Cybernetics tells us Conscious Energy must exist

reply to post by Salander


Good points,

The problem is materialism. It basically ignores our immaterial or non local nature and says everything must emerge from a blind material process which makes no sense.

Eastern thought probably has it right when it says matter and spirit are two sides of the same thing and the immaterial shapes the material reality we experience.

So there's one unified Consciousness or Spirit that manifests through matter which can be local and SEEM separate. This separation is merely an illusion and everything is interconnected. This is what science tells us. So you have a Coherent source that Decoheres and has local or separate experiences before you die and coherency starts to return. This is why you hear many near death experiences say they become more connected and aware as they leave local, classical consciousness of the body. This is the Quantum Mind reconnecting with our Coherent nature.

It goes back to Plato and the Allegory of the Cave. Some people are stuck in the cave of materialism so they can't see our spiritual or immaterial nature.

reply to post by neoholographic


I honestly I have no idea what you are going on about.

First "problem states" was a typo that i pasted over and over as I already said i thought that was obvious. It still doesn't matter what word you use there. I could have just made up a word and it would have made just as much sense as anything else you posted.

So a memory may randomly pop into your head but that's an involuntary memory not random memories

Another flash of genius...and you have no insight into this?

What's the definition of will?

The mental faculty by which one deliberately chooses or decides upon a course of action:

Deliberate intention or wish

Er..um...that's the same as free will. We aren't talking about that. Are you trying to confuse me?

I would lay off the more complex subjects like " protoconsciousnes" until you can get the basics like that "will" and "free will" are the same thing. One implies deliberately choosing while the other implies deliberately choosing freely. Your whole topic implies a discussion about free will. You decided it didn't when I brought up this which supported what I was talking about.

In their quest for the source of randomness in human free will, both neurophysiologists like John Eccles and physicists like Roger Penrose have proposed that quantum effects are responsible for creating randomness in the processes of the human brain.

You are basically talking out of both sides of your butt.

Where's your random brain activity

Here

In their quest for the source of randomness in human free will, both neurophysiologists like John Eccles and physicists like Roger Penrose have proposed that quantum effects are responsible for creating randomness in the processes of the human brain.

Where's your random memories

Here

So a memory may randomly pop into your head

Where's your problem states?

Can you google that for me?

At the end of the day, you seem to just make it up as you go

of course I do.

It's like you're more concerned about responding to a post than trying to learn something new.

obviously

I will make the suggestion one more time but I know it will not mean anything. Try to take the time to learn and understand what your reading before you respond. It makes for a much better debate.

Maybe take your own advice? You lost me a long while ago. I'm not debating you despite that you think i am and im not interested in much of anything you think you know about. I'm not putting much effort into the "discussion". I'm just fascinated that you keep replying to my inane posts as if I actually said anything worth responding to. I'm obviously not taking you seriously. But I guess anyone responding to you is better than nothing.

What I find interesting is in relation to multiverse theory. As is can be about, not just the electron cloud. But also as well with parallel universes, within one frame of the electron cloud.

Specifically citing the level 1,2 and 3 type multiverses the issue of entanglement comes to mind.

Consider, that just in respect to the separation of states in the electron cloud as a whole. Each Doppelgänger is potentially akin to a facet in a diamond. The differences in each perspective as a whole being representative of an environment outside that perspective. Taken to the next two levels, from my evaluations, it seems more in kind with reality in 11 dimensions +.

Further

Any thoughts?

reply to post by Kashai

Any thoughts?

How does the brain recall specific memories at will?

How do you know if its a random memory or a willed memory?

Memories can randomly pop up but that's an involuntary memory. Is that what you mean?

I don't think there's a difference but I will accept involuntary memory as better term. But involuntary still could be random like a random involuntary twitch but that is besides the point. So how do you know the difference between an involuntary memory and a willed memory?

Here is the way I understand it....
Penrose is talking about quantum effects because the randomness he's talking about is the ability of the brain to randomly choose between different probable states.

And will is the act of deliberately choosing.

How do you randomly choose something deliberately?

