14 ms·

Electrons don’t think

32 points by mathgenius 8y ago

kazinator 8y ago
Look, I'm not asking electrons to think outright; but reading a bit of the schematic would be nice.
- noonespecial 8y ago
  I don't know about you, but all of my electrons diabolically thwart my every effort to contain or direct them, especially at higher frequencies. Petulant little bastards those electrons...
FakeComments 8y ago
This post seems to try and refute really technical philosophy with simplified to the point of being wrong science. It just seems awkward as a result. But thinking really simplified science is enough to completely dismiss other serious thinkers is why scientists get called closed minded: to use their parlance, this rant isn’t even wrong.
- buboard 8y ago
  Same can be said about philosophy. And therein lies a schism between physicists and philosophers that lasts for a few decades now, that has leads to them mostly avoiding each other and growing increasingly orthogonal arguments to avoid any chance of synthesis.
- SiempreViernes 8y ago
  Eh, probably Hossenfelder found some popular account of panpsychism that did in fact argue that electrons have some sort of independent consciousness, maybe even written by a philosopher. In fact, I spot just the argument she refuted being stated as a reply elsewhere in these comments, preceded by the words "She misses the point". In any event, what exactly is simplified to the point of being wrong? That more internal states effects cross sections?
hprotagonist 8y ago
of course electrons don't think! they are merely the chaff and dross thrown off by the real movers and thinkers in the universe, which are monads[0]. "Just when one is about to judge Liebniz as having the strangest mind of anyone who ever lived, one remembers Newton and his lifelong obsession with alchemy and his strenuous efforts to predict the exact date of the End of the World by ransacking the Book of Revelations for encrypted clues"[1] [0]: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz/ [1]: http://faculty.cord.edu/andersod/Stephenson-Metaphysics.pdf http://faculty.cord.edu/andersod/Stephenson-Metaphysics.pdf
SmirthsDAC 8y ago
>Now, if you want a particle to be conscious, your minimum expectation should be that the particle can change. The crux of the argument seems to be here, and is simply a fallacious equivalency of free will/agency and consciousness. Two different philosophical issues that may have a unifying explanation, but not for now. Besides, panpsychism seems to almost be tautological in its assertions: if we accept materialism, and we accept consciousness exists in some creatures, then where else would consciousness be "realized" in aggregate except distributed amongst the actual matter of the brain, down reductivly to sub-atomic particles? That doesn't mean it's a fully formalized robust theory, but the concepts underlying it are sound.
- Analemma_ 8y ago
  No, that’s crazy. It takes lots of atoms of iron and silicon to make a Boeing 747, but that doesn’t mean that a single iron atom has even the slightest amount of “plane-ness”.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - SmirthsDAC 8y ago
    Requiring that it has "plane-ness" seems like an unpackable ambiguous criteria. I am speaking on a simple functional level. Rather, a given iron atom is one of the atoms that make up a given 747, so it absolutely is (and here's where the tautology comes in) part of the distributed material that makes up the plane. Without such atoms there would be no plane. The same is being said here except with consciousness, no more.
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      Requiring that it has "plane-ness" seems like an unpackable ambiguous criteria. So consciousness is more unpackable and less ambiguous?
  - evdev 8y ago
    Demanding "plane-ness" is the mistake here: you're throwing in a kind of glib idealism. If instead you demand "the possibility of forming lots and lots of electron bonds in a shape capable of performing flight" then the iron atoms did "have an amount" of the property necessary for being a plane.
jstanley 8y ago
If elementary particles can't think, how can thinking arise when combinations of elementary particles are put together? It's all well and good saying that consciousness is incompatible with evidence, but I for one perceive a great deal of consciousness. How do "scientists" address this conflict with perception? Simple: they don't. (FWIW, I don't think elementary particles can think).
- empath75 8y ago
  > If elementary particles can't think, how can thinking arise when combinations of elementary particles are put together? Where's the hurricane in a drop of water?
crazygringo 8y ago
This is possibly the biggest straw-man I've ever seen set up to represent panpsychism, and I feel like I've seen a lot. This article is beyond nonsense. The author seems to define panpsychism as the idea that a "conscious" particle would somehow affect the number of particles produced in a collision. Where she gets that definition from, I can't even begin to fathom. Panpsychism isn't "crazy shit" we "tried long ago" and we haven't "moved on". There's currently zero solid scientific evidence for any theory of consciousness, and the idea of panpsychism -- that consciousness is grounded in the physical universe rather than being an emergent property or being something supernatural -- is just as valid as any other right now. Who knows, maybe it's something like gravity that's indetectable at the atomic scale but shows up under very particular configurations at larger scales. I don't know who this author is, but based on this post she comes across as anything but scientific.
