Originally Posted By: Tutor Turtle
Consciousness being like baked bread.. rising from the dough. eek

LOL, way to miss the point. Our cells communicate via the passage of chemical signals; the most common mechanism used to pass these messages is something called a "G-protein coupled receptor" (GPCRs). GPCRs are one of the most common types of genes in our bodies, and play a range of roles from making our eyes work, to allowing neurons to talk to each other, to allowing our immune system to detect infection, too. . .smelling baking bread.

That is how our cells communicate to each other - via the exchange of chemical signals - some even follow those signals (using GPCRs) to find the source of the signal. . .just like you may follow the smell of baking bread to a bakery (or in my case, the smell of yeast to a brewery).


Originally Posted By: Tutor Turtle
Originally Posted By: Bryan

My emergent properties are not dependent on anything other than my biology.
Right I got that. That you subscribe to the idea that spirit is a mythical fabrication of stone aged humanity points to the fact that the idea (being something other than original) also points to the fact that you couldn't have actually thought of it yourself but instead assumed the thought via the nueropeptied highway which took the exit to the (I'm Bryan a cellular/molecular biologist) reciever site.

I don't see the point of your rant; regardless of the source of information, all information gets processed via neurotransmitter pathways. There is no magic involved, just neurobiology.

And, btw, the existence of those neurological pathways would allow me to conceive of a concept like a soul - just as those same pathways allowed me to identify the paucity of evidence and the paleo origin of the concept.

Originally Posted By: Tutor Turtle
Originally Posted By: ImagingGeek
Society itself is an emergent property of humans; but not vice-versa.
And humans being isolated to their emergent chemical makeup have no connectivity to society. They just project it outward from their biologically emergent and random individual and isolated personalities, and it miraculously finds both commonality and diversity, forcing humanity to either love or hate each other and any idea of reality.

You almost got it - but, as I pointed out before, you're relying on the false assumption that biophysical processes are random to reject the very thought that almost entered your conciousness. Emergence is simple the arisal of complex structures due to the simpler interactions of of the component parts. Basic human interactions - pair-bonding, child-rearing, economic activity, community, etc - lead to the emergence of more complex social structures and activities. Its the very "soul" of emergence.

Originally Posted By: Tutor Turtle
Originally Posted By: ImagingGeek
Perhaps you should learn a little about emergence before pontificating on it.

Or know something about consciousness before falling for the baked bread consciousness theory of humanity?

Yeah, that would be a good place to start too. A little reading on the neurological basis of cognition & conciousness:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22032656
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20951608
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18280713
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16906530
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22512333
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22227888


Originally Posted By: Tutor Turtle
Originally Posted By: ImagingGeek

Ahh, the good ol' red herrings of randomness and the need for supernaturalism to somehow give our lives value.

Oh you had to look at it that way didn't you.

Truth hurts, doesn't it? Randomness is the excuse you use to ignore science - despite the fact that science clearly shows the processes to be non-random. And the claim that without god(s)/spirit(s)/soul(s)/etc are required to give life value are simply the empty claims of the religieux fearful of a changing world.

Originally Posted By: Tutor Turtle
Originally Posted By: ImagingGeek

Firstly, randomness has little to do with it. Emergent (biological) properties are a product of chemical interactions, which in turn are predicated on physical properties driven by concrete and immutable 'laws'.

Ah.., and out of what did physical properties and these immutable laws come?

That is one of the big questions, and its a big question to which science is beginning to offer some very compelling answers. A few examples:
http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/personal/mgreen/thesis/index.html
www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaB-zq864-c
http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0511037v1


Originally Posted By: Tutor Turtle
Originally Posted By: ImagingGeek
There is no randomness to that; just stochasticism.
Oh you mean democratic laws, based on random observations and the current best guess.

No, that is not what stoichasticism means...again, try learning what something is before you deride it. Stoichastic processes are simply probabilistic processes which exhibit predictable population behaviours. Take smelling bread as an example - the odorans of baking bread spread outwards from the source via brownian diffusion, leading to a predictable molecular distribution forming based on strict physical laws - despite the "randomness" of the movement of the constituent odorants.


