• The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    The brain controls the heart; the heart controls the brain. Funny, the anus is the first thing to develop, so in a chicken or egg scenario. Sorry dude, our entire bodies are one codependent organism. We're not "just" brains.
  • The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    Cut out the heart and the brain dies. Therefore, we're just hearts.

    Yeah, neuroscience and sociopathy have got to be closely linked. It amounts to emotional slavery.

    It shouldn't even be a matter of contention that we're "just" our nervous system. It strips us of our property, our bodies, which we altogether and without a doubt are. The brain is "just" another part of us, and is equally dependent on the rest of our bodies.

    You can't just explain the empirical nature of a body, though. The brain included, of course, but it seems less obvious that it's abstract.
  • The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    Neuroscience hasn't figured out how a conscious experience is produced. They somehow know...or I shouldn't say they, but sycophants like Garrett know that neuroscience has proven its the product of the amalgamation of the brain.

    So, three things they don't understand:

    1. The complete function of the brain.
    2. Consciousness.
    3. The environment in which said consciousness exists.

    And yet...they kNoW tHeRe Is nO mystery. Ie. There cannot be ANY surprises.
  • The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    That isn't to say it would matter as to what consciousness is if the brain did produce it.

    Boeing makes airplanes.
  • The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness
    What is consciousness? How does it work? What are it's qualities in relation to this dimension as well as all other hypothesized dimensions? How does it flow through time, and, a big question:

    How did you prove that your brain is an adequate tool for locating it in your brain? Circular logic, much?

    Nobody knows shit, and those who claim they do are trying to sell something. I don't even buy the transducer valve theory and even that can match you point-for-point.

    You can't see consciousness -- you can't touch it -- and the idea anything you can physically perceive creates it sounds just as silly as the alternatives.

    It's all just vying for control, but we true lovers of wisdom ain't afraid of neuroscience.
  • A Question for Physicalists
    Any time you can prove the brain alone generates consciousness, I'm more than ready. You don't even know what that is, though, and yet you say there's evidence towards. Complete woo.
  • A Question for Physicalists
    , ALL the evidence that exists, that's every single bit of it, suggests that consciousness is the production of multiple complex regions of the brain working in sympohony. You guys can keep ignoring the research I've posted, but I'm going to keep walking away from this having to conclude you guys are not philosophically oriented, and are simply asserting things predicated upon your emotions.

    You're gonna be dealing with it a while, at least until the in-depth analysis of how the brain produces awareness arrives.

    There's no such thing. You're just wrong, and as you accuse others, speaking from emotion. It's an apparent inferiority complex.
  • A Question for Physicalists
    There is no evidence pointing to the brain, and the brain alone, producing consciousness. If you disagree, pray tell, what is consciousness?

    I'm tired of this circular reasoning. All that is known for certain is that the brain seems to have a correlation to objective, physical states of the body.
  • Steelman Challenge For Intellectual Rigor
    It not possible to against assertions of non-existent that is claimed no evidence is needed for. You not arguing here, on dis. You just saying tings.

    - Garrett Travers
  • Ayn Rand's Self-Sainted Selfishness
    It's not natural that honest, humble men should suffer so that Patty and her clinically obese step-triplets can each have five ice cream sandwiches for desert, is all I'm saying.

    Almost everyone is forced to meet the quota of a lazy ass society that just wants more, more of this and more of that, something just to buy something. On top of that, it's destroying the planet.
  • Steelman Challenge For Intellectual Rigor
    So no compassion for unskilled laborers because just because Hitler was an unskilled laborer doesn't mean he deserves compassion. OK got it.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    I hate to be that guy, but with Russia's history, both past and present, why wouldn't NATO be set up at its borders to defend against exactly what is happening now? And why is an alliance of republics such anathema to Russia?

    Couldn't Putin have just, simply, not invaded Ukraine and just have tried to make his country better? Or was someone going to invade Russia, which, after Iraq and Afghanistan...

