budaatum:


Is scattering not just bending in various different directions simultaneously?

In a manner of speaking, the difference being in bending the light continues through the medium while with scattering the light is changing direction without penetrating the medium.

budaatum:


In a way, that is what I am saying. You can't have a shadow if you have no light source. You can't have light neither without a light source.

The manipulation of a light source produces light, and shadows, don't you think? The shadow being formed by reducing the effect of the light source by bending the light away from the shadowed area.

Yes but can you explain how a shadow is made of light and is not made of light at the same time. As far as I know that is impossible.

LordReed:


Can you state where I changed something because it didn't favour me?

Then be definite about your usage of the word,effect, because you create a critical misunderstanding by using it in isolation.

A subjective reaction to something is also effect. But would you accept it is real effect caused by something?

You have been using that word for or so long on this thread that I think it is about time you mentioned exactly what you mean by effects and stick to it so as to remove all suspicion.

Sorry if I have accused you wrongly but I have explained why
.

LordReed:


Yes but can you explain how a shadow is made of light and is not made of light at the same time. As far as I know that is impossible.

"Made of", I suppose, would be layperson speak for, the light creates the shadow.

Shadows are made by the manipulation of light, my Lord. Without a light source, you can't have shadows (nor light, obviously), so the light source makes (or, creates) [the] shadow. No light, no shadow.

triplechoice:


Then be definite about your usage of the word,effect, because you create a critical misunderstanding by using it in isolation.

A subjective reaction to something is also effect. But would you accept it is real effect caused by something?

You have been using that word for or so long on this thread that I think it is about time you mentioned exactly what you mean by effects and stick to it so as to remove all suspicion.

Sorry if I have accused you wrongly but I have explained why
.

I would define effect as the result of a prior cause or event so yes a subjective reaction is also an effect.

No offence taken, I just thought I goofed somewhere.

budaatum:


"Made of", I suppose, would be layperson speak for, the light creates the shadow.

Shadows are made by the manipulation of light, my Lord. Without a light source, you can't have shadows (nor light, obviously), so the light source makes (or, creates) [the] shadow. No light, no shadow.

Yeah but you are defining the way it was formed not what it is constituted of.

Damn! See wuruwuru!

budaatum:

Material, is of a different order, though that does depend on usage. A physical thing would have a material, one might like to think, but an emotion, which is a non- physical thing (depending on opinion of course), lacks physical material for instance, even though emotions are physically felt. (Hmm! Physically felt like a slap, or psychologically felt, I now wonder.)

I feel implied that an emotion has material, lol, by distorting with the adjective, 'physical'.

Do emotions have material?

budaatum:
Spirits too lack physical material, and I will hesitate on their existence, which I wouldn't do regarding a shadow or darkness that I can witness and see and even measure, but I would not argue that spirits are not things, because I'm obviously here discussing it as a thing even though it has much less material, in my opinion, than a shadow has.

This is much better, though that adjective!

Does 'non-physical matter' exist?

Examples please.

LordReed:


Yeah but you are defining the way it was formed not what it is constituted of.

It is constituted of light. Though, saying that one could argue the light just allows one to see the shadow.

My light school was like 40 years ago, my Lord. Let me go do some learning and come back on this one.

budaatum:


It is constituted of light. Though, saying that one could argue the light just allows one to see the shadow.

My light school was like 40 years ago, my Lord. Let me go do some learning and come back on this one.

I can't wrap my head around how it is constituted of light and at the same time the absence of light.

Share what you learn dear buda, don't be a hog. LoL!

triplechoice:


If man is spirit and God is also spirit as you say, then it means humans are the same with God.

Sure. Even the bible corroborated this.
Know ye not that ye are gods?

Though the creator is greater than the creation.

LordReed:


Well how do we know it is spirit and not just the mind? How do we know the spirit is communicating to another spirit?

This my friend is the question.
Cos when it's the mind, it normally should be from what is stored up from your experience.