Originally Posted By: Tutor Turtle
You mean Physics based on changing observations and evolving theories.

Nothing much has really changed in a century. We know more today than we did 100 years ago - and thus those old theories have been updated/extended to account for the new data, but the original concepts discovered by Maxwell, Lorenz & Einstein (AKA relativity) remain intact today - as does the work of individuals like Planck, Euler, Faraday, Bohr, etc - AKA quantum mechanics.

Physicists talk about things like M-theory - but these are simply extensions of (or fusions of) classical QM & relativity theories. All these "new" thoeries do is expain new phenomina, using the foundation provided by old and still standing physical principals.

Ironically, you seem to ascribe the very thing wrong with religion - stasis and an unwillingness to adapt to new data - as a virtue that science should aspire to. In reality, that is the opposite of the very "soul" of science - science strides to explain reality, and adapts if reality doesn't fit prior explanations. That is the key - adapting to new data, instead of rejecting it.

Originally Posted By: Tutor Turtle
Originally Posted By: ImagingGeek

As for needing supernaturalism (i.e. a 'soul') to have self-value, or to value human life, is a myth created by the religieux to validate their beliefs and to maintain their self-sense of moral superiority.

Of course.. what utter nonsense. What is self value or any human value system other than religious tripe.

Human value systems are a product of our evolution. We are a social species - it should be of no surprise that we have evolutionary adaptations that allow us to function as such.

Originally Posted By: Tutor Turtle
I remember a description of an organ harvest that was witnessed by a friend of mine with a medical title. A motorcycle accident had rendered a man brain dead by all measurements and random observations made by the staff at a hospital in Florida. The (stochastic) determination was that the man for all intents and purposes was brain dead (no neural activity, therefore no consciousness).
While the man was basically dead, his body was still working with the help of artificial support systems. His brain connected to the artificial consciousness measuring device of the emergent stochastic scientific law, also assisted by the current stochastic scientific measurement systems for heart rate and blood pressure, skin tempurature and respiration etc.

The moment the first incision was made, the heart rate increased, respiration increased and skin tempurature increased.
Now since the brain was dead and consciousness was absent, the observation and determination was that the cells with its baked bread relationship to each other somehow got the impression that something was happening to the body.

Now why do you suppose the heart, lungs and skin reacted to the knife that was cutting the skin? What investment would either of the organs have to the cutting of the skin, and to react the way someone does when their brain is active and sending impulses of conscious stimuli based on the scientific idea of brain induced chemical and cellular activity?

Based on this description, lets say that I am dubious about he medical credentials of your "friend". What you describe is a commonly observed biological process that requires no supernatural explanations - indeed, the processes responsible for it have been known, and understood, for decades.

Most biological processes progress just fine without the help of our brain - even many that are neurologically-based. If your brain dies, your heart continues pumping, your immune cells continue to fight infections, your gut continues digesting - right up until a lack of O2 leads to cellular death. Provide O2 & these processes can be maintained indefinitely.

This is true of many neurological processes - yes, many neurological processes work just fine without a functioning brain. For example, if you are not paying attention and touch a hot surface, your arm jerks away without any involvement of your brain - the pain signals travel along a sensory neuron to the spine, where an interneuron then passes the signal to a motor neuron that moves your arm. This while process occurs - and you hand jerks away form the stove - before the pain signals even manage to reach your brain! Our neurological system if full of these brain-independent networks; formally, they are called reflex arcs.

In addition, pain/trauma releases various chemicals (e.g. hormones, substance P, protaglandins, certain cytokines, etc) into the circulation which have effects all over the body completely independent of the brain - heart & respiration rates elevate, external blood vessels contract, blood flow is redirected form the skin intestines to muscles, basal metabolism rates increase, etc - it is a brain-independent preparation of the body for fight-or-flight responses.

Or, in other words, what your "friend" claims to have observed is exactly what one would expect of a brain-dead body; reflex arcs causing muscle movement near/at sites of surgical incisions, and systemic responses due to the release of compounds at the incision sites that have systemic effects.

You could remove the head completely and still see the same thing - at least, until the body bled out.

Bryan

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