ZetaRediculian
reply to post by Kashai

 

Any thoughts?

How does the brain recall specific memories at will?

How do you know if its a random memory or a willed memory?

Memories can randomly pop up but that's an involuntary memory. Is that what you mean?

I don't think there's a difference but I will accept involuntary memory as better term. But involuntary still could be random like a random involuntary twitch but that is besides the point. So how do you know the difference between an involuntary memory and a willed memory?

Here is the way I understand it....

Involuntary memory, also known as involuntary explicit memory, involuntary conscious memory, involuntary aware memory, and most commonly, involuntary autobiographical memory, is a subcomponent of memory that occurs when cues encountered in everyday life evoke recollections of the past without conscious effort. Voluntary memory, its binary opposite, is characterized by a deliberate effort to recall the past.

Source

Memories "popping up" can have many reasons specific to the individual. Say for example you are walking in a large mall with your good friend. For what seems no apparent reason you start thinking about a time you were playing at the age of at a park with some friends. You did not actually look in there direction. But peripherally, with your vision, your unconscious brain did register the resemblance of the child to that friend. The result was what seemed like a random memory. Our senses collect all kinds of data that we are not actually paying attention to that the brain can store.

This is why hypnosis is used by law enforcement on witnesses. This because it helps retrieve stored memories that are of events outside the persons direct attention.

The sense off smell is a really good example Pheromones can illicit behavioral activity in both humans and animals, triggering unconscious thoughts/instincts.

An involuntary twitch in example is not a random event. It is the result of activity occurring in a human body that functions outside conscious control. Part of the brain addresses conscious and voluntary activity. The other part like the brain stem up to where the reticular activating system resides (in general).

Addresses unconscious/involuntary functions of the human body. Specifically I mean that in this case the term unconscious and involuntary are synonymous.

This part of the brain essentially regulates all the organs and is taken seriously as a source of dreams. If for example in the lower brain the part the regulates the heart. Were to stop working, the heart would immediately stop working.

If a person were to eat something that disagreed with them and had nightmares that night. This is a also a result of the part of the lower brain.

To conclude, even in the case of where there is an aberration of some kind there is always a cause as to why the aberration is being expressed.

reply to post by ZetaRediculian



You're stuck inside the paradigm of randomly. You have been trying to squeeze randomly in everything no matter how silly it sounds. So this is obviously a belief you hold that you can't see past. Everything has to be random even if it sounds idiotic.

You still haven't linked to the scientific paper or study that talks about random activity in the brain recalling specific memories. Science has shown that both voluntary and involuntary memories are recalled by the same network of specific neurons.

So who randomly chooses? How does this randomness know the difference between probable states? How does this randomness choose between these probable states? How is this randomness aware that it can choose between these probable states? Where or how does this random brain activity occur? Who or what activates this random brain activity to recall specific memories?

What's a random memory? If I'm sitting here and a memory of me going to Prom pops into my mind, how 's that a random memory? It's a specific experience that was processed by the brain. Like I said involuntary memories are recalled by a specific network of neurons. Give me an example of a random memory. Did random brain activity create these random memories? How does this work?

Here's what one study said about mind pops.

MENTAL HICCUPS: Sometimes memories pop into consciousness on their own. Although they may seem random, they are often related to recent experiences and thoughts.

www.scientificamerican.com...

The brain is an active machine. It's plugged in and so all kinds of thoughts and past experiences can pop into your head. Just like when you're surfing the internet and run into pop up ads, viruses and error pages. The machine (brain) processes information and the User filters this information and forms a world view.

Here's an interesting study on how the brain filters out information. The question materialist fail to ask is whose running the machine.

The human brain is bombarded with all kinds of information, from the memory of last night's delicious dinner to the instructions from your boss at your morning meeting. But how do you "tune in" to just one thought or idea and ignore all the rest of what is going on around you, until it comes time to think of something else?

Researchers at the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience and Centre for the Biology of Memory at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) have discovered a mechanism that the brain uses to filter out distracting thoughts to focus on a single bit of information. Their results are reported in 19 November issue of Nature.

