WatDabney

It's a hosting site for free ebooks.

The site admins don't provide any of the ebooks themselves - they just host files that are uploaded by whoever wishes, and provide for downloads for whoever wishes. (Not that that alters its legal status - just by way of explanation).

It's notably popular among college students, as a source to download free versions of obscenely overpriced textbooks.

That consciousness is (theoretically) an emergent property of the brain doesn't make it indistinguishable from the brain. I would say that it's self-evidently a thing unto itself - while consciousness appears to be (and logically is) a manifestation of brain activity, it is not that brain activity in and of itself. My experience of consciousness undoubtedly manifests via the firing of neurons and release of chemicals, but it is not merely the firing of neurons and release of chemicals - it's an experience unto itself.

To use a potentially poor analogy, consciousness might be viewed as the fruit of the plant of the brain. While the fruit comes to be solely through the workings of the plant, it still, fully formed, has an existence outside of, and even to some degree independent of, the plant.

Or something like that...

Or, as you acknowledged before, it seems like you experience them.

Yes.

If I'm to be precise, it seems that I exist on what seems to be a planet in what seems to be a universe. On that seeming planet it seems as if I am surrounded by what seem to be things - some of which seem to be alive and others of which seem not to be. And among the ones that seem to be alive, there are some that seem to share the classification I seem to possess, as a human being.

In my seeming experience as what seems to be accurately desgnated a human being, I seem to experience some things, among them the process of seeming to make choices. And that process of seeming to make choices is a thing that I seemingly perceive the other seeming humans who seem to exist seemingly relate to be a part of their seeming lives as well.

And so on. Since I, as seems to be the case with all other beings that seem to exist, live behind the veil of perception, I cannot know for certain that any part of what I experience represents an objective reality. So every single aspect of my experience of life, most accurately, can only be said to seem to be as I perceive it to be.

And each of these inputs could be understood as the inevitable result of a causal chain.

I simply don't believe that to be the case, if for no other reason than that that would appear to make creative reasoning impossible. If reason was merely the manifestation of a rigid causal chain, then all reason would follow the same paths to the same destinations. The fact that human history is, viewed one way, a record of new chains being followed to new destinations, means that there must be some mechanism by which consciousness can and does effectively "switch tracks." Or even introduce entirely new ones.

It’s super complex and likely involves technology that we don’t yet possess, but if I could perfectly simulate a brain identical to yours, with the same neural states, and the same concentrations of relevant chemicals in its simulated blood at the moment of the decision, that simulated brain would have to produce the same output as as your meaty one.

Nor do I believe that to be true, since while consciousness appears to be a manifestation of the mechanical workings of the brain, it is not itself merely those mechanical workings - it is a "thing" unto itself. And I believe, quite simply, that the relationship between consciousness and the brain is not unidirectional, but bidirectional - that just as the physical state of a brain can be a proximate cause of a chain of thought, a chain of thought can be a proximate cause of a physical state of a brain.

And in fact, I would say that that's easily demonstrated by the fact that one can trigger a response - fight or flight for instance - merely by imagining a threat. There's no need for any physical manifestation of the threat - a wholly conscious, wholly non-physical imagining of it is sufficient. That says to me, rather clearly, that consciousness can serve as a cause - not merely as an effect.

And on a side note, thanks for the responses - this subject particularly fascinates me, but I find intellectually honest debate on it to be vanishingly rare.

I don’t understand where you found justification to state that there really are such points.

Because I experience them, and not just at times, but moment-to-moment, every waking day. And so do you. And so does essentially every single human in existence.

That indicates two possibilities - either it's a universal illusion, and in both senses of the term - one experienced by everyone and one experienced without exception by each individual, or it's a real experience.

And I just find the former to be so ridiculously unlikely that the latter can be safely said to be near certainly true.

How do you dismiss the idea that our conscious choice is not simply an application of the myriad parameters?

I don't. I simply include consciousness, and all it entails - reason, value, self-interest, preference, mood, etc. - among those parameters.

That's unfortunate - you credited me with debating in good faith, yet won't do the same.

You rather obviously knew that the way you attempted to frame my position was disparaging - if you hadn't, you wouldn't have felt the need to add that proviso to the end of your post. What you clearly attempted to do with that was to disparage the position, while asserting that you didn't mean it personally.

Ah well.

god of the gaps

supernatural

Without those obvious pejoratives, that would've been a pretty good summation of at least that aspect of my position.

With those obvious pejoratives, it was reduced to an unfortunate expression of bias.

I believe that it's not simply that science doesn't yet fully understand how the brain works, but that it's not even really equipped to deal with consciousness, which while clearly a manifestation of physical processes, is not itself physical.

That and we're in an era in which "science" (scare quotes because part of the problem IMO is a misunderstanding of what science can do and does) has largely moved to the forefront of the pursuit of understanding, but humanity is still to some significant degree stuck in a quasi-religious mindset, so all too many have merely shifted from a devout faith that their religion provides every answer to everything ever to a devout faith that "science" provides every answer to everything ever.

The problem then comes when they run up against something for which science can't provide an answer. And the common response then is to blithely insist that that thing must not and cannot exist at all, since the alternative is to face the fact that science potentially cannot provide every answer to everything ever. And that's generally accompanied by an immediate assignment of whatever it is that's in question to the other half of their wholly binaristic worldview - if it's not amenable to science, it must and can only be religion/magic.

Reality, IMO, is vaster than that.

Because people who do not have the approval of party power brokers and wealthy donors are effectively locked out, leaving only people of which the power brokers and donors approve.

The primary requirements of the power brokers and donors are that the would-be candidate has no principles that might interfere with them getting whatever it is that they want but have enough skill and/or charisma to project the illusion of principles to the voters. They want someone they can count on to exclusively serve their interests while maintaining enough of an appearance that they serve the interests of the people to win an election, then maintain at least enough support to function in office.

And since they control, as the case might be, the nomination process and the funding of campaigns, they get what they want.

Because there are points at which, exactly as seems to be the case, we consciouly choose to follow one particular path in spite of the fact that we could just as easily have chosen another.

Because it's not an illusion.

Determinism seems reasonable only because people have an inaccurately simplistic conception of causation, such that they believe that consciousness and choice violate it, rather than being a part of it.

Causation isn't a simple linear thing - it's an enormously complex web in which any number of things can be causes and/or effects of any number of things.

Free will (properly understood) is just one part of that enormously complex web.

I'm roundaboutly reminded of one of my favorite novels - Greener Than You Think, by Ward Moore.

It's a science fiction story about the end of the world that was written in the late 40s. The proximate cause of the end is all of the landmasses of Earth being smothered by a gigantic and very aggressive strain of Bermuda grass, but the real cause is the utter and complete failure, due to ignorance, greed, selfishness, short-sightedness, incompetence, arrogance and so on, of every attempt to combat it.

Well damn.

No - I very deliberately used round peg in the square hole, initially just to avoid the cliche, but the more I thought about it, the more I liked it.

Conservatives pound on round/natural/organic/smooth pegs to try to force them into square/artificial/contrived/rigid holes.

I liked it anyway....