- KineticLensman 8y ago
  > I don't know who this author is, but based on this post she is certainly anything but scientific The article is credited to Sabine Hossenfelder, who according to [0] is "an author and theoretical physicist who researches quantum gravity. She is a Research Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies where she leads the Analog Systems for Gravity Duals group. She is the author of Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, which explores the concept of elegance in fundamental physics and cosmology". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabine_Hossenfelder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabine_Hossenfelder
- marcosdumay 8y ago
  > Where she gets that definition from, I can't even begin to fathom. Quantum mechanics is very clear in that the possible states of a particle determine a lot of things, including the probability you have of spotting one after a collision. And if you try to ignore QM, there are not much that you can change without violating the second law of thermodynamics either.
- TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
  I think she's perfectly scientific. She's also clueless about philosophy and metaphysics - which is unfortunately not that unusual among contemporary scientists. And I don't mean philosophy in the sense of being able to debate the fine points of anything much - but in the sense of having the breadth of conceptual education to understand what's required of genuinely a rational and consistent argument, and what's actually an irrational and irrelevant appeal to authority, as this "argument" is. This isn't particularly about panpsychism or consciousness. It's that the quality of the argument being presented is so poor. She's drawing an identity between a taxonomy of observed behaviour and independent consciousness, and saying that any entities that can be fitted into a taxonomy can be conscious. Which is "not even wrong." You could just as well argue that electrons are conscious because they can read our minds while we do experiments and are trolling us by creating some made-up rules they've invented which happen to look like quantum theory. Both make as much sense, and both are equally unhelpful as rational arguments.
rthomas6 8y ago
This definition of consciousness, that there is some internal state that can change based on input, and changing this internal state leads to different behavior, is problematic. So is a definition that defines consciousness as responding to identical stimuli in different ways. The whole problem is that consciousness as a concept is poorly defined. I do not think the people the believe inanimate objects have "consciousness" believe consciousness necessitates thought, or even internal state.
jf- 8y ago
The author misses the point. Panpsychism is in part a response to the hard problem of consciousness, the question of how subjective experience arises from non-experiencing matter. If consciousness at some basic, low level is instead a property of matter, the issue stops being a difference of kind and starts being one of degree: consciousness is an organisation of a property that already exists in the components, so it need not arise at all. Consciousness and thought are also separate things. The seeing of the colour red or touching a rough surface are experiences, though neither could be described as thoughts.
- empath75 8y ago
  Any macroscopic property doesn't exist in single elementary particles. Why single out consciousness?
- rebuilder 8y ago
  does subjective experience arise from matter? By which I mean, does it exist? I realize that seems like a completely bananas question to ask. But any theory of consciousness seems to get into absurd territory very quickly. The only proof we have that consciousness even exists is that each of us (or me, anyway, who knows what you guys are) vehemently professes to experience it. Other than that, all we seem to find is complex web of deterministic reactions. So what if the question is wrong? When we parse "I think therefore I am", we look at "am" as the insight, but it seems to me the "I" is left undefined. edit: I'm sorry, I jumped the gun on this a bit, you were saying it doesn't arise. But nevertheless, I'm left uncomfortable declaring something exists that we can not actually perceive from the outside.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
kmm 8y ago
What an unnecessarily divisive post. Science is not antithetical to philosophy, and physicists and philosophers aren't two different camps. As someone with an education in physics, I had a physics professor who also wrote lovely articles in the subject of philosophy of science. I don't doubt philosophers without education in the fundamentals of physics can and often do come to conclusions that are naive and hopelessly incompatible with physical evidence or models that have stood the test of time for centuries. Especially quantum mechanics is a widely misunderstood and misapplied subject. But it goes both ways, it is quite arrogant to think you can disprove an entire subject in a field of study that isn't your own with such simple reasoning. It is true that electrons don't have a lot of internal state and can be completely described with a few quantum numbers. But my first reaction wouldn't be to conclude that panpsychism is obvious nonsense (not that I'm a fan either, I'm have no problem confessing my ignorance on the subject), but to see if someone more qualified in the topic had written something about it.
sneakernets 8y ago
Wow, i just read all that. I've never seen trolling on such a high level before.
- SiempreViernes 8y ago