Think of your brain like a radio: You're turning the knob to find your favourite station, but the knob jams, and you're stuck listening to something that's in between stations. It's a frustrating combination that makes it quite hard to get an update on swine flu while a Michael Jackson song wavers in and out. Staying on the right frequency is the only way to really hear what you're after. In much the same way, the brain's nerve cells are able to "tune in" to the right station to get exactly the information they need, says researcher Laura Colgin, who was the paper's first author. "Just like radio stations play songs and news on different frequencies, the brain uses different frequencies of waves to send different kinds of information," she says.

Information is carried on top of gamma waves, just like songs are carried by radio waves. These "carrier waves" transmit information from one brain region to another. "We found that there are slow gamma waves and fast gamma waves coming from different brain areas, just like radio stations transmit on different frequencies," she says.

The cells that tune into different wavelengths work like a switch, or rather, like zapping between radio stations that are already programmed into your radio. The cells can switch back and forth between different channels several times per second. The switch allows the cells to attend to one piece at a time, sorting out what's on your mind from what's happening and where you are at any point in time. The researchers believe this is an underlying principle for how information is handled throughout the brain.

"This switch mechanism points to superfast routing as a general mode of information handling in the brain," says Edvard Moser, Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience director. "The classical view has been that signaling inside the brain is hardwired, subject to changes caused by modification of connections between neurons. Our results suggest that the brain is a lot more flexible. Among the thousands of inputs to a given brain cell, the cell can choose to listen to some and ignore the rest and the selection of inputs is changing all the time. We believe that the gamma switch is a general principle of the brain, employed throughout the brain to enhance interregional communication."

www.sciencedaily.com...

The materialist are stuck in the cave of randomly. So no matter how silly and convoluted they sound, it doesn't matter because everything MUST emerge through random, blind processes. If you notice in the article they say the cell chooses and ignores information to pick out the specific information you want. How does the cell know which information I want? How does the cell know I want to tune into the waves that's carrying the information of the Michael Jackson Beat It Video and ignore the waves carrying the information for the Thriller Video? How does random brain activity know this? How do cells know this?

There's a sea of information that has been processed by your brain, yet they tell us cells know the specific information you want and they tune out information you don't want. How does the cell or random brain activity know this?

The study talks about how this information is carried at different frequencies. Low frequencies for past memories and high frequencies when your dealing with present situations. How do these cells or random brain activity know the difference between these waves carrying all this information and which specific information you want?

At the end of the day, this is what occurs when you're trapped inside the paradigm of materialism. Everything MUST emerge from the material no matter how convoluted or silly it sounds.

reply to post by Kashai

To conclude, even in the case of where there is an aberration of some kind there is always a cause as to why the aberration is being expressed.

So if I am sitting still with no external stimuli,like in a floatations tank, the thoughts and memories I have would all have a cause? such experiments have been done most notably by John Lilly.

The question I am still raising is where is that dividing line between "willed" recall and "involuntary" recall?

"involuntary" does imply that there is something that is not voluntary and I suppose such a division would be necessary for neurologists and psychologists to communicate. It would also be necessary in the courts, otherwise, anyone could argue their actions were involuntary.

I liked your response and i don't disagree but what roll would the "user" play if everything has a cause?

reply to post by neoholographic

You're stuck inside the paradigm of randomly

Oh well. You do mean randomness, I think.

If you can follow, it's part of the discussion. I'm not stuck on anything.

In their quest for the source of randomness in human free will, both neurophysiologists like John Eccles and physicists like Roger Penrose have proposed that quantum effects are responsible for creating randomness in the processes of the human brain.

as you can see "randomness in the processes of the human brain" is key to the discussion and would actually be in your favor. I do believe recall is a brain process. but we now agree that random recall and random brain processes do not exist and so according to the above quote, free will would not exist.

When people are having an actual discussion, it is necessary to the define terms clearly so that both parties know what they are discussing. I said I accept "involuntary" as a better term than "random". Even so, it doesn't detract from me trying to discuss the topic.

