Here is what I was referring to:
This is certainly a claim of agency, and indeed I don’t mean some esoteric meaning of the word, I mean what people normally mean by this, “having purposes and making plans, and carrying them out.” This jump seems to me quite unjustified.
And I agree that nobody knows how thoughts are produced, but that is not what I was speaking of by mentioning agency.
And there is good evidence for a soul! As in out-of-body experiences, as in being unable to stimulate some types of thought by electrical stimulation of the brain, and so on.
And once again, I reply that atoms are not omnipotent! There are certain things collections of atoms cannot do, and you have not acknowledged or responded to this, you just repeat your argument.
Really? Puppets’ movements are completely caused by the puppeteer, which would be the atoms in our brains, creating thoughts. And real independence means there is an “I” I can speak of, which is the actual author of my thoughts, which is why they haul people off to jail if they did wrong, even if they insist their brain atoms actually caused the misdeed.
No, you don’t examine my reasoning, or my thinking, instead when you do this, you propose a nonreasoning cause. You think my thoughts come from wanting to be important. This is very plain, and you cannot escape by providing this other claim and explanation of what you just said.
I keep seeing this! People here dismiss my reasoning, saying I’m stupid, or I’m repeating mindlessly statements I heard because I want to keep my conclusions, or I want to feel important, and so on.
No, “DNA just is, and we dance to its music” is not about evolving DNA, your explanation is plainly wrong. This statement is about our behavior, which includes our thoughts, which was my point.
Well, neither of us knows the mechanics of planning or the operation of our chosen cause of our thoughts, so bringing this up is not a way to make progress. And I don’t claim the soul does the work of eyes, or “all the real work”, where do you get this from what I said? I do claim the soul can perceive without eyes, though, in out-of-body experiences, where they eyes are probably closed, and what is perceived corresponds with what happened, when for example, doctors were attempting resuscitation.
My view is a little different, natural selection might produce a brain that can do correct reasoning, which is why I mentioned said laptop as having a working theorem-proving program. I disagree with the view that the brain is the actual source of our thoughts.
Well, if the assembly is ridiculously improbable, I think we can lay that proposal aside. Science should not (does not?) proceed with the most probable explanation, if all present explanations are absurdly improbable, what must be done is to wait for one that is reasonably probable. Like in the explanation of consciousness, we don’t have a good explanation now, and we don’t just pick the most probable explanation, since none of them are reasonably probable.
As mentioned above, the puppeteer is the motion of atoms in our brain, producing our thoughts and actions, and nobody proposes or believes in a puppeteer being caused by another puppeteer, and so on. This objection is based on a fiction you made up.
But what you said does not show a contradiction, confusions and contradictions are not somehow synonymous. But where do I confuse these?
We are part of nature, was your point, by way of explaining our thoughts and actions.
But this is a mere claim! And people certainly do not mean what the materialists mean, when they speak of their identity. They think they are real agents, when for example they plead “guilty” or “not guilty” in court. Even the plea “not guilty by reason of insanity”, implying nonreasoning causes were responsible, shows this. And contradicts the materialist explanation of all our actions, which people will evidently call, insanity.
Yes, I’m the uncaused cause of my thoughts. And I restate that my decisions, my reason can be valid because my reason comes from a self-existent reason. I said “I am the cause of my thoughts”, which would not correspond to them coming from nowhere. People believe they exist, they have agency, they can make decisions and perform actions themselves. You are arguing against a straw man.
You said even your view involved an infinite chain of causation, this is not a necessary consequence of what we know of physics.
Well, the study mentioned both cardiac arrest and the cessation of measurable brain activity, which I conclude includes both.
I am making a conclusion from what I said previously, how is this not what people normally mean when they say “therefore”?
But how does “working” imply “trustworthy”? That is the question. We keep inspecting bridges, for example, we don’t just see how many cars have made it across so far.
Of course I meant survival in order to reproduce.
I made the point though to show that the one thing materialists point to, survival (to reproduce). does not make our brains suitable for any given purpose! Such as lab work.
But I did present evidence, which you skipped over. And this is another instance of pointing to a nonreasoning cause to my thoughts! I have forgotten what I was responding to, so my thoughts here must be mindless muttering, and can be dismissed. People do this all the time, they dismiss reasoning when they see (or think they see) a nonreasoning cause.