But when it's spirit, then you yourself know the source of your knowledge transcends your experiences.

Myer:


This my friend is the question.
Cos when it's the mind, it normally should be from what is stored up from your experience.

But when it's spirit, then you yourself know the source of your knowledge transcends your experiences.

Yet none of those who claim to be in touch via spirit can demonstrate any capacity beyond what would be naturally available to them. I have tested this several times and no one has fulfilled it. My tentative conclusion is no spirit connection has been demonstrated.

@ LordReed, triplechoice -

Definition & Description of Spirit - (for the purposes of this discussion):

The vital principle, essential animating force and root-consciousness (of living, sentient and sapient beings).

It manifests itself in the world of matter principally through the physical body, and engages in activity therein and has experiences thereby, but its consistency is of a lighter nature than matter, which is heavy by comparison. It has its domicile in the spiritual dimension with which it shares the same consistency and nature, and which dimension is different from, and lighter than the world of matter, even if attached to the world of matter.

Given your definition of spirit I can now more clearly see why you have issue with my position but still you are not simply finding the logical inconsistences with my position. You are judging my position based on what you think is the dual nature of the human. Let's see if I can make clear that the logic in my position is sound.

DeepSight:


I think you need to settle down and take a cold dispassionate view of the conundrum presented. It is illogical to say, for example, that a car is exclusively controlled by its steering-wheel and simultaneously insist that you have control over that car if you have no control over its steering wheel. What you are doing is quite circular and it surprises me that you cannot see the inherent circularity. To break it down -

This analogy is plain wrong. When I used the analogy of a car I did say you have control of the car because you have control of the steering wheel. What I said you didn't have control over was the constituent atoms of the car and I went to say that to claim you must have control over the atoms or else you don't have control over the car is plain wrong. This is similar to the control you have over your body. You do not control individual cells but you control the entirety.

- - -> You assert that minds arise from matter
- - -> You assert that the interactions and activities of matter are responsible for mind
- - -> You then imply that mind has some independent will of its own in what you have written above, because you insinuate that by this will, mind controls its body - - -> notwithstanding that the body is what produces mind in the first place, and that the interactions of the matter of the body are responsible for every thought and action of mind under your worldview

Wrong again. I never said the will was independent.

- - - > This is just circular. It is logically impossible. You cannot derive mind from matter and at the same time seek to infuse mind with some inchoate separate will of its own by which it can control matter. This would be absurd because what you are in fact trying to do here is eat your cake and have it - you are trying to assert that all the thoughts and actions of mind arise from the interactions of matter and at the same time insist that mind controls the matter. This patently self contradictory.

It doesnt help you that you say that you have said that we cannot control our cells. This in fact works directly against you. Because the action of those cells (in your worldview) is what activates the functions of mind. You will have to decide what comes first: the mind willing an action, or the cells and neurons making the mind will an action.

There is actually some scientific research on this matter which suggests that split seconds before we have a thought, take an action or make a decision, neurons have already coalesced in the direction of such a thought, action or decision. Such research naturally aligns with the overall argument you are making - that cells and neurons are responsible for the activity of mind. The only problem here is your refusal to accept the natural consequence of this - namely that there is nothing like free will, that all our thoughts and actions are determined by cells and neurons beforehand - over which we have no control. This is of course not my position since I make a distinction between matter and mind. Nor do I even entirely accept the results of that research - for reasons I will later go into. But you see, from my position, I needn't accept the results of that research. Whereas, not only does the research line up with your argument, but you must also be bound by its implications. You simply cannot eat your cake and have it. There is no way you can insist that you have conscious control of anything if indeed the prior activity of cells and neurons - which you have no control over - determines all the activity of your mind.