I didn't bother reading anything else you posted since it looks like more of the same insulting garbage you continue to employ.

Try having an actual discussion. As I mentioned before, you start good topics but the way you present yourself is horrid. Even if you come up with the most brilliant insight ever, all people see is moronic retorts and insults.

Try again.

reply to post by ZetaRediculian



I'm just responding to your post. I'm pointing out that it doesn't make sense to attribute specific functions to random activity. I do think you're stuck on everything being random because that's the paradigm that many people fall under. They can't see past this paradigm. So I use reductio ad absurdum to show just how absurd materialism is.

When you post things that flies in the face of common sense in order to stay inside a materialist paradigm, it doesn't make sense.

For instance, this is what you said in the last post.

I liked your response and i don't disagree but what roll would the "user" play if everything has a cause?

Everything in my computer has a cause but it still needs to be designed and operated by a User.

Everything in my TV has a cause but it still needs a User to design an operate it.

Like the earlier study showed. information the brain has processed is stored in the material brain. You have this sea of information. The brain also tunes into the specific information it wants and tunes out information it doesn't want. Common sense has to ask:

How is it possible for random activity in the material brain to tune into specific information that you want? Who wants this specific information?

How does random brain activity know which specific information I want to tune into? How does random activity in the brain know I want to recall Beat It by Michael Jackson and to tune out Thriller? How is this even possible without a User?

The same way the User operates the computer(machine) to surf the internet and go to the specific websites it wants to go to, the brain(machine) is operated by the User to recall the specific information it wants while tuning out other information.

This makes zero sense in the context of materialism and my only point is people who subscribe to the paradigm turn common sense on it's head in order for consciousness to fit into the paradigm that consciousness is an emergent property of the material brain.

I haven't done anything but respond to your posts. This is what happens in a discussion on a message board. I would check the thread sometime and you have like 3 or 4 responses to the post I made and like I said, I'm just responding.

I know you're having a tough time but when you talk about random brain activity or things like problem states it makes no sense and I just point that out.

www.scaruffi.com...

Free will and randomness

Free will is often associated to randomness: a being has free will if it can perform "random" actions, as opposed to actions rigidly determined by the universal clockwork. In other words, free will can exist only if the laws of nature allow for some random solutions, solutions that can be arbitrarily chosen by our consciousness. If no randomness exists in nature, then every action (including our very conscious thoughts) is predetermined by a formula and free will cannot exist.

In their quest for the source of randomness in human free will, both neurophysiologists like John Eccles and physicists like Roger Penrose have proposed that quantum effects are responsible for creating randomness in the processes of the human brain. Whether chance and free will can be equated (free will is supposed to lead to rational and deterministic decisions, not random ones) and whether Quantum Theory is the only possible source of randomness is debatable.

Since we know that a lot of what goes on in the universe is indeed regulated by strict formulas, the hope for free will should rely not so much in randomness as in "fuzziness". It is unlikely that the laws of nature hide a completely random property; on the other hand, they could be "fuzzy", in that they may prescribe a behavior but with a broad range of possible degrees.

I think these are interesting comments so I appologize for trying to better understand them.

reply to post by neoholographic


Sorry, you need try again. It's a discussion. "Random memories" was just a discussion point. It doesn't matter to me weather it exists or not. I don't care. We have established that "involuntary" is better. So I have no idea why you want keep harping on it. I dropped random memories a while ago anyway. We now have "involuntary memories".

When you post things that flies in the face of common sense in order to stay inside a materialist paradigm, it doesn't make sense.

I'm not a materialist. I'm trying to understand what the user is that you seem to have discovered.

When I asked if everything has a cause, I'm using "cause" in the involuntary sense not the willed sense. Thanks for politely asking for clarification.

So how do you distinguish between involuntary memories and willed memory? You pointed out that "willed" is a deliberate choice. So that's different then "involuntary" choices. So you must have some way to distinguish them.

There is no right or wrong answer which I think is throwing you off. Im looking for where you are making that distinction because I think it's an interesting topic.

