Free Will And Free Choice

[untermensche]

The cell has mechanisms that respond to a molecular transition.

The cell has no mechanism to respond to energy or know anything about energy.

You have voodoo biology and nothing more.



The only thing that responds to energy is a molecule. It is a simple trans to cis transition. No magic information about energy is contained within a molecular transformation.

The cell responds to a change in the configuration of a molecule, not energy.

Voodoo biology.

Explain your theory of mind. Explain the relationship between brain and mind, how mind interacts with brain, the composition of mind, it's origin, etc, with evidence to support your model.

Theory?

Nobody has even a working hypothesis for how experience arises and you want a theory?

What I know is it takes intelligent willful decisions to have cultural advancement.

A brain that has not evolved in that time can't explain it.

Just tell me how you can know something is true without the freedom to make truth judgements?

 

[DBT]

The cell has mechanisms that respond to a molecular transition.

The cell has no mechanism to respond to energy or know anything about energy.

You have voodoo biology and nothing more.



The only thing that responds to energy is a molecule. It is a simple trans to cis transition. No magic information about energy is contained within a molecular transformation.

The cell responds to a change in the configuration of a molecule, not energy.

Voodoo biology.

Explain your theory of mind. Explain the relationship between brain and mind, how mind interacts with brain, the composition of mind, it's origin, etc, with evidence to support your model.

Theory?

Nobody has even a working hypothesis for how experience arises and you want a theory?

What I know is it takes intelligent willful decisions to have cultural advancement.

A brain that has not evolved in that time can't explain it.

Just tell me how you can know something is true without the freedom to make truth judgements?

As it happens, you are making positive claims about the relationship between brain and mind, and I am asking you to explain the reasons for your stance on the separation of mind and brain.

I am asking you to explain your dualism.

If you can't do that - offer an explanation for your stance - all of your claims and your objections are meaningless.

Meanwhile, once again:

Mind, Brain and Consciousness

''Ask yourself, is the functioning brain identical to the mind? If your answer is no, you are a closet dualist. You believe that brain and mind are made of different kinds of stuff. Such a stance will make it hard for you to understand the nature of consciousness. It will make the mental aspects of our lives mysterious and unknowable.

I am a working neurologist who sees brain disease causing mental dysfunction every day. Take the case of Representative Gabrielle Giffords. If she does not recover pretty much full brain function, her mental states will be altered, and she may not be able to function in Congress as she did before the bullet damaged her brain. If the bullet had done more damage than it apparently did, she might not now be fully conscious. Hopefully she will recover. There is the famous case of Phineas Gage, however, in which brain damage to the frontal lobes of the brain by a railfoad spike turned a sober, hard-working man into a lout. His mind was altered because his brain was altered. He was a different person after that spike went through his brain.''


''As a neurologist, I contend that consciousness is nothing more than the ability of our brain to acquire information (which is the state of being awake) AND all the content that the information contains AND the ability to get all that information into and out of memory. The key word is "ALL". If you have all that, you are conscious of the blue sky and the red sun. Nothing more is needed to be conscious of that beautiful sky. My contention is that the brain can do all that, and, therefore, a functioning brain is identical to a conscious mind. That makes me a materialist and not a dualist.''

 

[DBT]

The mind is whatever a brain does...

Says who?

That is religion. Not science.

The brain has no idea what truth is.

Only minds know about truth.

A hard knock on the head says so. Chemical imbalance's say so. Structural changes to the brain say so. Damage to the senses or CNS say so. Electrical stimulation of brain structures says so......hard evidence says so.

 

[fromderinside]

 Signal Detection Theory would blow your mind untermenscehe​.

The cell has mechanisms that respond to a molecular transition.

The cell has no mechanism to respond to energy or know anything about energy.

You have voodoo biology and nothing more.

There are millions and millions of receptors responding to incoming light energy.

The only thing that responds to energy is a molecule. It is a simple trans to cis transition. No magic information about energy is contained within a molecular transformation.

The cell responds to a change in the configuration of a molecule, not energy.

Voodoo biology.