This I think is the crux of your misunderstanding, you think I believe in freewill, I don't. I think I have mentioned it at least twice in conversation with you that I am compatibilist. It seems you skip over some of these clarifications. The mind and the body are a single unit, there is no independent will, the will works with and from the body and vice versa. And like I previously clarified your will has control over a limited set of functions of your body. Your will doesn't automatically assign intentionality to your cells because it exists.

Its very simple to indicate why this analogy fails. The constituent molecules of the TV remote are not said to be responsible for your own independent action of pressing down on the remote buttons! They are not your cells and neurons and it is not their activity that is said to be responsible for your actions! - which is what your position is with regard to humans and their cells and neurons.

You miss the point of the analogy. The point was to show that control does not extend to constituent molecules. When you press the remote's button you are only activating a limited portion of it's entire make up. You are not activating the entire of the remote only a specific subsection required to do the task. This is analogous to the mind and body, your will only controls certain functions of your body.

In the case of the human being under the worldview you have described as your position, the constituent parts - the cells and neurons must perforce act prior to your being able to exercise any function of mind. Their action must precede your every thought, word and deed. For this reason it would be circular to say that you control anything outside of this. Indeed the minute you make such a claim you actually cede the debate entirely because you are thereby conceding that mind must precede and control matter.

In short, mind over matter.
There is just no way you can logically get around this.

There is no hierarchy going here, instead it is a reciprocal set of interactions. The body influences the mind and the mind influences the body.

DeepSight

I think a more important conundrum for us to contemplate is how do we determine if indeed the human is a mind matter duality and what benefits can be derived from establishing such as fact.

LordReed:
DeepSight

I think a more important conundrum for us to contemplate is how do we determine if indeed the human is a mind matter duality and what benefits can be derived from establishing such as fact.

Now this is indeed the koko of the matter. I will address this later this morning. Let me be diligent and finish with some work presently before me. Cheers.

LordReed. I have found a friend for you. Tammiejo.

From here -
https://www.nairaland.com/6952017/freethinkers-how-manage-living-country/3#109771372

LOL. Where do I even begin, Mr DeepSight?

TammieJo:
LOL. Where do I even begin, Mr DeepSight?

Anywhere. You will have a strong wingman in LordReed.

Hi DeepSight, this is TammieJo. I've reverted to my main moniker since it is back from its' ban.

DeepSight:


In summary the discussion here centers around LordReed's position that mind derives from matter and my opposing position that mind is distinct from matter, matter being only a tool or vehicle for mind. While LordReed says that there is "no ghost in the car" (that there is no spirit in the body) I say that there is an indwelling immaterial being which is the actual "personal being" which the functions of the body serve. These conflicting positions had led me to argue that for LordReed to sustain his position, he must perforce grant intentionality to cells and neurons, and all those chemicals which constitute the body, as well as eliminate the concept of personal responsibility for actions.

Essentially, this is a conflict between bottom-up causation and top-down causation. Even as a materialist, I have often had to argue that not everything is determined bottom-up, that free will is therefore a real thing and so on. I've had some rather heated and prolonged discussions with several rather dismissive atheists over these issues in other places in the past. And I think I stand on solid ground because several of the consciousness researchers whose books I have read agree with my assessment, that there is in fact a third position which preserves free will decision-making and other varieties of top-down causation within a materialistic framework. That's why I call myself an emergent materialist, since I consider both life and consciousness as emergent properties of complex material systems.

Emergentism maintains there is both bottom-up and top-down causation, but that they are both understandable materially. In the case of consciousness, top-down causation is accomplished through virtual or symbolic processing of information. In that sense, a reason for doing something (like a decision), is different than a physical cause for doing something (like a reflex). But there is no need to reify consciousness into some immaterial spirit, though it is certainly immaterial in the sense of being virtual.

DeepSight: I contend that save there exist a being which inhabits the body, there could be no such thing as the senses, no such thing as thought, and no such thing as emotion.

To be clear, I say that the being utilizes the particles which form a body, as instruments of perception: and I deny the reverse - which would be to say that dead particles assemble over time, and through evolution, into a perceptive being.

