Denial of Evolution VI.

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Trippy said:
Have you ever actually read up on any of the current research that's being done in this area? Since Urey and Miller published their controversial findings, I mean.
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depends on what you mean by current.
i've read material about various advances but i haven't read much published after about 2000 or so.

what's your point?
 
Write4U said:
But potential does not have conscious intention. It is an implication of a possibility and probability. It is inherent in all things and does not require a single mind to become causal. On the contrary, there need to be several potentials present before a potential can be expressed in reality. A convergence of reinforcing potentials from which reality becomes manifest (Explicate)

Example1, the water in a river has the potential for use as a source of energy but it requires the conversion of its kinetic energy to turn a generator, which then delivers energy.

Actually, water itself has incredible potential power.

Example2, the potential energy contained in a single glass of water, theoretically could provide energy for 1 million people (fusion technology) for 1 day. 365 glasses of water could provide energy for 1 million people for a year. This energy is already contained in the hydrogen atoms. When we drink water we partake in a great exchange of potential energy from the glass to our bodies.

Thus we can say that water has potential for energy. Even if the water is never used for that purpose it still retains this inherent quality in latent form, not real but implied in the Implicate.

Thus the very profound definition of the word Potential as "a latent excellence which may become reality". The encyclopedia devotes many pages to the various expressions and functions of potential, it is invoked every time we speak of the future not yet real.
It is a fundamental component in the science of physics.

It is my firm belief that Potential is a "common denominator" of everything. It existed before this universe existed and exists in every single particle in the universe. This has become my god and understanding the word potential has allowed me to look at the world with deeper understanding in a subjective but secular way.

With respect for anyone who believes in the existence of a Wholeness, it must have been preceded by Potential; a latent excellence which may become reality. The Implicate becoming Explicate in reality. It cannot be otherwise, IMHO
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This is nothing short of fascinating; thank you for explaining it as you have. You're right and after thinking it through, Intention can really only exist in some"thing" capable of employing intention. Water is a great example of how the concept of Intention can't be used beyond what it's currently being used for, amongst psychologists.

A question for anyone here...slightly off the beaten path but maybe not.

In 1924, Alfred Lotka proposed that the mind controls the brain through what he termed as "quantum jumps," that would otherwise lead to a random existence. This was around the early timeframe of Quantum Theory.

What does random mean in this context?
 
wegs said:
This is nothing short of fascinating; thank you for explaining it as you have. You're right and after thinking it through, Intention can really only exist in some"thing" capable of employing intention. Water is a great example of how the concept of Intention can't be used beyond what it's currently being used for, amongst psychologists.

A question for anyone here...slightly off the beaten path but maybe not.

In 1924, Alfred Lotka proposed that the mind controls the brain through what he termed as "quantum jumps," that would otherwise lead to a random existence. This was around the early timeframe of Quantum Theory.

What does random mean in this context?
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Equally, what does"quantum jump" mean? The early notion of the electron making an instantaneous "jump" between "orbits" in the Bohr model of the atom was out of date by the mid 1920s. It has lived on in popular parlance, in which it is sometimes is used to denote a big jump (as in the tiresome expression "quantum leap"), whereas in fact, the essence of the real quantum jump was it was almost unimagineably tiny!

Your discussion sounds rather woo-woo to me, I must confess.
 
wegs said:
In 1924, Alfred Lotka proposed that the mind controls the brain through what he termed as "quantum jumps," that would otherwise lead to a random existence. This was around the early timeframe of Quantum Theory.

What does random mean in this context?
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Mind controls the brain? How can the mind control the brain when mind is a function of the brain? :bugeye:
 
exchemist said:
Equally, what does"quantum jump" mean? The early notion of the electron making an instantaneous "jump" between "orbits" in the Bohr model of the atom was out of date by the mid 1920s. It has lived on in popular parlance, in which it is sometimes is used to denote a big jump (as in the tiresome expression "quantum leap"), whereas in fact, the essence of the real quantum jump was it was almost unimagineably tiny!