  I suspect this is simply how many germans argue in english, with the cultural differences in expression lining up in such a way that their calm argument comes out rather angry in english.
lolc 8y ago
Look we've been shooting these particles you call "humans" at varying targets and so far they've all acted the same way. They haven't shown any difference in how they reacted with different stars, for example. Even if we shoot them back at that cold planet where you collected them, they all interact with it the same way. Consciousness at such small scale is simply not possible. Our theories don't allow it.
21 8y ago
r/IAmVerySmart https://xkcd.com/793/ https://xkcd.com/793/
- skh 8y ago
  She's a physicist and is addressing the notion that electrons have consciousness. She works in quantum gravity and presumably knows quite a bit about particle theory. Her blog post is solely about the idea that electrons can have consciousness and why she - an expert in physics and quantum gravity - believes this isn't possible. Since, according to her conclusions, electrons can't have consciousness then the idea that all matter has consciousness can't be correct. The logic is quite sound. I don't know if her definition of panpsychism is correct but her logic is sound. 1. Electrons are matter. 2. Electrons don't have consciousness. (according to her argument) 3. Therefore the belief that all matter has consciousness is wrong. Note that an argument can be logically sound while having a false conclusion. This happens if one of the premises are wrong. In this case it would be her conclusion that electrons can't have consciousness.
User23 8y ago
This is a well written and educational article, but it’s also missing the point. For a dualist, no amount of material testing is going to determine a spiritual/ideal/pickyourlabel characteristic. Even if you hold the dualist position there’s nothing here to disagree with. Sadly she didn’t address a question that’s interested me since reading Feynman’s QED: how do electrons “decide” how to scatter? Edit: I’m going to bookmark this to use as a virtually perfect example of not even wrong.
nabla9 8y ago
Author confuses thinking, and ability to act with consciousness the hard problem. If you want to debate with philosophers, you must be ready to dig deep into definitions. When physicists use dabble with philosophy, run. Even philosophers (like Dave Chalmers) can't explain their thinking in detail in podcasts or popular articles. They just put some ideas there but it does not represent the analytical thinking well.
nyc111 8y ago
Consciousness is nothing mysterious. It is the state of the human body to be aware of itself. It's independent of any organs. It has nothing to do with the heart as previously thought or with the brain as is popular now. But it can be associated with the microbiome because consciousness or self-awareness always reacts to the microbiome. The microbiome serves to consciousness the content it creates in order to lead the consciousness. The self perceives this content as the "inner voice". A cat is not aware of itself as a cat because it experiences its environment directly and not through the filter of language as humans do. During sleep conscioussness "dies" and microbes take over and do their business of repairing the body without the meddling of the consciousness. When they become hungry and they want to be fed they wake up their slave (the consciousness) and serve him beautiful images of crossants and the smell of coffee in order to get their feed which is usually sugar. This is not a physics problem and physicists should take their atomic materialist doctrines with them and get out and continue discussing the temperatures 14 billions years ago in ever greater details. Physicists can have nothing to say about the human body.
- a11595 8y ago
  this is the reply of a religious person. at cat is not aware of itself as a cat? A 1 year old human baby is unaware of itself as a baby by your definition. Let's make post-birth abortion legal. How old are you? consciousness is literally the most mysterious thing unknown to man, and all evidence which you authoritatively dismiss because "you just know" points to it being the brain. if I were personally to scientifically define it, it would be: given the same stimuli in the same exact setup, 2 different outcomes can be observed. We call this choice. This completely clashes with Newtonian physics, but quantum mechanics - maybe not. In physics, we describe the environment with equations and theories that fit an observed outcome, but we don't describe the reason for how it works. The classic: magnets - how do they work?? I can tell you how they'll behave, how energy is moved around by elementary particles, but that tells me nothing of what it actually is. If choice is something that exists, the world is particles and energy, and doing a lot of math on the movement of energy and particles can predict what those particles will do - we have opposing ideas which are both observed to be true. Now whether choice actually exists or not is debatable. But that also depends on how we view time through our body's sensors. Does that fact that a choice I make is predetermined negate the fact that I make the choice? You can say that a point in the future already exists, and I just need to get to it. Just like the waffle house exists, but for me it's only there once I walk to it. This is absolutely physics. Your wild declarations are not made stronger by you talking like you got it all figured out. So again I ask - Christian? Because if so, the argument stops here, as it's pointless to debate it with you.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

