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It's almost like having a 'higher power' to choose your priorities. :-)
That's an interesting observation.
We all tend to suffer from the delusion that we control our own actions, but if we really did then this website wouldn't have any readers (and, come to think of it, it wouldn't have a writer either).
The fact that we need so many diets, resolutions, motivational methods, systems, etc, etc, shows how little control we really have.
So I tend to think of the random method as actually enabling us to decide what *we* want to do and then to do it. We decide what it on our list, we decide what the parameters of the system are. All the randomized selection does is remove some of the resistance, addictive behaviour and distractions.
I've been very clear throughout that this is not like "The Diceman" in which the idea was to introduce things you would never normally consider doing. In other words in the novel dicing was there to help you lose control rather than to gain it.
The procedural difference is that in "The Diceman" the dice chose one out of a range of possibilities and the others are discarded, while in my experiments the randomization is there to get everything done.
<<Christian theology is essentially and primarily apophatic,>>
Not in my experience. I went to Sunday School in 3 major Christian churches. The Lutheran confirmation class didn't mention it at all. The United Church of Canada sometimes touches on it in the sermons, but not Sunday School. I think they consider it an advanced, difficult concept. Instead, they concentrate on a more anthropomorphic view.
Mark, your agnostic phase feels familiar. I'm curious what made you move out of it.
Amusingly I came across the god of effort - Horme (http://www.theoi.com/Daimon/Hormes.html) - and the goddess of idleness - Aergia. Perhaps Horme has a link to "hormone". Perhaps this web site might be a modern shrine to the marriage of these 2 deities?
I'm aware you're not one to be cajoled into posting, but I would like to add my voice to those who have already lodged their interest in your 'religious interlude' postings.
I seem to recall you were planning to outline your move from agnosticism to faith.
I hope you will allow for the gentle prompt ...
"There was however one thing which I couldn't fit into my system... (to be continued)"
The one thing which I couldn't fit into my system was me.
Have you every noticed that the population of the world is divided into two classes of people?
1) Everyone else: approx 7 billion
2) Yourself: 1.
It seems odd to me that the world should be divided like this. I can't see any reason why it should be. After all the universe has got on perfectly well without me for billions of years and will get on perfectly well without me for further billions of years. Why this tiny interlude of 70+ years out of billions and billions in which there are two types of people? Inexplicable.
As far as I can see there is only one explanation. Something or someone has deliberately created me. That is to say has created a "me" who is conscious of being "me". And if that is the case both atheism and agnosticism become untenable.
Next: the fatal flaw at the heart of the Theory of Evolution.
Apophatic: never heard that word. Reading the definition, I'm of the opinion that the concept makes sense, but it's primarily Catholic and Orthodox theologians who pursue it. My own Reformed background focuses theology much more on God's relationship to man and man's response to God. Also positive characteristics such as Sovereignty and Grace.
<< Sounds like Descartes who wrote "I think, therefore I am", and followed up with essentially "I think of God ergo God is"; but you write "why am I? God." >>
My argument wasn't remotely like Descartes'. I don't really understand what you are trying to say. Could you explain a bit more clearly, please?
<< My own Reformed background focuses theology much more on God's relationship to man and man's response to God. Also positive characteristics such as Sovereignty and Grace. >>
These are all subjects which are dealt with at length in Catholicism. For example the index of The Catechism of the Catholic Church contains two and a half columns of entries for "Grace" and "Kingdom" and about the same for God's relationship to man and man's response to God. The word "apophatic" doesn't feature in the 904 pages of the English edition of the Catechism at all.
Have you every noticed that the population of the world is divided into two classes of people?
1) Everyone else: approx 7 billion
2) Yourself: 1."
The fallacy here being that if you were created then I was created, so you simultaneously belong to both the group of 1 which gives you cause to celebrate your significance, and the other group of 7 billion which under the same rules are of no significance to me at all.
Another way of viewing it is like suggesting that the Earth must have been created because it is just right for life to exist, while ignoring the distinct lack of people on Jupiter bemoaning how less fortunate they were.
Before I answer your post could I just check that this time you do actually want to engage in a discussion.
Fair enough. I won't reply fully then at this stage.
I will probably get round sometime to expanding what I said more clearly as I feel I must have expressed my point particularly badly. It had nothing to do with "celebrating my significance". Nor was it anything to do with other people being "of no significance to me at all".
It was about consciousness of self, i.e. my being conscious of being Mark, but not of being Chris or any of the other myriad people who exist. And vice versa none of them are conscious of being me. We are all conscious of being only one different person each, and the rest of humanity is "them out there".