It's not about the cell. Cells specialize as do systems following the receiving cells.

It's about a large population population of cells sensitive to EM frequency providing frequency specific information to the nervous system for analysis and processing. It's in the processing re the input. The auditory system processes auditory information as determined by the receptor organ as does the visual system process visual information as determined by the visual receptor. They never make the mistake of processing the other system's information.

Just as audible frequency stimulates specific areas on the organ of corti to send signals up the ascending auditory system pathways produce patterns of response corresponding to the location of maximum stimulation along the Organ of corti in the auditory system that the processing nuclei in the ascending pathways translates those patterns into audible frequency ensembles reflecting the nature of the signals received. So to does the ascending visual system translate the millions of frequency specific responses produced at the retina reduce to translations to colors, shapes, movement, of both uncolored and colored representations of visual stimuli in cortex.

You have to remember each receiving sense has dedicated pathways and processes which to what the being was exposed via that sense channel. Channel specificity is extremely important. One does not receive auditory input via the visual system. Its about the system. Of course EM energy is different from acoustic energy. They are separate stimuli passed through separate systems for analysis and determination peculiar to that form of energy.

The cell needn't know the source of the energy since the energy source is only available to cells sensitive to it. The very channel through which the energy is processed determines the nature of the energy passed for analysis, Eyes receive visual information. Ears receive auditory information. Skin receives mechanical vibration and pressure information. Geez. Cells above the receptors are designed to process attributes of the mode that is received through that channel.

If we had a general sense organ your argument might hold water. We don't so it doesn't. A visual system doesn't process sound unless the visual system isn't used. Then the visual system can be adapted to processes auditory spatial information and vica versa. Plasticity has its limitations in brain function.

The nervous system would be designed in an entirely different way if senses weren't identified at the receiving point, processed, then integrated further up in mid and fore brain.

The only voodoo here is what you do.

So back to ground zero. Determined. No free choice outside the misunderstanding humans have about what they receive from the world.

 

[untermensche]

The mind is whatever a brain does...

Says who?

That is religion. Not science.

The brain has no idea what truth is.

Only minds know about truth.

A hard knock on the head says so. Chemical imbalance's say so. Structural changes to the brain say so. Damage to the senses or CNS say so. Electrical stimulation of brain structures says so......hard evidence says so.

That does not tell you that a mind is only brain.

It just says a mind needs a functioning brain to be fully expressed.

Brains don't know about truth. They don't know anything. Only minds know things. Therefore minds are more than mere brains.

Just tell me how you can know something is true without the freedom to make truth judgements?

 

[untermensche]

It's about a large population population of cells sensitive to EM frequency providing frequency specific information to the nervous system for analysis and processing.

Millions of cells have no more information about energy than a single cell.

A molecular transformation is not information to the cell about energy. Just because humans understand the thing that caused the transformation has a wavelength does not mean the cell has this information.

There is no information about energy in the system.

The system can in no way have it's output determined by some aspect of the energy.

A color cannot possibly be a representation based on any aspect of energy.

It is something created whole based on information about molecular conversions. And this information is (+,-) information. Either a transition of the molecule occurs or it doesn't.

Millions of bits of (+,-) information is a lot of information for the brain to work with. And it is the only information the brain has.

The brain has no information about color from the external world.

It therefore must have mechanisms that create color.

This confusion between what humans know about energy and what a cell knows is a blindness.

 

[fromderinside]

You glossed right over the point that humans, all mammals, all reptiles, amphibians all fishes, all other classes of living things with and without nervous systems developed responses to visible light, audible sound, mechanical activity, odorous activity.

Mind you that's a huge order of sensing and using things to gloss over. Oh wait. Very few of them have minds. All you have is a round peg and there are all those other shaped holes to fill.

Maybe you can come up with an evolutionary strategy that produces sensing organs that do process color, sound, all the rest but with no drive for those cells upstream to adjust to the inputs yet still respond appropriately to every class of sensed information exclusively yet, most have no minds, many no nervous systems to cover for the failure of those stimuli to be passed long up the nervous system.