32 points by mathgenius 8y ago

kazinator 8y ago

Look, I'm not asking electrons to think outright; but reading a bit of the schematic would be nice.

noonespecial 8y ago
I don't know about you, but all of my electrons diabolically thwart my every effort to contain or direct them, especially at higher frequencies. Petulant little bastards those electrons...

FakeComments 8y ago

This post seems to try and refute really technical philosophy with simplified to the point of being wrong science. It just seems awkward as a result. But thinking really simplified science is enough to completely dismiss other serious thinkers is why scientists get called closed minded: to use their parlance, this rant isn’t even wrong.

buboard 8y ago
Same can be said about philosophy. And therein lies a schism between physicists and philosophers that lasts for a few decades now, that has leads to them mostly avoiding each other and growing increasingly orthogonal arguments to avoid any chance of synthesis.
SiempreViernes 8y ago
Eh, probably Hossenfelder found some popular account of panpsychism that did in fact argue that electrons have some sort of independent consciousness, maybe even written by a philosopher. In fact, I spot just the argument she refuted being stated as a reply elsewhere in these comments, preceded by the words "She misses the point". In any event, what exactly is simplified to the point of being wrong? That more internal states effects cross sections?

hprotagonist 8y ago

of course electrons don't think! they are merely the chaff and dross thrown off by the real movers and thinkers in the universe, which are monads[0]. "Just when one is about to judge Liebniz as having the strangest mind of anyone who ever lived, one remembers Newton and his lifelong obsession with alchemy and his strenuous efforts to predict the exact date of the End of the World by ransacking the Book of Revelations for encrypted clues"[1] [0]: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz/ [1]: http://faculty.cord.edu/andersod/Stephenson-Metaphysics.pdf http://faculty.cord.edu/andersod/Stephenson-Metaphysics.pdf

SmirthsDAC 8y ago

>Now, if you want a particle to be conscious, your minimum expectation should be that the particle can change. The crux of the argument seems to be here, and is simply a fallacious equivalency of free will/agency and consciousness. Two different philosophical issues that may have a unifying explanation, but not for now. Besides, panpsychism seems to almost be tautological in its assertions: if we accept materialism, and we accept consciousness exists in some creatures, then where else would consciousness be "realized" in aggregate except distributed amongst the actual matter of the brain, down reductivly to sub-atomic particles? That doesn't mean it's a fully formalized robust theory, but the concepts underlying it are sound.

Analemma_ 8y ago
No, that’s crazy. It takes lots of atoms of iron and silicon to make a Boeing 747, but that doesn’t mean that a single iron atom has even the slightest amount of “plane-ness”.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- SmirthsDAC 8y ago
  Requiring that it has "plane-ness" seems like an unpackable ambiguous criteria. I am speaking on a simple functional level. Rather, a given iron atom is one of the atoms that make up a given 747, so it absolutely is (and here's where the tautology comes in) part of the distributed material that makes up the plane. Without such atoms there would be no plane. The same is being said here except with consciousness, no more.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    Requiring that it has "plane-ness" seems like an unpackable ambiguous criteria. So consciousness is more unpackable and less ambiguous?
- evdev 8y ago
  Demanding "plane-ness" is the mistake here: you're throwing in a kind of glib idealism. If instead you demand "the possibility of forming lots and lots of electron bonds in a shape capable of performing flight" then the iron atoms did "have an amount" of the property necessary for being a plane.

jstanley 8y ago

If elementary particles can't think, how can thinking arise when combinations of elementary particles are put together? It's all well and good saying that consciousness is incompatible with evidence, but I for one perceive a great deal of consciousness. How do "scientists" address this conflict with perception? Simple: they don't. (FWIW, I don't think elementary particles can think).

empath75 8y ago
> If elementary particles can't think, how can thinking arise when combinations of elementary particles are put together? Where's the hurricane in a drop of water?

crazygringo 8y ago

This is possibly the biggest straw-man I've ever seen set up to represent panpsychism, and I feel like I've seen a lot. This article is beyond nonsense. The author seems to define panpsychism as the idea that a "conscious" particle would somehow affect the number of particles produced in a collision. Where she gets that definition from, I can't even begin to fathom. Panpsychism isn't "crazy shit" we "tried long ago" and we haven't "moved on". There's currently zero solid scientific evidence for any theory of consciousness, and the idea of panpsychism -- that consciousness is grounded in the physical universe rather than being an emergent property or being something supernatural -- is just as valid as any other right now. Who knows, maybe it's something like gravity that's indetectable at the atomic scale but shows up under very particular configurations at larger scales. I don't know who this author is, but based on this post she comes across as anything but scientific.