ZetaRediculian
reply to post by Kashai

 

To conclude, even in the case of where there is an aberration of some kind there is always a cause as to why the aberration is being expressed.

So if I am sitting still with no external stimuli,like in a floatations tank, the thoughts and memories I have would all have a cause? such experiments have been done most notably by John Lilly.

The question I am still raising is where is that dividing line between "willed" recall and "involuntary" recall?

"involuntary" does imply that there is something that is not voluntary and I suppose such a division would be necessary for neurologists and psychologists to communicate. It would also be necessary in the courts, otherwise, anyone could argue their actions were involuntary.

I liked your response and i don't disagree but what roll would the "user" play if everything has a cause?

Flotation tanks are designed to assist a person in meditation. To achieve a similar brain wave pattern indicative of dreams and or deep sleep while the subject remains in a waking state. This in theory allows the subject to have experiences, related to the information stored in the unconscious. In respect to the works of Dr. Carl Jung theorized in having such an experience, is access to what he called the Collective unconscious.

An example of "involuntary" recall would be hearing a song that was popular 10 years ago. And then remembering events in your life in those days. An example of willed recall would like me asking you to give me the name of the the Captain of the Star Ship Enterprise, in the Star Trek series.

The role of the user is to make a decision as to what to do about the issue, through the conscious process.

The materialist philosophy in relation to psychology and consciousness. Places emphasis the theories offered by Skinner an Pavlov with models such as Operant Conditioning, Behavioral Modification and Positive reinforcement (as examples).

This conclusion emphasizes the idea that the will to act can be circumvented through conditioning. Back in the 50's and 60's everything from weight loss programs to the care of the mentally ill. Today the last private institution that specifically applied those models shut down in disgrace in 2008. In so far as public institutions no facility of the type in question operates modeling like that since the 1960's.

A good example of what went wrong is in relation to the Willowbrook facility of Staten Island in the 1960's

The term "involuntary" as I have applied is relevant to all forms of Clinical assessments.

And so far as Consciousness that is something that is assessed clinically.

A random event is essentially an inconsistent one.

reply to post by neoholographic

How is it possible for random activity in the material brain to tune into specific information that you want? Who wants this specific information?

You asked that before and I agreed that it wasn't possible followed up by "I guess I was wrong". I also said what we have is a cause and effect relationship which you came around to discovering "on your own" that it's
"involuntary memory"...BUT you stated "the brain has the ability to randomly choose between probable states".

I'm trying to understand how that works.
1. "there is no such thing as random memory"
2. "there is involuntary memory"
3. "the brain has the ability to randomly choose between probable states"
4. "there is willed memory that is deliberately chosen"

Doesn't it seem odd that there is no such thing as random memory but the brain has the ability to randomly choose?

You have also stated that all memories are stored in the material brain and the will chooses them deliberately.

"The brain has the ability to randomly choose between probable states". Each stored memory is a potential recalled memory or a probable state. isn't it?

I'm not trying to prove you wrong, I'm just asking for clarification.

reply to post by Kashai


Operant Conditioning would be the ultimate materialist point of view. It is effective for training your dog though.

I'm not convinced that there is a user that we have in normal daily life that makes decisions. However, I do think there is something "other" than the day to day consciousness but I don't think it's quantifiable or "provable" by any logic.

reply to post by ZetaRediculian


Take for example Gravity Theory, why is it not called the Gravity Principal. The reason is that we have no way to test gravity to the extent it could be considered a principal. In order to claim one has established a proof one needs to test the population. To be clear in order to test gravity to reach a proof that it is correct. One would need to test at the very least the entire "Universe". By that I mean the 13.7 billion year object that is anywhere between 40 and 185 light years wide.

Science is all about statistics unless the entire population of whatever is being tested can be tested. Take aspirin for example; unless someone is allergic to it or the head pain is because of some other problem it works to treat headaches. By excluding those two criteria (in general) we can say that today it is proven that Aspirin can
cure a headache.