Your discussion sounds rather woo-woo to me, I must confess.
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gmilam said:
Mind controls the brain? How can the mind control the brain when mind is a function of the brain? :bugeye:
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Consciousness controls the brain. ;)

@ exchemist, not "woo woo" at all. :eek:

Lotka reached a conclusion that physics falls short of explaining consciousness. His model is considered to be the first quantum model of consciousness. In a nutshell, Lotka basically said that subjective "consciousness" falls below Planck's constant.

He was a pioneer of sorts and hardly thought of as a "quack" if that is what u meant. Lol

So just wondering what is meant by random in the above context?
 
Never mind; think I know what was meant. Random meaning as it is generally defined as having no direction or purpose.

So, subjective consciousness is what causes us to make decisions, etc.
Life would be random then without that ability.

I think that's what's implied.
 
wegs said:
Consciousness controls the brain.
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No. All thought is a function of the brain, including consciousness, memory, dreaming, instinct, etc. Consciousness and other thought processes are also influenced by emotions, which are indeed affected by thought (creating a feedback loop), but the brain is also heavily influenced by hormones and other physiological phenomena such as hunger, pain, balance, things we see and hear, etc., and these influences also affect thought.

We have some control over our brains, but it is a vague, slow sort of control which can hardly be described as "conscious." By age 3, a child of professional parents will have heard 45 million words spoken directly to him; whereas a child of working-class parents will have heard 26 million, and a child of a family on welfare will have heard only 13 million. This will affect the growth of the speech center in his brain, resulting in better or worse language skills and concomitant levels of other abilities that affect the probability of success in a communication-intensive civilization.
 
Mind controls the brain? How can the mind control the brain when mind is a function of the brain
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another thing, all matter must possess the basic qualities of life and consciousness or they are derived from space-time somehow
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Substrates do not control the patterns supported on them, nor do they possess in themselves the "basic qualities" of those patterns, in general. This is true of all substrate/pattern distinctions; protons and electrons and neutrons do not themselves conduct electrical current or exhibit high rates of radioactive decay, for example - copper and uranium do. None of the chemical constituents of the human brain do any thinking whatsoever, nor do they contain in themselves the "basic qualities" of human thought.

Although the brain definitely responds to at least some quantum level effects (a single photon can register in the visual cortex), these phenomena do not themselves act at the level of mind; the mental response to the registry of a photon is several levels removed from that photon and certainly not controlled by it. Searching for the emergent properties we label "mental" at the quantum level is looking in the wrong direction - in general we look "up" or "out" from the substrate for the basics of the patterns it supports, not "down" or "in".
 
Fraggle Rocker said:
No. All thought is a function of the brain, including consciousness, memory, dreaming, instinct, etc. Consciousness and other thought processes are also influenced by emotions, which are indeed affected by thought (creating a feedback loop), but the brain is also heavily influenced by hormones and other physiological phenomena such as hunger, pain, balance, things we see and hear, etc., and these influences also affect thought.

We have some control over our brains, but it is a vague, slow sort of control which can hardly be described as "conscious." By age 3, a child of professional parents will have heard 45 million words spoken directly to him; whereas a child of working-class parents will have heard 26 million, and a child of a family on welfare will have heard only 13 million. This will affect the growth of the speech center in his brain, resulting in better or worse language skills and concomitant levels of other abilities that affect the probability of success in a communication-intensive civilization.
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I will meet you part of the way and say what you are saying isn't the entire picture when it comes to what scientists over the years have grappled with, in terms of proving how consciousness "comes about."

To say that consciousness is merely nothing more or little more than a brain function may be impossible to prove.
I don't think anyone has proven that.

It is however, a well accepted scientific hypothesis so that I will give merit to.
But, science still has the tough task of proving this.