KineticLensman 8y ago
> I don't know who this author is, but based on this post she is certainly anything but scientific The article is credited to Sabine Hossenfelder, who according to [0] is "an author and theoretical physicist who researches quantum gravity. She is a Research Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies where she leads the Analog Systems for Gravity Duals group. She is the author of Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, which explores the concept of elegance in fundamental physics and cosmology". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabine_Hossenfelder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabine_Hossenfelder
marcosdumay 8y ago
> Where she gets that definition from, I can't even begin to fathom. Quantum mechanics is very clear in that the possible states of a particle determine a lot of things, including the probability you have of spotting one after a collision. And if you try to ignore QM, there are not much that you can change without violating the second law of thermodynamics either.
TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
I think she's perfectly scientific. She's also clueless about philosophy and metaphysics - which is unfortunately not that unusual among contemporary scientists. And I don't mean philosophy in the sense of being able to debate the fine points of anything much - but in the sense of having the breadth of conceptual education to understand what's required of genuinely a rational and consistent argument, and what's actually an irrational and irrelevant appeal to authority, as this "argument" is. This isn't particularly about panpsychism or consciousness. It's that the quality of the argument being presented is so poor. She's drawing an identity between a taxonomy of observed behaviour and independent consciousness, and saying that any entities that can be fitted into a taxonomy can be conscious. Which is "not even wrong." You could just as well argue that electrons are conscious because they can read our minds while we do experiments and are trolling us by creating some made-up rules they've invented which happen to look like quantum theory. Both make as much sense, and both are equally unhelpful as rational arguments.

rthomas6 8y ago

This definition of consciousness, that there is some internal state that can change based on input, and changing this internal state leads to different behavior, is problematic. So is a definition that defines consciousness as responding to identical stimuli in different ways. The whole problem is that consciousness as a concept is poorly defined. I do not think the people the believe inanimate objects have "consciousness" believe consciousness necessitates thought, or even internal state.

jf- 8y ago

The author misses the point. Panpsychism is in part a response to the hard problem of consciousness, the question of how subjective experience arises from non-experiencing matter. If consciousness at some basic, low level is instead a property of matter, the issue stops being a difference of kind and starts being one of degree: consciousness is an organisation of a property that already exists in the components, so it need not arise at all. Consciousness and thought are also separate things. The seeing of the colour red or touching a rough surface are experiences, though neither could be described as thoughts.

empath75 8y ago
Any macroscopic property doesn't exist in single elementary particles. Why single out consciousness?
rebuilder 8y ago
does subjective experience arise from matter? By which I mean, does it exist? I realize that seems like a completely bananas question to ask. But any theory of consciousness seems to get into absurd territory very quickly. The only proof we have that consciousness even exists is that each of us (or me, anyway, who knows what you guys are) vehemently professes to experience it. Other than that, all we seem to find is complex web of deterministic reactions. So what if the question is wrong? When we parse "I think therefore I am", we look at "am" as the insight, but it seems to me the "I" is left undefined. edit: I'm sorry, I jumped the gun on this a bit, you were saying it doesn't arise. But nevertheless, I'm left uncomfortable declaring something exists that we can not actually perceive from the outside.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

kmm 8y ago

What an unnecessarily divisive post. Science is not antithetical to philosophy, and physicists and philosophers aren't two different camps. As someone with an education in physics, I had a physics professor who also wrote lovely articles in the subject of philosophy of science. I don't doubt philosophers without education in the fundamentals of physics can and often do come to conclusions that are naive and hopelessly incompatible with physical evidence or models that have stood the test of time for centuries. Especially quantum mechanics is a widely misunderstood and misapplied subject. But it goes both ways, it is quite arrogant to think you can disprove an entire subject in a field of study that isn't your own with such simple reasoning. It is true that electrons don't have a lot of internal state and can be completely described with a few quantum numbers. But my first reaction wouldn't be to conclude that panpsychism is obvious nonsense (not that I'm a fan either, I'm have no problem confessing my ignorance on the subject), but to see if someone more qualified in the topic had written something about it.

sneakernets 8y ago

Wow, i just read all that. I've never seen trolling on such a high level before.