Cybernetics is a transdisciplinary[1] approach for exploring regulatory systems, their structures, constraints, and possibilities. Cybernetics is relevant to the study of systems, such as mechanical, physical, biological, cognitive, and social systems. Cybernetics is applicable when a system being analyzed is involved in a closed signaling loop; that is, where action by the system generates some change in its environment and that change is reflected in that system in some manner (feedback) that triggers a system change, originally referred to as a "circular causal" relationship. Some say this is necessary to a cybernetic perspective. System dynamics, a related field, originated with applications of electrical engineering control theory to other kinds of simulation models (especially business systems) by Jay Forrester at MIT in the 1950s.

Concepts studied by cyberneticists (or, as some prefer, cyberneticians) include, but are not limited to: learning, cognition, adaptation, social control, emergence, communication, efficiency, efficacy, and connectivity. These concepts are studied by other subjects such as engineering and biology, but in cybernetics these are abstracted from the context of the individual organism or device.

Cybernetics was defined in the mid 20th century, by Norbert Wiener as "the scientific study of control and communication in the animal and the machine."[2] The word "cybernetics" comes from the Greek word κυβερνητική (kyverni̱tikí̱, “government”), i.e. all that are pertinent to κυβερνώ (kyvernó̱), the latter meaning to “steer,” “navigate” or “govern,” hence κυβέρνησις (kyvérni̱sis, “government is”) is the government while κυβερνήτης (kyverní̱ti̱s) is the governor or the captain. Contemporary cybernetics began as an interdisciplinary study connecting the fields of control systems, electrical network theory, mechanical engineering, logic modeling, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, anthropology, and psychology in the 1940s, often attributed to the Macy Conferences. During the second half of the 20th century cybernetics evolved in ways that distinguish first-order cybernetics (about observed systems) from second-order cybernetics (about observing systems).[3] More recently there is talk about a third-order cybernetics (doing in ways that embraces first and second-order).[4]

Fields of study which have influenced or been influenced by cybernetics include game theory, system theory (a mathematical counterpart to cybernetics), perceptual control theory, sociology, psychology (especially neuropsychology, behavioral psychology, cognitive psychology), philosophy, architecture, and organizational theory.[5]

Source

You see it is not just about making Robots that can think.

Further

reply to post by Kashai


One of Penrose's main points is that the human brain is nothing like any current AI model

Penrose believes that such deterministic yet non-algorithmic processes may come into play in the quantum mechanical wave function reduction, and may be harnessed by the brain. He argues that the present computer is unable to have intelligence because it is an algorithmically deterministic system. He argues against the viewpoint that the rational processes of the mind are completely algorithmic and can thus be duplicated by a sufficiently complex computer. This contrasts with supporters of strong artificial intelligence, who contend that thought can be simulated algorithmically. He bases this on claims that consciousness transcends formal logic because things such as the insolubility of the halting problem and Gödel's incompleteness theorem prevent an algorithmically based system of logic from reproducing such traits of human intelligence as mathematical insight. These claims were originally espoused by the philosopher John Lucas of Merton College, Oxford.

en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by Kashai

An example of "involuntary" recall would be hearing a song that was popular 10 years ago. And then remembering events in your life in those days. An example of willed recall would like me asking you to give me the name of the the Captain of the Star Ship Enterprise, in the Star Trek series.

hmmm...I think I have to disagree with this or at least question it. To me, "hearing a song" and hearing someone "asking" the name of a particular character are both external triggers or cues to remembering something. You could consider both "involuntary". For instance, hearing a song causes associated memories in the same way hearing "the Captain of the Star Ship Enterprise" causes me to think of Captain Pike, Captain Kirk and Captain Picard. It also cause me to to recall Captain Janeway witch caused me to confuse the name with Jane Hathaway. None of that I intentionally "willed". Quite frankly, I didn't have a choice.

More interesting would be how you came up with "star trek".

reply to post by neoholographic

The materialist are stuck in the cave of randomly. So no matter how silly and convoluted they sound, it doesn't matter because everything MUST emerge through random, blind processes

Can you find a materialist who says that everything is a random blind process? I don't think this is an accurate statement.