The emergentist position is similar, in saying that the senses, thought, and emotions all depend on the complete system, on all the parts working together in a certain way, and do not exist without that whole, or at least not in the same way. Another way of conceptualizing the emergentist position is by saying that the whole really is greater than the sum of the parts in the sense of exerting top-down causation and operating by any number of new and different rules. In that sense, psychology and logic will never be reduced to chemistry or physics, as reductionists and eliminative materialists like to think. This is why a systems approach to consciousness studies holds much more promise. It actually tackles important questions on the appropriate level of organization.

DeepSight: I say that a robot cannot taste an orange, or enjoy sex, however it may be formed, now or in the future.

I say that cameras, even computerized cameras, do not have the faculty of sight.

I say that audio recorders cannot hear.

I say that perception is only open to a person, and that matter, and the body, is not, and cannot, be a person.

I say that experience is only open to a person.

I therefore say that that which is not material, evidentially exists.

All of this boils down to what philosopher David Chalmers called "the hard problem" of consciousness research: qualia. For experience to happen there must be a being to experience it. I have read several materialistic critiques of this problem. My take is that consciousness must necessarily be an emergent property of life which is already evolutionarily organized into selves (not all of life is). Of course, that pushes the problem of the organization of selves further down the evolutionary tree, but the problem becomes much simpler to tackle that way. From my point of view, the self-organization of evolution must necessarily create selves as one possible survival strategy - in the sense that plants, for instance, have a different strategy based on sophisticated chemical reactions.

Anyway, those are a few generalizations about my position, which I continue to develop through my reading.

LordReed. Just a passing thought I thought to drop. I have told you before about my thoughts about the root of reality being something I call an infinite field of potentialities. The mind is like a minuscule droptlet of that infinite field of potentialities. This is why a mind is a terrible thing to trifle with: because a mind can do almost anything.

The brain is only the physical tool for the expression and manifestation of the activity of the mind.

DeepSight:
LordReed. Just a passing thought I thought to drop. I have told you before about my thoughts about the root of reality being something I call an infinite field of potentialities. The mind is like a minuscule droptlet of that infinite field of potentialities. This is why a mind is a terrible thing to trifle with: because a mind can do almost anything.

The brain is only the physical tool for the expression and manifestation of the activity of the mind.

Why does it need a brain to express it's activity? You say it is in a field of infinite potentialities so why not express itself without the limitation of a physical body? Won't it be better to express itself in the infinite instead of acquiring a needless limitation?

LordReed:


Why does it need a brain to express it's activity? You say it is in a field of infinite potentialities so why not express itself without the limitation of a physical body? Won't it be better to express itself in the infinite instead of acquiring a needless limitation?

Good question and the answer I believe is that such a field is purely intangible and can only be expressed in the physical realm through physical means. Physical expression being just one of virtually infinite forms of expression conceivable to it.

DeepSight:


Good question and the answer I believe is that such a field is purely intangible and can only be expressed in the physical realm through physical means. Physical expression being just one of virtually infinite forms of expression conceivable to it.

Sure but why the limit of a brain though, why not just create physical realities that don't require such a limit? There is a Star Trek character and race called Q that are interdimensional beings that have practical omnipotence that is not limited by any physical body yet can create themselves any physical body they desire. Why are we not like that if this field of infinite potentialities is the case?

There is this notion of parallel universes whereby every possibility and permutation of possibilities get their full expression each in their own universe parallel to the others.

So there might be a parallel universe in which Deepsight is a girl. Another in which he is an oyinbo. Another in which he has a 15 inch penis. Another in which he is impotent and can't even get it hard. etc etc etc.

