The Deistic God

Preamble My next post would be conclusory and as is clear all that seperates me from Con are presuppositions. A materialist one on his part and an idealistic one on my part. As it stands, Con is 1) yet to admit the causal gap I mentioned, 2) has glossed over my request (which I highlighted) to state if consciousness is physical and substatiate it and 3) has not responded to my reply on evolutionary mechanisms and why they can't possibly account for consciousness. I will be focusing on rebutting specific points Con makes (on material consciousness, working processors, inferring thoughts from brain scans etc). Rebuttals To Con's Points I would like to give my arguments more depth by giving a short detail of an aspect of my deism. After mulling deeply on the nature of reality as a result of debates on God I concluded that reality is based on 3 aspects: space, matter and mind. I have repeated that I hold space to be nothing, matter is physical (as are molecules, elements, quarks etc) and mind is that which is aware of the two. In mind, we have an excluded middle. Mind is not nothing, it is experienced in its many aspects such as awareness, memory, creativity etc. Neither is mind material. As experienced, it is immaterial. A curious thing I note about the physical world is how we tend to take as physical, many aspects of that are in fact mental. For instance, one may quickly agree that beauty is a concept attached to objects; but the same is applicable to motion which is manifestly not an object. The moving object is physical but the object's movement isn't. When I consider the simple fact that mindless things can't even know they and other things exist, talkless of their motion, I'm led to conclude_like other idealists before me_that the basis of existence is mind. It is in the nature of mind to acknowledge existence even when there is none (eg space as nothing), and without it not even physical objects can be acknowledged. One damning aspect of my stance is the gap between the immaterial and the material. 'Poofgooddidit' sums it up. Yet I find it curious that Krauss would say the same in his book 'A Universe From Nothing' and get away with it. At the least, his stance show that the materialist stance is not at all devoid of absurdities, since he asserts that the universe arose from nothing. And presumably, it evolved to result in conscious humans. This tells me that when it's convenient people will accept absurdities. As it stands, God couldn't have used physical means to make the physical world. It will be illogical. If one decides disembodied mind making the world is absurd, you still face having to explain how matter which clearly lacks mind resulting in beings with mind. At this point, matter poofing it up, or mind being illusory, or reducing mind to the material brain involve a denial of the fact of mental experience. Keeping this in mind, let's see why Con's point fails " on material consciousness: on the contrary, even Descartes tried to find the seat of the soul in the brain and fully believed that the brain explained the body's behaviour. There's nothing about dualism that precludes the fact that material effects affect consciousness. It so happens you are the one denying the opposite, that the conscious mind affects the way the brain behaves. I happen to be familiar with the TED talk on using brain waves to control devices and I've watched the TED talk on brain imaging. My response to it is that 1) the researchers involve didn't experience for themselves what the subject was thinking, 2) depended on past data built over the years on brain function and interpretation given by subjects 3) the image predicted from brain scans in Jou Lepsen's case study seemed to be highly constrained to videos similar to the ones the subjects were exposed to. And finally, Con ignores the caveat that follows after my talk on fMRI scans. I said "Even then, the 'knowing' wouldn't be physical." " On emergent properties: Sharpness, chemical bonds and smoothness are not physical objects. One must seperate between objects and concepts we build around them to explain them. Con can use this same argument of emergent property for location, height, width and volume, which are also concepts we build around objects. I make a distinction between objects and the concepts we use to distinguish such objects. Con doesn't. I also note that these properties aren't self-aware because that's what is in contention, and consciousness is in a different category from such properties since consciousness makes a thing aware of itself. To show how absurd Con's insistence on sharpness and smoothness miss the point and don't explain anything I would ask him a question he will undoubtedly special plead for. What physical properties make an object sharp or smooth ? Chances are Con will simply repeat the definition of sharpness and smoothness. " On conscious beings and working processors: In the case of brain-dead people, I never claimed that a consciousness substance was passed down. I simply noted conscious beings give birth to conscious beings. In mammals, consciousness is tied to our ability to move, survive and thrive. Without it we can't fulfill basic needs of feeding, reproduction and shelter so there's no way unconscious mammals or humans would mate, talkless reproduce. This is why I noted that Con was the conscious being who arranged everything and it is why Con's point fails. As for working processors, I concede Con's point of emergent property. But as is evident, all the emergent property in his examples are physical eg capacitors, magnets etc. But consciousness (again, as experienced) isn't physical. " On Boltzmann's brain and my concluding points Con's talk of Boltzmann's brain is interesting and I must say while I myself even have wild ideas of my own I don't agree with Boltzmann's proposition that a brain can pop out from quantum fluctuations. I've already said emergent properties are physical. I've also said that Con's use of properties like sharpness or smoothness misses the point by failing to distinguish between concepts we use to class objects and the objects themselves. Even time and taste are associated with objects, yet won't it be absurd to say breakfast and sweet are emergent properties of a sandwich someone had in the morning ? This is the point I'm trying to make to Con which he is yet to rebut. Furthermore, Con's talk of me not arguing that the being needs to be uncaused is simply false. From the second part of my argument in the first round, I clearly state in P2) that there can't be an infinite regression and use this in P3) to argue that the being can't be caused. Con's final point shows my point of presuppositions being the issue here. Because explaining why we are here is why I conclude that this 'extra unargued for attribute' is a good case for a deistic God. In fact, it is all that required since deists make no other claims about what God wants or does. At least, they do so less than other theists. Why Con won't consider my argument that at most matter would have made (philosophical) zombies or definitively state what consciousness is (with evidence) is a fairly easy guess.