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One Brow said:
The more children tend to stay alive, the more women want abortions after they have had children. No wonder Republicans want almost everyone to be poor.
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Yeah everyone knows trojans, keeping your knees together, and giving an unwanted child to a infertile couple don't come cheap.
 
PearlWatson said:
Yeah everyone knows trojans, keeping your knees together, and giving an unwanted child to a infertile couple don't come cheap.
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Trojans occasionally fail, keeping your legs together often offends your spouse, and giving up a baby is much harder emotionally than abortion.

Of course, you're concerned about embryos, not the women who carry them, so none of that matters to you.
 
One Brow said:
Your question was how chemical reactions can account for consciousness. I was pointing out that we are getting pretty close to consciousness with material reactions. Saying they are not the same because they are electric is beside the point.



I have no idea what you mean by will, here. Computers do exhibit the determination to complete a task using whatever resources are available, but maybe you mean something different.
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I'll take the truth of this assertion on faith.

computers do what they are told to do. That's why "programmers" have jobs. I suppose some very good programmers really can create programs that will create programs of their own, but I consider that to be the design of the programmer who created that/those programs. The concept originated in the human mind. . . . like maybe "evolution" originated in some other mind or collective consciousness of some sort. . . .

We are dealing with an unknown and undefinable essence much like "God" when we talk about "will", whether human, bovine, or any other choice taken by any living thing that can not, or perhaps can not yet, be rationally attributed to a chemical reaction like "chemotaxis", for example. . . . or any chemical messenger-mediated response.

I probably don't know enough about neurological chemistry to convince any devout scientist of a purely material world view that anything goes on in any living thing that isn't chemistry. However, in my opinion, chemistry does not explain the difference in choices between me and my brother or my father, for example, who would both be on your team in this debate.
 
One Brow said:
Your question was how chemical reactions can account for consciousness. I was pointing out that we are getting pretty close to consciousness with material reactions. Saying they are not the same because they are electric is beside the point.



I have no idea what you mean by will, here. Computers do exhibit the determination to complete a task using whatever resources are available, but maybe you mean something different.
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Less than a hundred pages ago, in this thread, I told how a bull ran at me one day. We were trying to load him on a truck to go the butcher, and I suppose I don't have any reason to think he should like that. He bolted and ran a tight circle, and picked the spot where I was standing to head for the wild blue-sage yonder. I had about one second of eye-to-eye contact before he shifted his eye to his right and I knew that was where he was gonna go. I jumped in the other direction to safety, so to speak.

That bull didn't want to run me down. I call that an example of "will". Maybe it's just wanting an easier path. But I've seen some creatures who preferred the harder path, too. I see what I call "will" in birds, even snakes. Who knows what "programmed" reflexes/chemistry phenomena in nature could explain it.

I see willful disbelievers in "God" as much as I see willful believers in "God". Many in both of these "choice options" can talk about "reasons" for their choice, some at great length, but I sorta take it that the reasons take second seat to "will".
 
babe said:
Less than a hundred pages ago, in this thread, I told how a bull ran at me one day. We were trying to load him on a truck to go the butcher, and I suppose I don't have any reason to think he should like that. He bolted and ran a tight circle, and picked the spot where I was standing to head for the wild blue-sage yonder. I had about one second of eye-to-eye contact before he shifted his eye to his right and I knew that was where he was gonna go. I jumped in the other direction to safety, so to speak.

That bull didn't want to run me down. I call that an example of "will". Maybe it's just wanting an easier path. But I've seen some creatures who preferred the harder path, too. I see what I call "will" in birds, even snakes. Who knows what "programmed" reflexes/chemistry phenomena in nature could explain it.

I see willful disbelievers in "God" as much as I see willful believers in "God". Many in both of these "choice options" can talk about "reasons" for their choice, some at great length, but I sorta take it that the reasons take second seat to "will".
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out of rep
 
It's alllll physiology, broughs. And every single description of it (with the concepts and affects) has its limitations.

'Consciousness' is a concept we use for talking about physiology. But bodies are always capable of more than what we recognize in them; and there are bodies that we can't perceive at all. This excess is what we acknowledge when we say 'spirit' or 'will'.
 
babe said:
I probably don't know enough about neurological chemistry to convince any devout scientist of a purely material world view that anything goes on in any living thing that isn't chemistry. However, in my opinion, chemistry does not explain the difference in choices between me and my brother or my father, for example, who would both be on your team in this debate.
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OK.
 
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