I do like this materialist view point a lot though R stands for a random function.

In my own opinion, it is not very helpful, from the scientific point of view, to "think of a dualistic 'mind' that is (logically) external to the body, somehow influencing the choices that seem to arise in the action of R. If the 'will' could somehow influence Nature's choice of alternative that occurs with R, then why is an experimenter not able, by the action of 'will power', to influence the result of a quantum experiment? If this were possible, then violations of the quantum probabilities would surely be rife! For myself, I cannot believe that such a picture can be close to the truth. To have an external 'mind-stuff' that is not itself subject to physical laws is taking us outside anything that could be reasonably called a scientific explanation, and is resorting to the viewpoint

If I remember correctly, the theory behind the conscious is our cells require certain chemicals and therefore we find ways to obtain it using the chemical balances in our brain. If we need more water, our body will tell us to go drink, but an improper chemical balance can lead our function to avoid water for one reason or another. If we repeat actions, or do other actions, our brain adapts and require us to do certain actions that are based on memory which is what we call personality. Our personality is forged by our memories and how our body functions. Genetics will be more or less efficient at certain things over other people and when combined with different experiences/memories, we act entirely different.

I believe it gets a lot more complicated from here on out but I think that's one of the more accepted theories and that would make a lot of sense if you want to talk about "cybernetics". Basically we work for the machine, and the machine is our body composition. If you want personality, it is constantly changing. Our memories are constantly changing as well and our biology has a limit of about 12-years for the oldest part of our body. We are not who we were yesterday, nor are we who we were 10 years ago. We are entirely different people, we just have vague memories on what may have happened.

That doesn't even consider quantum entanglement and how our atoms may be shifting from one end of the universe to another.

reply to post by neoholographic

I'm just responding to your post. I'm pointing out that it doesn't make sense to attribute specific functions to random activity. I do think you're stuck on everything being random because that's the paradigm that many people fall under. They can't see past this paradigm. So I use reductio ad absurdum to show just how absurd materialism is.

You are definitely missing it. When you talk of 'will', randomness is a key concept that must accounted for.

Here are some points I picked at random. None of which come from a materialist view as far as I know.

www.informationphilosopher.com...

In the first "free" stage, the development of creative alternative possibilities for thought and action, our control is probably minimal. Random thoughts appear to "come to us," more than "from us."

These thoughts may be our own, remembrances of past experiences or ideas that are relevant to the current situation. But they also may be random variations of past experiences and contain many immediate sensory inputs we can not control that suggest new possibilities to us.

Random alternatives may be generated internal to our minds or come into us from external events that are random and outside our control. Nevertheless, we may have some control over the time we allow our minds to consider new possibilities.

www.informationphilosopher.com...

There is no problem imagining that the three traditional mental faculties of reason - perception, conception, and comprehension - are all carried on deterministically in a physical brain where quantum events do not interfere with normal operations.

There is also no problem imagining a role for randomness in the brain in the form of quantum level noise. Noise can introduce random errors into stored memories. Noise could create random associations of ideas during memory recall. This randomness may be driven by microscopic fluctuations that are amplified to the macroscopic level.

www.informationphilosopher.com...

But neurobiologists know very well that there is noise in the nervous system in the form of spontaneous firings of an action potential spike, thought to be the result of random chemical changes at the synapses. This may or may not be quantum noise amplified to the macroscopic level.

But there is no problem imagining a role for randomness in the brain in the form of quantum level noise that affects the communication of knowledge. Noise can introduce random errors into stored memories. Noise can create random associations of ideas during memory recall.

www.informationphilosopher.com...

In stage 1? Even Dennett admits that possibilities may be generated randomly. These need not be inside the brain. They could be random events happening in the environment, or random suggestions from other persons. Those in the brain might be ideas that "come to mind" as a matter of luck, or may simply be random connections between existing ideas.

www.informationphilosopher.com...

The Cogito Model of human freedom locates randomness (either ancient chance or modern quantum indeterminacy) in the mind, in a way that breaks the causal chain of strict physical determinism, while doing no harm to responsibility.