exists or that God does not exist. Then based on reasonings coupled with observation of the state of the world, I concluded that it is much more...

Re: religions are man-made? I don't buy this because I can't even get past the notion that God exists. For me, the way the world is points to the non-existence of God rather than its existence. And given the way the world is, if God exists, he is an evil God. Even if a good God exists, I see...

Re: religions are man-made? Then God must be really inefficient. He easily could have materialized for all of us his book not written by any intermediary. Either that God is out to confuse all of us, assuming God exists. Come to think of it, God wants us to be confused and ignorant so that...

Hi Yanniru, I would be interested to hear your comments on this article, especially on any views you might have on "conscious particles": Which-way detector unlocks some mystery of the double-slit experiment

I think I am more comfortable with the view that space encompasses both a non pure-consciousness space and a pure-consciousness space compared to the view that consciousness is an emergent of certain processes. This is because for me, consciousness is not just being conscious of something but...

When you hit the "Quote" button to reply to a post, you will notice that the post will be enclosed by something in square brackets at the beginning (call this A) and by something in square brackets at the end (call this B). The system apparently will draw a box around whatever is so enclosed...

Does this mean that there is no basic consciousness emerging from the compact subspace from emergent non-computational etc processes? but that the basic consciousness is somehow inherent within the compact subspace? Would it be accurate to say that "emergence" is a term for some unknown process...