Is atheism a belief?

[Shell B]

It's like they think that if they can show we think the way they do, we have to admit there's a god. I don't know.

[The Grand Nudger]

That's the idea.  It's a stupid idea...but that is the idea.

[bennyboy]

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EgoDeath

On the other we have man who went his entire life thinking that the expression was "tow the line."

I cannot live with this shame.
I shall commit seppuku at sunset.

I also did not know my "it's and itses" until hoc and Girly taught me my "it's and itses" on TTA.
So much for prep school and the Ivy League.
It's very important to know your it's and itses.
I have never done penance for this ignorance either ... so I'll throw that onto the fire of my fake seppuku this evening, also.

There is not a shred of evidence for "mind", and invoking it is nothing but woo.

My problem with waving toward the brain and saying "there it is" is that it doesn't really explain on what level of organization the most essential "magic" happens: at what degree of complexity would you say there was no consciousness at all under it, but now there is some element of subjective awareness?

.... so here we have an argument from ignorance. Neuro-science will answer that question some day,
There is no "magic".
https://www.scientificamerican.com/artic...ciousness/

Clearly, an entire brain can experience subjectively. Brain damage studies show that quite massive brain injuries still leave some ability to experience, but in radically altered ways. But what about, say, a few dozen neurons which fire in response to parallel lines? If you could isolate them (say by carefully removing them from the retina and the visual cortex), would there be an isolated "parallel line experience" all on its lonesome? What about a single neuron-- is there some elemental experience in the simple firing of a neuron? What about a single chemical exchange?

No. A reductio ad absurdum argument.
Every single day in almost every medical center in the entire world, people come in with catastrophic brain injuries, ischemic strokes and various bleeds (aneurysmal, hypertensive) and trauma, and are declared brain dead. They really are dead. Totally brain. They have NO ability to experience anything, and before they are compassionately extubated or made "comfort measures only" they are TESTED for brain death. Their bodies are alive, their brains function IN NO WAY, and there is NOTHING they experience.

This guy knows NOTHING about how humans LEARN, what memory is, how it is formed, and how it is referenced when a human "has an experience".

If you could isolate them (say by carefully removing them from the retina and the visual cortex), would there be an isolated "parallel line experience" all on its lonesome? What about a single neuron-- is there some elemental experience in the simple firing of a neuron? What about a single chemical exchange?

No, no, and no.
It does not work that way AT ALL. And the fact it would be asked that way demonstrates he knows nothing about the subject.
First a human has to learn (normally as a child), by trial and error what "parallel lines'' mean, and that his sensation of that pattern matches what others call "parallel lines", and that memory is laid down. Later when the complex systems of sensory input, (in this case photons excite the cells at the back of the eye, if they are healthy), and the sensory input is referenced to the learned memory, and "organized" by the brain so recognition occurs, "Oh those are parallel lines". It's a complex series of chemical/physical events. Science KNOWS what that COMPLEX SERIES is. Obviously he doesn't.
http://news.mit.edu/2015/how-brain-recog...jects-1005

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[The Grand Nudger]

It doesn't matter whether or not you know how mind works.  Your agnosticism in that regard is irrelevant to your belief in the existence of mind.

Not knowing how mind works, do you still believe in mind?

(the answer is yes, you believe in mind. You're an agnostic mindist just as you're an agnostic atheist)

[bennyboy]

It doesn't matter whether or not you know how mind works.  Your agnosticism in that regard is irrelevant to your belief in the existence of mind.

Not knowing how mind works, do you still believe in mind?

(the answer is yes, you believe in mind.  You're an agnostic mindist just as you're an agnostic atheist)

lol

Hmmm. . . mindism sounds like a positive belief.  Are you sure you want to relate my positive belief in the existence of mind to a happenstance and beagle-like lack of belief in gods? 

[The Grand Nudger]

Do you believe that you possess a mind or not?

[bennyboy]

Do you believe that you possess a mind or not?

Possess?  Absolutely not.

I AM mind.

[The Grand Nudger]

So..yes.  Easy answer.  You believe in mind.  You don't know how it works and you have some interesting ideas, but you believe in mind. Your agnosticism is irrelevant to your belief, just as it is with gods.

Do you have some interesting god ideas? Yes. Do you know how gods are supposed to work? Not really. Do you believe in gods? No.

[HappySkeptic]

... I'm saying that given the brain, and only the brain, is the mechanism of human consciousness, we still don't know on what level of organization the most elemental essence of consciousness occurs.  If you disagree with this, and you seem very much to want to, you can clear up the mystery by answering this question: on what level of organization does the most elemental essence of consciousness occur?

