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> Materialists always lose me when they start trying to explain things like how exactly inanimate matter started thinking. Define "thinking." Is an ecoli decid

> Materialists always lose me when they start trying to explain things like how exactly inanimate matter started thinking. Define "thinking." Is an ecoli deciding to move towards or away from a chemical signal "thinking?" > I've never seen any recourse other than handwaving of the highest order. How much have you read from people researching consciousness, vs reading half-baked layman ideas about materialism on web forums? Do you find "souls" to require less handwaving than materialism? Because if not, I have a lot of questions about souls that I'd love you to answer. Here are a few. - when you were a wee child, was your soul also unable to think sophisticated thoughts and was also afraid of monsters under the bed? - does your soul sleep when you are asleep, or is it just waiting for you to wake up? - how does a soul manifest its influence on the physical body? Do you posit that it violates physical laws to make the material body do something other than follow the physical laws, or is there some undiscovered force of nature that allows a soul to "tunnel" into the physical world? - at what point does the soul attach itself to the physical body? That is, does a blastomere have a soul? If so, what happens when a blastomere cleves fully in two, making identical twins -- does another soul pop into existence? Does the original soul split into two as well? - when a person develops dementia, does the soul suffer from it too? or does the soul get frustrated that it can no longer communicate with its associated body? - is there one soul that everyone taps into, or does each person have their own soul? - do souls get one "life", or do they get recycled? if they are recycled, do souls specialize in one type of creature, or can a soul be a worm in one life and a physicist in the next?

User23 5y ago
> Define "thinking." Is an ecoli deciding to move towards or away from a chemical signal "thinking?" Define "defining". Is a definition the thing that is being defined? > How much have you read from people researching consciousness, vs reading half-baked layman ideas about materialism on web forums? Will I not learn anything from dialog with you because it's on a web forum? > Do you find "souls" to require less handwaving than materialism? Do you find "materialism" to require less handwaving than dualism? > Do you find "souls" to require less handwaving than materialism? Because if not, I have a lot of questions about souls that I'd love you to answer. Here are a few. Did I somehow give you the impression that I'm an apologist? I'm here to talk about how conscious intelligence could arise from dumb matter, not about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin and other such nonsense.
- TchoBeer 5y ago
  >Do you find "materialism" to require less handwaving than dualism? The upside to materialism is that the gap in our knowledge, namely why networks of neurons cause consciousness, is something we can acknowledge we don't know and try to understand. Resorting to an explaination relying on objects we can't observse seems... inelegant.
  - User23 5y ago
    > Resorting to an explaination relying on objects we can't observse seems... inelegant. Does your objection hold for dark matter and dark energy too?
    - TchoBeer 5y ago
      Dark Matter and Dark Energy are just catchall terms for "the force that causes more gravitation than we'd expect" and "the force that causes the universe to accelerate in expansion" respectively. Those two phenomena definitely exist, and physicists are obviously not content with concluding our understanding at that, which is why hypothesis about what they are abound.

User23 5y ago

> Define "thinking." Is an ecoli deciding to move towards or away from a chemical signal "thinking?" Define "defining". Is a definition the thing that is being defined? > How much have you read from people researching consciousness, vs reading half-baked layman ideas about materialism on web forums? Will I not learn anything from dialog with you because it's on a web forum? > Do you find "souls" to require less handwaving than materialism? Do you find "materialism" to require less handwaving than dualism? > Do you find "souls" to require less handwaving than materialism? Because if not, I have a lot of questions about souls that I'd love you to answer. Here are a few. Did I somehow give you the impression that I'm an apologist? I'm here to talk about how conscious intelligence could arise from dumb matter, not about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin and other such nonsense.

TchoBeer 5y ago
>Do you find "materialism" to require less handwaving than dualism? The upside to materialism is that the gap in our knowledge, namely why networks of neurons cause consciousness, is something we can acknowledge we don't know and try to understand. Resorting to an explaination relying on objects we can't observse seems... inelegant.
- User23 5y ago
  > Resorting to an explaination relying on objects we can't observse seems... inelegant. Does your objection hold for dark matter and dark energy too?
  - TchoBeer 5y ago
    Dark Matter and Dark Energy are just catchall terms for "the force that causes more gravitation than we'd expect" and "the force that causes the universe to accelerate in expansion" respectively. Those two phenomena definitely exist, and physicists are obviously not content with concluding our understanding at that, which is why hypothesis about what they are abound.