There are well respected scientists who don't believe that consciousness is a mere function of the brain.
Hope that better clarifies my earlier post(s).
 
Meant to add...

Awareness as we know equals consciousness. To varying levels.
It is not synonymous with thoughts, rather it paves the way for thoughts and functions that require thought.

So, our brains create images, thoughts, feelings, etc...of which we are aware. But how did we become aware? Awareness is already there.
If you don't believe that, please tell me why.
 
The question of consciousness is one I think best left answered several decades from now after several orders of magnitude of computing power have been tasked with directly simulating the human brain, then we will know if consciousness if merely an emergent/virtual property of a complex biological machine or if its derived from some unreplicable supernatural realm, until then I'm don't have a clue where consciousness comes from and don't see what this presently unanswerable question has to do with evolution.
 
@ ElectricFetus:

It is relevant because it causes us to ask ...did consciousness emerge as a result of evolution?
Was it always present?

Max Planck was quoted as saying..."I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. Everything that we regard as existing postulates consciousness."

It's relevant. :eek:
 
wegs said:
@ ElectricFetus:

It is relevant because it causes us to ask ...did consciousness emerge as a result of evolution?
Was it always present?

Max Planck was quoted as saying..."I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. Everything that we regard as existing postulates consciousness."

It's relevant. :eek:
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Max Planck did not define or explain his use of the word "consciousness" here and it is semantically as meaningless as "soul" or "God" either of which can be freely substituted with no harm to the nonexsistant scientific content of the quote.

And I have a slightly fuller quote "I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness. " which is really a quote of a quote since it is allegedly from The Observer (25 Jan 1931) as cited in Joseph H. Fussell, 'Where is Science Going?: Review and Comment', Theosophical Path Magazine (1933)
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1169812759

The quote was widely circulated in the 1930's but no progress has been made since in "fundamental consciousness" in terms of its behavior or action. Specifically, ensoulment or fundamental phenomena of consciousness doesn't explain sleep, the action of drugs or brain trauma as well as the animal model of the brain plus modern neurological theory.

In context:
In answer to the question, "Do you think that consciousness can be explained in terms of matter and its laws?" he is reported to have answered that he did not. "Consciousness," he continued, "I regard as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing postulates consciousness."
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J. W. N. Sullivan, "Interview with Max Planck," The Observer, January 25, 1931
as related in Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad. Philosophical Aspects Of Modern Science, (1932) page 16

So my question is -- since evolution theory is getting the job done in biology, just what scientific job is supposed to be done by Planck's fundamental consciousness. Planck was in his 70's and speaking to an area outside of his scientific expertise so no special weight should be given to his reported opinions in an English tabloid.
 
Thank you for posting that in its entirety. My question though is why do you discount it?
I think we can safely assume what he meant by ''consciousness'' in that above mentioned quote.

Further, I don't think it is a matter of semantics at all. With all due respect, that's merely your opinion, only.
:confused:
 
I discount extraordinary claims. I discount baseless claims. I discount worthless claims. This appears to be all three.
 
What an appeal to authority! Max Planck can't answer the question of where consciousness comes from anymore then anyone else, especially since he is dead. This thread is about denial of evolution, not about the origins of a property which may or may not actually exist! Even if consciousness is breath into us by some kind of wrinkly old invisible all powerful sky wizard it does it does nothing to the fact of evolution: its not evidence in anyway against evolution!
 
Oh, I didn't start the dialogue here about consciousness lol, I'm merely interjecting my points into the mix.
Consciousness for the sake of this discussion, has nothing to do with God...or a soul...or any of that.

But, it plays a role (perhaps, how much/to what degree, don't know) in the evolutionary process.

Anyways...
 
ElectricFetus said:
This thread is about denial of evolution, not about the origins of a property which may or may not actually exist!
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no it isn't, it was renamed a denial thread by a moderator after i posted an article from science and started asking questions about that article.
 
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