As there are an infinite number of these parallel universes anything we can imagine has it's own universe. So therefore....
There may be a universe indeed where the mind expresses itself without the use of a brain or any physicality. We just happen to be living in the universe where the brain is a vehicle for the minds expression. So the question of 'why' things are the way the are becomes moot. Our universe is not so unique or wonderful as we seem to think. Things are every other way too, but we just only know this version of possibilities.
Somewhere on another parallel universe Deepsight has just discovered that she's is pregnant again for the umpteenth time. She has not even graduated school cert. yet she is distracted by thoughts of why the grass is purple rather than any other colour, in fact she starts to fantasise about a possible world where the grass is green and she is a bloke.

See as I'm just reminding myself of the Loki show on Disney.

LordReed:


Sure but why the limit of a brain though, why not just create physical realities that don't require such a limit? There is a Star Trek character and race called Q that are interdimensional beings that have practical omnipotence that is not limited by any physical body yet can create themselves any physical body they desire. Why are we not like that if this field of infinite potentialities is the case?

As Pastor AIO has rightly said, remember that this may be just one version of infinite possibilities.

I will only add that such an infinite field may not necessarily be self conscious even if it may birth self conscious beings. And many gradations down the line any combination of possibilities could arrive at some ET somewhere whose school science project was creating this world.

PastorAIO:
There is this notion of parallel universes whereby every possibility and permutation of possibilities get their full expression each in their own universe parallel to the others.

So there might be a parallel universe in which Deepsight is a girl. Another in which he is an oyinbo. Another in which he has a 15 inch penis. Another in which he is impotent and can't even get it hard. etc etc etc.

As there are an infinite number of these parallel universes anything we can imagine has it's own universe. So therefore....
There may be a universe indeed where the mind expresses itself without the use of a brain or any physicality. We just happen to be living in the universe where the brain is a vehicle for the minds expression. So the question of 'why' things are the way the are becomes moot. Our universe is not so unique or wonderful as we seem to think. Things are every other way too, but we just only know this version of possibilities.
Somewhere on another parallel universe Deepsight has just discovered that she's is pregnant again for the umpteenth time. She has not even graduated school cert. yet she is distracted by thoughts of why the grass is purple rather than any other colour, in fact she starts to fantasise about a possible world where the grass is green and she is a bloke.

See as I'm just reminding myself of the Loki show on Disney.

You just stated a speculation and then made a conclusion based on that speculation as though it has been established as fact. Not how this works. It is fine to speculate that there are infinite universes but until it is established as fact you don't get to make conclusions based on it.

LordReed:


You just stated a speculation and then made a conclusion based on that speculation as though it has been established as fact. Not how this works. It is fine to speculate that there are infinite universes but until it is established as fact you don't get to make conclusions based on it.

Where's your sense of dazzle. Your sense of wonder. He just dropped some wonder dust for us right there, and you failed to be dazzled. That's very worrisome.

He wasn't being either scientific or empirical - deliberately so. He wasn't seeking to prove or conclude anything. He was tossing forward brilliant and wild thoughts of what world's may be.

And he was doing so humorously. So where's your sense of humor too.

DeepSight:


Where's your sense of dazzle. Your sense of wonder. He just dropped some wonder dust for us right there, and you failed to be dazzled. That's very worrisome.

He wasn't being either scientific or empirical - deliberately so. He wasn't seeking to prove or conclude anything. He was tossing forward brilliant and wild thoughts of what world's may be.

And he was doing so humorously. So where's your sense of humor too.

I have learnt to separate my fantasy from my reality. I can indulge in fantasy right up there with the likes of Tolkien or George Lucas but when I am discussing the nature of reality I am not going to confuse Lucas or Tolkien for reality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTXTPe3wahc

PastorAIO:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTXTPe3wahc

So the gist of it is that there is an infinitely small probability that another PastorAIO exists somewhere in the universe.

LordReed:


I have learnt to separate my fantasy from my reality. I can indulge in fantasy right up there with the likes of Tolkien or George Lucas but when I am discussing the nature of reality I am not going to confuse Lucas or Tolkien for reality.

Oh what a bore.