This is a non-trivial question, because the brain is a layering of very many systems of organization, from fully-integrated brain parts, right down to QM wave functions.  Some of those systems of organization are unique to the human brain, and some are not.  

We can all agree that the unique flavor of experience that is human being depends on a functioning human brain.  But that's not the question-- the question is on what level the simplest elements of subjective experience supervene.  What's required that minimal flash-in-the-darkness?  At what level of complexity can it be said, "There was no mind, but now there is?"

I think the reductionist route is the wrong one here.  There is no atomic unit of consciousness.  Consciousness is a process.  It involves the creation of a sense of self.  That 'self' experiences the input through filters of past experience, recreates the past through memory, and extrapolates the future through imagination.  The structure of the brain has been evolved over hundreds of millions of years to create consciousness, so that the cells in our body can live.

The brain experiences the world.  The more complexity, the richer the experience.  I have no idea at what complexity level a brain needs for consciousness (i.e. is a nematode conscious?), but I expect there is a minimum, after which there are degrees.  But, I do not believe that the seat of consciousness exists at some reductionist level, like quantum mechanics.  It is a complex process, not a thing.

On the very slim chance that Quantum Mechanics has anything to do with consciousness (and I don't believe it does, beyond the fact that QM is the source of all physics and chemistry), QM teaches that the two most fundamental 'things' in the universe are information and events.  I suggest that anything that can exist, must be possible to create from these two things. 

It is one of the reasons why I don't believe in a supernatural soul.  Such a 'soul' would have to be constructed of information and events to exist.  Why postulate some eternal plane for it to exist on, when it can exist in the material universe?

[bennyboy]

I think the reductionist route is the wrong one here.  There is no atomic unit of consciousness.  Consciousness is a process.  It involves the creation of a sense of self.  That 'self' experiences the input through filters of past experience, recreates the past through memory, and extrapolates the future through imagination.  The structure of the brain has been evolved over hundreds of millions of years to create consciousness, so that the cells in our body can live.

The brain experiences the world.  The more complexity, the richer the experience.  I have no idea at what complexity level a brain needs for consciousness (i.e. is a nematode conscious?), but I expect there is a minimum, after which there are degrees.  But, I do not believe that the seat of consciousness exists at some reductionist level, like quantum mechanics.  It is a complex process, not a thing.

On the very slim chance that Quantum Mechanics has anything to do with consciousness (and I don't believe it does, beyond the fact that QM is the source of all physics and chemistry), QM teaches that the two most fundamental 'things' in the universe are information and events.  I suggest that anything that can exist, must be possible to create from these two things. 

It is one of the reasons why I don't believe in a supernatural soul.  Such a 'soul' would have to be constructed of information and events to exist.  Why postulate some eternal plane for it to exist on, when it can exist in the material universe?

It may very well be that there is a specific and minimal physical structure, or level of information processing, required in order to say that there's anything like consciousness; I suspect, though, that this level of truth will always be unavailable to us-- you can't really ask a single neuron, or an atom, what is experiencing.

It may even be that something unique to organic chemistry allows for it-- where silicon information processing, for whatever reason, might not. Clearly, the brain allows for experiences that a rock almost certainly does not: but pointing to the brain in general isn't sufficiently robust an explanation to resolve any philosophical questions about the essential nature of mind, unless we can establish exactly what about the brain is responsible for it.

As for QM: I'm not sure how long you've been watching this thread, but I was responding to a description of mind as information processing, and that was the starting point for this particular sub-discussion about orders of complexity. It seems to me that every energetic interchange at the QM level also carries (or perhaps IS) information. I'd therefore like to know if there was some particular kind of information processing required to say that there's some kind of primitive consciousness. Because if not, then I'd look to panpsychism at the QM level as the most likely entry point for mind in a Universe which probably doesn't much need to experience the taste of hot chocolate, beaches at sunset, or what it's like to be in love.

And just to clarify completely-- I suggested that if panpsychism is true, I would be fairly well-disposed toward the idea that the Universe is God, though such a philosophical God probably wouldn't respond to requests for increased income or to cure Aunt Ethel's kidney stones.

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So..yes.  Easy answer.  You believe in mind.  You don't know how it works and you have some interesting ideas, but you believe in mind.  Your agnosticism is irrelevant to your belief, just as it is with gods.

Do you have some interesting god ideas?  Yes.  Do you know how gods are supposed to work?  Not really.  Do you believe in gods?  No.

I don't believe in mind.  I am mind and mind is me.  I am the alpha and the omega, baby!