Maybe you have a rationale for mutation that works exclusively with particular sense in particular systems generating appropriate processing for each class of physical input. I know the scientific community hasn't.

Your cell approach just doesn't hold water.

You glossed over the fact that millions of receptors provide specific information about locus, duration, shape/texture of inputs. You rest your entire argument, on the idea that no information about frequency resulting from the very specific properties of mechanisms to capture that frequency gets passed along.

You have much more than a misunderstanding of how transduction structured to respond to frequency takes place within cells, systems of cells, and of how evolutionary mutation works. There is no reason for there to be specific sense systems if there aren't something about specific senses that need further specific processing.

Nothing about which you are bravely putting up barriers seems to limit how the specific sense produces identifying attributes upon which the individual makes decisions.

All you have is misplaced understanding of how receptor systems and transduction works based on claims that they can't work as they are designed to work. Its not my problem that you have this misunderstanding. The evidence is clear that each system is properly structured to deliver appropriate information to the up channel processing systems.

The only problem here is with your insistence that something can't be accomplished that is obviously accomplished as designed. Instead you wave your hands and claim a subjective, not material, process intervenes and with some magic to produce sensation.

I'm sorry.

I've examined human and mammalian sensing systems, horseshoe crab sensing systems, fly, noctuid moth, sensing systems, examining receptors, transducers, ascending and descending sensory systems conducting experiments both neurophysiological and psychophysical. I've carried out experiments on effort (workload), reviewed how pilots process tactical and material information in critical task situations. Not once have I ever studied attributes of an experience system.

I'm certainly not going to start now exploring attributes of sensing systems based on the dictate there is no processing of frequency within biological systems. Call me closed minded. I'm blinded by the results I've achieved over my career. I'm not going to abandon them now because Untermensche declares cells can't do that.

It's time you quit declaring. Begin analyzing those systems you say can't do what they obviously do.

Maybe when you do you'll find that there are reasons that Journals like the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Journal of the Optical Society of America, Journal of Neurophysiology, Journal of Behavioral Biology, Journal of Ergonomics and Journal of Human Factors exist. Or maybe some of those Institute of Engineering research journals are more of your cup of tea. They all publish articles on those things you say can't be done by humans and other beings.

Ah Untermensche the mighty. The one who climbed up a hill he insisted wasn't there.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Interesting discussion. There are people who literally believe in brainless minds.

 

[DBT]

A hard knock on the head says so. Chemical imbalance's say so. Structural changes to the brain say so. Damage to the senses or CNS say so. Electrical stimulation of brain structures says so......hard evidence says so.

That does not tell you that a mind is only brain.

It just says a mind needs a functioning brain to be fully expressed.

Brains don't know about truth. They don't know anything. Only minds know things. Therefore minds are more than mere brains.

Just tell me how you can know something is true without the freedom to make truth judgements?

The electrochemical activity of a brain produces experience, sight, sound, touch, smell, thought, feeling.....which is what call conscious mind.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

That does not tell you that a mind is only brain.

It just says a mind needs a functioning brain to be fully expressed.

Fully? That's like saying that light needs the sun to be fully expressed. That's some weird woo.

 

[fromderinside]

That does not tell you that a mind is only brain.

It just says a mind needs a functioning brain to be fully expressed.

Fully? That's like saying that light needs the sun to be fully expressed. That's some weird woo.

We're all friends here, even Untermensche​. Give him full colors. Woo woo.

 

[untermensche]

Interesting discussion. There are people who literally believe in brainless minds.

No.

They believe in free minds.

In minds that extend beyond the brains that give rise to them.

Minds that deal in ideas. Minds that understand truths.

How do you know what a truth is if you don't have the freedom to make truth determinations?

Are you being forced to say the things you say or do you do it freely?

 

[untermensche]

That does not tell you that a mind is only brain.

It just says a mind needs a functioning brain to be fully expressed.

Fully? That's like saying that light needs the sun to be fully expressed. That's some weird woo.

It is only saying the whole is greater than the parts.

