iNow

I reckon that depends entirely on how one chooses to define soul I would have to agree with you. God is an invented narrative in your head. Sciences suggests you’ve made god in your image, not the other way around.

Why would you ask that flawed claims not be challenged and suggest some desire to learn what is "not right?" That's ridiculous. I feel this deeply right now.

So panpsychism, basically? Easy to do since a definition of mind is so arbitrary and so consistently conflated with self. That's not a definition, at least not one that anyone with any experience on this topic would willingly accept. The "substrate of mind" is a set of cells that behave in specific ways. Sub - Under, beneath, below... Strate - Material, surface, layer... these are useful concepts in construction, but not in definitions of intelligence (which are expressed behaviors and activities viewed from specific perspectives and with an overarching framework. Lol... now try definining living. Most consciousness chats on a science forum just waste time for page after page after page and go absolutely no where useful. --iNow's Law

It is if we're talking about the cause of behavior and actions. I may need you to elaborate here. They don't move backwards, they simply move in the same direction more slowly... in aggregate. Individual cars may temporarily change gears and and go in reverse, but the overall flow doesn't tend to reverse.

Actually, the parts of our minds responsible for narrative generation and story writing pretty much own this. While much like a single board or brick doesn't hold up an entire house and other parts of the brain are involved, contrary to your assertion above the key player here is quite obviously the hippocampus. This depends on how one defines intelligence, does it not? Some people are intelligent with regards to math, others with regards to poetry, and others still with music or engineering or how emotions work and how to interact with others. The point is there are MULTIPLE frameworks for the concept of "intelligence" and your assertion comes across as oblivious to that. I agree that there is intelligence to be found in nature, but unless you make this more concrete then you may as well be saying there is love in nature or beauty. Agreed... so what? So obviously false, it's not even wrong... but maybe you're defining "mind" in a unique way? You're obviously a very important man, but please expect no awe from me that you "have a meeting." I haven't been able to scrub through them all... Do any of your links above touch on recent ideas from neuroscientists regarding the use an algorithm to consistently calculate different levels of complexity in cortical activation? The core idea here in case you're unfamiliar is that we seem to have different levels of consciousness (whatever that is and however it ultimately gets defined) and that those levels of complexity can be put into an equation and get explored by reviewing how much activity is occurring across how many brain regions at which intensities in a given time.

I believe they're currently considering draft of a strongly worded letter. That'll do it. Done and dusted.

With bated breath I sit awaiting your return

And there are passages in the bible that suggest we should stone people to death for wearing two different fabrics at the same time or that we should slaughter neighboring tribes and rape their women. So what?

Substances are measurable. What apparatus can we use to measure these? What is the baseline state we're looking to compare results against? You posted like 900 of them. How about instead you summarize here which key point you'd like to begin with. Also, please don't assume I'm beginning in this topic tabula rasa and with no existing baseline knowledge. That would be an error.

There are also passages in Mein Kempf that are still relevant today, that doesn’t exactly mean we should be using it to amplify what’s best in humanity. I thought that was the tooth fairy.

You seem to be conflating mind, consciousness, and other similarly nebulous concepts lacking utility.

A label repeatedly leveled at me by various respondents in these FW threads is that I’m epiphenomenalist. I don’t think I am, but acknowledge maybe I’m wrong and have been trying to better understand that position in order to be more sure. When you said: This struck me as an obvious disagreement I would have with that stance and the simplest rebuttal against claims that I am epiphenomenalist myself. It seemed quite silly to me… to suggest that a new brain state cannot be caused / influenced / shaped by a past one… or have “no causal impact on the brain.” Ergo: If that’s what being an epiphenomenalist means, then I’m clearly not one. However, while the above quote suggests there is a relevant meaningful difference between mental phenomena and brain states, the next quote below seems to suggest the opposite: And we agree if this is the case. I’m attempting to validate that agreement, but also respect that you may be using terms differently than I do and so I’m working to validate my own comprehension in parallel. So… in that first quote… the implication was that there’s some sort of important difference between a mental phenomenon and a brain state. If so, what is that? Not entirely, though definitely agree we align in other important ways. It is our notion of how the concept of “freedom” applies / does not apply to these FREE-will explorations that seems to differ most (and to be frank I don’t entirely disagree with you there either). Please understand that I’m not approaching this topic with my mind up nor closed, but instead looking to challenge my existing preconceptions and better comprehend the various threads in this quilt were weaving together. To that end, I am grateful for your contributions and partnership in doing so.

To make this simple, is the suggestion that brain state 1 cannot lead to brain state 2?

This doesn’t answer my question. That is not my position, nor have I posted anything which should reasonably lead one to conclude it is. To be transparent, I’m struggling to find my stance on this topic. I do know the asymmetry in the Israeli response is only making things worse long term.

Yes. Exactly. Golly, how nice it is to finally be understood. Are you clairvoyant? Then why mention 2005 at all? It’s about to be 2024.

I read it similarly. Consider recognizing authors role in conveyance of intended / unintended points

It wasn’t his intended point, but when reading MigLs post it could come across like he was saying that because the Palestinian parents screwed up 20 years ago it’s okay for Israel to lob missiles by the thousand at their children today.

Like how gay people who love each other shouldn’t be allowed to marry and visit each other in the hospital when sick? Or how women should remain barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen? Or how we should throw stones at them if they were so dishonorable as to allow themselves to be raped?

In this horrible situation, where nuance matters a lot, We keep aligning with extremes, helpful it is not. We agree Hamas is evil, different from Palestine, And Israeli response asymmetric, at least adjacent to a crime. We can pick at nits and exaggerate where we each disagree, Or we can advocate for the end of killing, and for humans to all be free. Limericks are much easier to write than stopping endless war, I’m in town all week folks, when you’re ready for some more. The Final Crusade: Starring Sylvester Stallone and Dolf Lundgren, coming soon to theaters near you

You seem to have forgotten to include an image, but often a spammer scammer creates an account, blasts users with scores of PMs without ever even posting, then gets banned or vanished (either by the software or mid team) before you see it. However, those red notification bubbles often have latency in updating / clearing and displays inaccurate counts

Ah, I see. So “causal” isn’t where my definition would be called wrong, but the challenge came instead toward my use of “mental phenomenon.” Will you please offer examples of what YOU mean by mental phenomena that aren’t themselves brain states so we may better align?

I believe some groups are also using AI to decode whale song and enable technology assisted 2-way communication with them

QFT. Quite right

Pain is a mental phenomenon. It clearly influences brain state. Love is a mental phenomenon. It clearly influences brain state. Hunger, fatigue, confusion, optimism, depression… all mental phenomena, all influence brain states (which are themselves in perpetual flux). I’m sure there’s some arcane super micro precise nonstandard usage definition of causal here that I’m ignoring though.

Yeah, we’re aligned on the neurobiology.