    At the very least I disagree there's an innocent side in this scenario. I mean, Putin is KGB for cripes sakes.
  • Ayn Rand's Self-Sainted Selfishness
    Consuming their own cheap product and calling it the best. Still cheap and tasteless.
  • Ayn Rand's Self-Sainted Selfishness
    What about greed, sloth, and cheap product, I say. Cause that's what really keeps American factories in business. Honest, pragmatic men must suffer for the greed of cheap, tasteless men.
  • Ayn Rand's Self-Sainted Selfishness
    If animals had no reason at all, dogs would be knocking over trash cans non-stop.
  • Introducing myself ... and something else
    Do you see the universe as a superbeing of which we are tiny parts?

    Yeah, but I don't dwell too hard on it. Something like that, even if it's Star Wars' mystical Force binding all things.
  • Introducing myself ... and something else
    But I think the universe at large is this superintelligence, that everything is one, and, truly, nothing is completely subjective.
  • Introducing myself ... and something else
    That's nice, though I don't see what God has got to do with intelligence. Maybe they know nothing in the way we do, have no power at all like we do, and are they mean in our metrics (just because they created the universe).

    Omniscience would be fairly intelligent. Though I think it would be picking straws if it even just had something along the lines of super intelligence.
  • Introducing myself ... and something else
    Belief in God needn't predicate the existence of an afterlife either.

    But anyway, there's nothing wrong with everyone exploring completely diverse arenas of belief, so long as they aren't a hindrance to human dignity.

    For me, God is synonymous with the simple idea that there may be vastly higher orders of intelligence. I wouldn't expect It to reveal itself everywhere or subjugate people to its power, either. Nor to erase pain and suffering from existence.
  • Introducing myself ... and something else
    A creator is a valid theory for the origins of the cosmos, one which many happen to believe. And you guys get angry, because you disagree, but how can it be ignored when it's a perfectly viable theory? There is no evidence of anything contradicting the postulate of a creator.

    Nor, technically, can there be.

    It strikes me that God and the concept of eternity are every bit as frightening as death. And maybe you guys are such reactionaries to the notion because you are afraid.
  • Transhumanism: Treating death as a problem
    I think our attitude towards death is scarier than death itself. If you want to explore life extension, fine, but death is not the enemy. Just look at how fearful we all are. That's the worst part about it.

    I don't think it's either noble or ignoble to want to live forever, but I can see the scenario becoming one where we're forced to go on, just because we won't be able to admit there's any justification for death.

    I mean, look at assisted suicide...
  • How is truth possible?
    Evidence hasn't pointed anywhere as yet. The truth is, we just (even with our complex brains) just can't comprehend reality from this lowly dimension.

    It will only be revealed in eons, tiny increment after tiny increment.
  • Introducing myself ... and something else
    I experience more than one god. They can't logically be alone as the creation of love and hate takes two at least. Only when you have knowledge of another mind, you will understand that. Monotheism lacks love.

    That's a possibility, too, and a good one. Though I would imagine some kind of primeval collision of worlds.

    And when you think about it, there is a disjunct symmetry to many things, including the human brain. Maybe we evolve to resemble nature.
  • Introducing myself ... and something else
    @Joe Mello

    Why should I listen to you and not me?

    Television shows? I don't get it.
  • Introducing myself ... and something else
    God is not everything because God’s omnipotent power does not engulf the uniqueness in every created thing.

    Says you. But if God was not the only resource from which to create, even if God has the power to make imagination tangible, then technically God did not create everything; he created everything out of an arbitrary "something."

    Furthermore, if we possess power God does not, this disqualifies God from being all-powerful.

    Yeah, you guys keep trying to tell me God is a person. I just don't believe as such. A universal mind, perhaps, but that's as far as I'll go.

    I do not seek to know the mind of God. That's waaay too deep and too powerful.