 

[untermensche]

A hard knock on the head says so. Chemical imbalance's say so. Structural changes to the brain say so. Damage to the senses or CNS say so. Electrical stimulation of brain structures says so......hard evidence says so.

That does not tell you that a mind is only brain.

It just says a mind needs a functioning brain to be fully expressed.

Brains don't know about truth. They don't know anything. Only minds know things. Therefore minds are more than mere brains.

Just tell me how you can know something is true without the freedom to make truth judgements?

The electrochemical activity of a brain produces experience, sight, sound, touch, smell, thought, feeling.....which is what call conscious mind.

You are making a claim that something is true.

The mind determines if something is true.

Not the brain. Brains have no understanding of any ideas. Only minds do.

The mind is more than the brain.

Just tell me how you can know something is true without the freedom to make truth judgements?

 

[untermensche]

You glossed right over the point that humans, all mammals, all reptiles, amphibians all fishes, all other classes of living things with and without nervous systems developed responses to visible light, audible sound, mechanical activity, odorous activity.

How many times do you have to be told?

The human is not reacting to light.

A molecule is.

And that molecule does not have any information about light to share.

The cell has no information about light.

The brain has no information about light.

The human mind knows about light though. After centuries of human cultural advancement.

Thus your utter confusion.

You think a molecule has the same understanding as you.

Saying the molecule is also in a fish won't give that molecule any added information.

You have no valid criticism.

You glossed over the fact that millions of receptors provide specific information about locus, duration, shape/texture of inputs.

That is how the brain creates the shape of the object.

Shape has a feedback mechanism.

If you don't have a good representation of the shape of an obstacle and you are trying to escape a predator you will bump into the obstacle and are therefore more likely to be eaten.

Over time those organisms that make a better representation of shape will win out as both predator and prey and over time the ability of the brain to create a representation of shape will improve.

That is not the case with color.

There is no possible feedback mechanism with color.

There is no way to know if you are making the wrong color or the right color.

You will avoid both the blue and the red rock equally. If you see the shape of the rocks accurately.

 

[untermensche]

That does not tell you that a mind is only brain.

It just says a mind needs a functioning brain to be fully expressed.

Fully? That's like saying that light needs the sun to be fully expressed. That's some weird woo.

We're all friends here, even Untermensche​. Give him full colors. Woo woo.

They all freely proclaimed.

This free mind stuff is woo.

 

[fromderinside]

The human is not reacting to light.

Indirectly he is.

A molecule is.

No.

The receptor, a complex combination of reactive material, many transduction processes, in a particular type of cell grandly named rod or cone cell is processing then signaling via release of transmitter substance, the detection of EM energy of a particular suite of frequencies.

It is doing this at the same time other rods or cones in the retina are signaling frequencies to which come from the same or similar sources upon which the eye is focused to which they are sensitive as well.

So it is never a cell responding. It is a bound population of cells covered by the range of boundary contrast signals accompanying them which is included in the stimulus to which the retinal cells are responding.

Along with location, there is information in the population of activity signaling cells on intensity of incoming EM energy from parts of the population of rods and cones currently signaling.

And that molecule does not have any information about light to share.

Since the only information being produced by the cell is EM energy of visible light your claim is patently false.

The cell has no information about light.

There is no need for restatement by receptor cells of what is the source of information a system restricted to exclusively responding to EM visible light energy. There isn't any tell from the cell the receptor is a particular place in the retina since that is obvious throughout the ascending system by it's design to respond to cells from this or that part of the retina. The cell actually reports how much, when, where and in relation to that of other receptor partners in the gross signal transmissions.

The brain has no information about light.

You keep repeating yourself as if the repetition will make it true. It doesn't.

All the information from the visual sensing system is information about light. That is because it is a system designed to respond only to light.

The human mind knows about light though. After centuries of human cultural advancement.

Right, you're wrong again. A baby can distinguish light A from light B as soon as it can be presented those signals.

I have all necessary valid criticism to expose your argument as a fraud.

Fuck. I'm just going to Complete starting from where you left off.

1.

That is how the brain creates the shape

, intensity, shading, movement, and color of of the object(s) viewed.