SiempreViernes 8y ago
I suspect this is simply how many germans argue in english, with the cultural differences in expression lining up in such a way that their calm argument comes out rather angry in english.

lolc 8y ago

Look we've been shooting these particles you call "humans" at varying targets and so far they've all acted the same way. They haven't shown any difference in how they reacted with different stars, for example. Even if we shoot them back at that cold planet where you collected them, they all interact with it the same way. Consciousness at such small scale is simply not possible. Our theories don't allow it.

21 8y ago

r/IAmVerySmart https://xkcd.com/793/ https://xkcd.com/793/

skh 8y ago
She's a physicist and is addressing the notion that electrons have consciousness. She works in quantum gravity and presumably knows quite a bit about particle theory. Her blog post is solely about the idea that electrons can have consciousness and why she - an expert in physics and quantum gravity - believes this isn't possible. Since, according to her conclusions, electrons can't have consciousness then the idea that all matter has consciousness can't be correct. The logic is quite sound. I don't know if her definition of panpsychism is correct but her logic is sound. 1. Electrons are matter. 2. Electrons don't have consciousness. (according to her argument) 3. Therefore the belief that all matter has consciousness is wrong. Note that an argument can be logically sound while having a false conclusion. This happens if one of the premises are wrong. In this case it would be her conclusion that electrons can't have consciousness.

User23 8y ago

This is a well written and educational article, but it’s also missing the point. For a dualist, no amount of material testing is going to determine a spiritual/ideal/pickyourlabel characteristic. Even if you hold the dualist position there’s nothing here to disagree with. Sadly she didn’t address a question that’s interested me since reading Feynman’s QED: how do electrons “decide” how to scatter? Edit: I’m going to bookmark this to use as a virtually perfect example of not even wrong.

nabla9 8y ago

Author confuses thinking, and ability to act with consciousness the hard problem. If you want to debate with philosophers, you must be ready to dig deep into definitions. When physicists use dabble with philosophy, run. Even philosophers (like Dave Chalmers) can't explain their thinking in detail in podcasts or popular articles. They just put some ideas there but it does not represent the analytical thinking well.

nyc111 8y ago

Consciousness is nothing mysterious. It is the state of the human body to be aware of itself. It's independent of any organs. It has nothing to do with the heart as previously thought or with the brain as is popular now. But it can be associated with the microbiome because consciousness or self-awareness always reacts to the microbiome. The microbiome serves to consciousness the content it creates in order to lead the consciousness. The self perceives this content as the "inner voice". A cat is not aware of itself as a cat because it experiences its environment directly and not through the filter of language as humans do. During sleep conscioussness "dies" and microbes take over and do their business of repairing the body without the meddling of the consciousness. When they become hungry and they want to be fed they wake up their slave (the consciousness) and serve him beautiful images of crossants and the smell of coffee in order to get their feed which is usually sugar. This is not a physics problem and physicists should take their atomic materialist doctrines with them and get out and continue discussing the temperatures 14 billions years ago in ever greater details. Physicists can have nothing to say about the human body.

a11595 8y ago
this is the reply of a religious person. at cat is not aware of itself as a cat? A 1 year old human baby is unaware of itself as a baby by your definition. Let's make post-birth abortion legal. How old are you? consciousness is literally the most mysterious thing unknown to man, and all evidence which you authoritatively dismiss because "you just know" points to it being the brain. if I were personally to scientifically define it, it would be: given the same stimuli in the same exact setup, 2 different outcomes can be observed. We call this choice. This completely clashes with Newtonian physics, but quantum mechanics - maybe not. In physics, we describe the environment with equations and theories that fit an observed outcome, but we don't describe the reason for how it works. The classic: magnets - how do they work?? I can tell you how they'll behave, how energy is moved around by elementary particles, but that tells me nothing of what it actually is. If choice is something that exists, the world is particles and energy, and doing a lot of math on the movement of energy and particles can predict what those particles will do - we have opposing ideas which are both observed to be true. Now whether choice actually exists or not is debatable. But that also depends on how we view time through our body's sensors. Does that fact that a choice I make is predetermined negate the fact that I make the choice? You can say that a point in the future already exists, and I just need to get to it. Just like the waffle house exists, but for me it's only there once I walk to it. This is absolutely physics. Your wild declarations are not made stronger by you talking like you got it all figured out. So again I ask - Christian? Because if so, the argument stops here, as it's pointless to debate it with you.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]