    That said, I am a pantheist, sorta of the classical variety, and believe God is as personal as we subjectively are to ourselves, which is very personal.

    But yeah, I don't go there. Beware, cause God is dangerous.
  • Ayn Rand's Self-Sainted Selfishness
    Never read Ayn Rand, never will. There's something disingenuous about trying to turn the very uncomplicated act of being a reasonable person (within reason) into an institution.
  • Introducing myself ... and something else
    I think everything is occuring at the same vibrating time, so effects can be causes.

    And God must be everything, or God couldn't have created everything.

    I think there is more to evolution along similar lines.

    Somehow the dinosaur must be aware of the sky to become a bird, and that, to me, suggests mind over matter. I don't buy the pretext that, oh, a dinosaur randomly sprouted a feather. I think there is a yearning within the imagination, that perhaps no material mechanism can be found for, that aids in things like dinosawyers becoming birds.
  • Ayn Rand's Self-Sainted Selfishness
    I think what Garrett is saying and suggesting is that the brain is amazing. But we don't even know how amazing it is.
  • Is Dishbrain Conscious?
    Dishbrain's whole awareness is pain. It is all Dishbrain has ever known.
  • Does magick exist? If so, can modern technology be used in the practice of magick?
    Stanford does a thing with random number generators and intent. Supposedly certain people and events can cause patterns to form or something of that ilk.

    I propose that one aligned with the force can take the random nature of any technology and bend it to his/her will.
  • Are there thoughts?
    I'm not even against the role of the brain in, at least, regulating consciousness. I believe it isn't just some useless thing. But do I determine that our awareness is perfectly linear and within the scope of human understanding? No, I certainly do not.
  • Are there thoughts?
    It's sociopathic to try and force people to believe all that they are is an organ in the vat of the body. We are whole people, found out here, out of our minds, in the cosmos. Not inside some dying brain.
  • Are there thoughts?
    The brain and the body are so codependent that the brain is a part of the body. This attempt to dwindle people down to a singular body part sounds like it was invented by a sociopath.
  • Are there thoughts?
    The abstraction of the body can't be found inside of the brain. In fact it's barely aware.
  • Are there thoughts?
    We are whole bodies, out of our minds. We're not just a nervous system, as is self-evident
  • Are there thoughts?
    The brain manages, not governs.
  • Are there thoughts?
    The body cogoverns with assistance from the outside world. The brain isn't just some powerhouse that wanted a cool body. The flesh keeps the blood warm; the brain tells the heart to pump because it receives blood from the heart, and without a skeleton your organs would rebel against you.

    It isn't saying anything to say the brain produces consciousness. All the evidence points to us not having a comprehensive understanding of the insides of or what is outside the body. It's very shortsighted to draw conclusions about all the properties of consciousness at this juncture.

    We don't know what energy or the physical are. People have been taking the most myopic approach and calling that reality for thousands of years, and nine times out of ten they're wrong.

    And you disgruntle me by saying the brain produces consciousness. That tells us nothing about the brain or consciousness and there are a myriad of forces that could be at play here.

    Everything is connected, and consciousness no lesser so. Perhaps it is produced by the brain. Perhaps the brain is a transducer for a field of consciousness. Perhaps matter is just how mind happens to seem.

    It bothers me when people claim to have solved these mysteries with no concrete proof, as if there could even be concrete proof, and is a hurdle to open-minded, scientific exploration.

    You're just claiming to know how everything works.
  • Panpsychism/cosmopsychism
    The only "woo" is hardline materialism: the equivalent of thinking the Earth is flat.
  • Are there thoughts?
    I love my daughter Sally and talked to her about riding bikes while flying a kite yesterday.

    The physical world is only as strong as the string. The truth is, something so abstract can't be meaningfully defined by its physicality.
  • Non-Physical Reality
    Pages like this are so enticing to narcissistic know-it-alls. Many of you are a fucking joke.