2. Color is by relation of cells with various opsin configurations being sorted. Remember. Black and white scenes are available before color renditions are available.

3. Shape is determined by neural process sub serving edge detection using relations between positive and negative propagation of signals being passed up tracts.

4.Your knowledge of the function of shape determination and processing is so rudimentary I won't shame you further.

 

[DBT]

The electrochemical activity of a brain produces experience, sight, sound, touch, smell, thought, feeling.....which is what call conscious mind.

You are making a claim that something is true.

The mind determines if something is true.

Not the brain. Brains have no understanding of any ideas. Only minds do.

The mind is more than the brain.

Just tell me how you can know something is true without the freedom to make truth judgements?

I am pointing out that there is no mind/consciousness without brain activity. That mind is not omnipresent, that conscious activity is being generated as a means to interact with the world, to be awake, to be aware....then the brain switches you off, you sleep.

Yet the brain remains active, consolidating memory, sorting information, generating dreams, etc.

This is well supported by evidence. All of the evidence supports it.

You refuse to consider the evidence because you prefer fantastic explanations over science and research, which you casually reject .

 

[untermensche]

The electrochemical activity of a brain produces experience, sight, sound, touch, smell, thought, feeling.....which is what call conscious mind.

You are making a claim that something is true.

The mind determines if something is true.

Not the brain. Brains have no understanding of any ideas. Only minds do.

The mind is more than the brain.

Just tell me how you can know something is true without the freedom to make truth judgements?

I am pointing out that there is no mind/consciousness without brain activity. That mind is not omnipresent, that conscious activity is being generated as a means to interact with the world, to be awake, to be aware....then the brain switches you off, you sleep.

Yet the brain remains active, consolidating memory, sorting information, generating dreams, etc.

This is well supported by evidence. All of the evidence supports it.

You refuse to consider the evidence because you prefer fantastic explanations over science and research, which you casually reject .

There is no scientific physiological understanding of the mind.

In all these studies you worship subjective reporting is all they know about the mind.

They have no clue where the mind is in all the activity they examine.

They have no clue what the mind is experiencing without a subjective report.

NOTHING is known about the mind and what it can do.

What we do know is that for a truth judgement to have any validity the thing that makes the judgement must have freedom.

Just tell me how you can know something is true without the freedom to make truth judgements?

 

[untermensche]

Indirectly he is.

Yes. Like the blue light is indirectly caused by the hand that pushes the light switch.

Does the hand pass information to the blue light when it flicks a switch? Does the light know if it was a right hand or a left hand that pushed the switch?

You keep ignoring this absolute fact:

The cell knows absolutely nothing about what caused the molecular transformation. It has no possible way to know anything about what caused the transition.

The receptor, a complex combination of reactive material, many transduction processes, in a particular type of cell grandly named rod or cone cell is processing then signaling via release of transmitter substance, the detection of EM energy of a particular suite of frequencies.

Reactive materials?

Proteins.

The cell does not detect EM energy.

It detects the transformation of a molecule.

You as a human know what transformed the molecule and know the features of the energy that transformed the molecule.

The cell has none of that information.

Since the only information being produced by the cell is EM energy of visible light your claim is patently false.

The only information the cell has is whether or not a molecular transformation has occurred.

Since it has no information about EM energy it can't be processing information about EM energy.

It is your claim that is clearly and patently false.

A baby can distinguish light A from light B as soon as it can be presented those signals.

A baby can distinguish between the experience caused by light A and the experience caused by light B.

That is all the baby is doing.

The baby knows about it's experiences.

Adult humans have figured out what stimulates the brain to create the experiences. The baby doesn't know anything about wavelengths.

You keep making the same error in logic. It an an absurd error for an adult to make.

You see the hand turn on the blue light and you keep thinking the hand must have information about blue.

You see energy transform a molecule and the brain create blue in response.

And you keep irrationally concluding that the only way for the brain to do it is if the energy has information about blue.

The brain does it with evolved mechanisms. Not by knowing anything about energy. The brain has no possible way to know anything about energy.