Please note that I write "It is my belief". That belief is heavily influenced by books like "Godel, Escher, Bach", and more recently, "The Illusion of conscious will" by David Wegner, but I must confess I'm not articulate enough to reproduce their arguments here.
My favorite counterargument is simple and folk: but not EVERY form of protein organization stems in life. Not EVERY superlevel of system organization stems in consciousness (there is 10 to the power of 15-20 neuron connections in a brain - we can find systems (e.g. molecules) with so many connections which are not conscious). Not EVERY machine stems in a man etc. And this simple argument makes these reductionistic theories incomplete.
So, I believe consciousness is still much more mystery...than many bestseller authors is willing to admit:-)
Another argument against your reason to abolish atheism and agnosticism is the Turing test. If a machine or computer would be so complex that you as a human can't find out if it's a machine or not, then how can you be sure that machine is not conscious of itself? And if you can't tell, how is that different from you being conscious of yourself versus all the other people in the world? You assume they are conscious because they are like you, but why couldn't that be true of a machine?
<< the example in your counterargument doesn't hold up.>>
That wasn't my counterargument. It was just a placeholder. So far no one has understood the point I am trying to make - which I freely admit is entirely my fault!
I will try and write a much fuller explanation sooner rather than later.
Antithesis: I also believe that any belief can be changed.
Synthesis: As in mathematics, there are unprovably true propositions. Ergo, faith is not provable.
"Christ consciousness" is not a concept of mainstream Christianity, so I'm pretty sure it's not related to what Mark was saying.
I can't make head of tales of the logic in your Thesis/Antithesis/Synthesis., but I believe the great theologian St. Thomas Aquinas agreed that faith is not provable. It is consistent with reason but steps beyond into areas that are neither provable nor refutable.
1. You described theory that ANY system with sufficient complexity will gain consciousness
2. I say that many systems in fact have greater complexity than human brain - if we define complexity by number of particles and possible relations between them - e.g. there will be around as many molecules in 1 liter of water as connections in human brain (and there are definitely physical relations between molecules of H2O) - around 10**23
3. You say that it is not valid, because the system must have plasticity and modularity and....be brain-like....with brain-like connections. But this denies your point 1. That ANY system with sufficient complexity will gain consciousness. So it must be human-brain-like system...which comes to redux: brain or other exactly-like-brain system have consciousness. Such theories in fact do not explain anything.
Turing test is about artificial intelligence, not about (dis)prove of consciousness. Similarly - there is famous Searle`s Chinese room experiment as sound counterargument to such interpretation of Turing test. Shortly, you cannot *prove* existence of consciousness. There is no way (because you use so called third-person approaches to prove first-person, phenomenological experience and there is gap between them which we cannot bridge with our methods.) You can just show that object/machine/other being behaves in a way similar to human (see Chalmer`s zombie problem). Nothing what would *explain* mystery of consciousness any further.
(if you did not comment to my post, I am sorry for misunderstanding)
And here is a link to Searle's article that introduced the idea: http://web.archive.org/web/20071210043312/http://members.aol.com/NeoNoetics/MindsBrainsPrograms.html
<< Daneb, thanks for the mention of Searle's Chinese Room experiment >>
这就是所谓的谷歌翻译！
Mark, are you trying to get Google to be self-referential and thus awaken to consciousness? This must be part of your plot to take over the world! LOL
sorry, I mistook your post from one by Mark. So yes, I was replying to you.
No, I wasn't saying that a system must be brain-like to have consciousness. I intended to say that the complexity of the brain is much bigger than determined by the number of elements and the number of connections. Complexity is also determined by the *nature* of those connections. If a connection can be only present or not present, then it's a matter of numbers. But in the brain, connections are graded: strong or weak on a gradual scale, easily triggered or difficult to trigger on a gradual scale, and that adds tremendously to the complexity of the brain. It's not just a matter of number of neurons and number of connections.
Your comparison to a liter of water is not what I would describe as "connections". Every connection between two water molecules behaves exactly the same. That's not how it works in the brain. Two molecules of water could be interchanged, without affecting the behavior of the liter of water. If you do that in the brain, the system as a whole changes, because no two neurons in the brain serve exactly the same function.
The Searle Chinese room experiment is exactly my point: you cannot prove consciousness, so how do you know that another organism or system doesn't have it? And if you can't be sure of the absence or presence of consciousness in any other organism, how does that prove or disprove the existence of a supreme being?
So I still don't see how the existence of consciousness would lead anyone to abandon atheism or agnosticism. I'm eagerly awaiting Mark's explanation!
Just to register my interest in reading your reworded explanation Mark.
I'm conscious that you said a carefully worded explanation might take some time, and I'd like to honour that; however, I didn't want a lack of interest allow the topic to come off the boil completely.
Yet as ever, as you choose.