yes, jeannie, as i said, self is my minds opinion of me. but i suppose that's not quite right is it. thinking further, self is the result of a bunch of neurons and chemicals in my brain reacting in such a fashion to develop an opion of me. another event of the brain, just one brain event that results in what i call "my mind". again, mind is more an event than a thing.

of course i exist. i've experienced that i exist so i know i exist. you don't know that i exist because you've not experienced that i exist so yes you must opine, form a hypothesis or theory, consider it plausible that i exist, etc. what i opine my"self" to be has nothing to do with my existence.

i'm not in the least saying that i "accept the scientific conclusion that there is probably no soul". a scientific conclusion is not a probability. the soul i put under the category of "supernatural phenomena" which as with gods and the afterlife is unknown and unknowable. call me a "soul agnostic" if that suits your fancy.

sorry but i just don't understand your last question. what i've experienced in the events that i refer to as "my mind" is what i've said. i don't know this but i've read and been told such things by folks who've said they've studied about brain chemicals and neurons and such. whether they actually did do that studying i simply can't say as i can't know they did if i wasn't their to experience it with them but i do find it plausible that the functions of the brain have been and still are being studied in great detail.

If that were true, then "self" (you) would be only an opinion of "mind" which is a property of "brain" which is just a biological machine.



That's even more confusing.
What are the neurons and chemicals in your brain reacting to?
How does that cause them to develop an opinion of you?

So if "mind" is just an "event" then you are the opinion of an event?

Or are you an opinion of the brain?

I'm confused.





You exist, but what are you? The body? The brain? The mind? Or are you just an opinion?

If we are just the body, why do people use the term "My body.." as if self were something other than the body?

The same question arises with the term "my mind..." and "my brain.."

Who is this "my" self that has ownership and possession of a body, mind, and brain?

I fully understand this "emergent property" idea of some secular scientists. This mostly comes from the biological community along with some vague support from pure mathematics as well as "Chaos Theory", which I also understand mathematically. In fact, "Chaos Theory" has more recently evolved to become "Complexity Theory", or something like that. I really need to take a refresher course in that to see if the actual theory itself has changed much or if it's just the name that has changed.

In any case, I would like to point out a genuine 'fallacy' upon which this theory is based. This not to say that the theory is then necessarily wrong, but rather to simply show that it is indeed based on a false premise.

The false premise that has grown favor in the biological community is the following:

They view everything in terms of 'form' and 'information'. They erroneously conclude then that unless something has a physical 'form' it cannot exist as 'information'.

That is a fallacy which is not supported by the theory of quantum physics. This is what the biologists, geneticists, and often times the pure mathematician/physicists who are attempting to apply abstract "Chaos Theory" to this idea of mind as an "emergent property of the brain" fail to consider.

What are they failing to consider?

Well, they are working on the following erroneous premise that is not supported by modern physics:

Their premise:

No information can exist if there is no 'physical form' to hold that information.

In other words, they ask questions like, "Where could spirit exist if not at least as information?" And since we (the biologists) have no scientific reason to believe in a realm of non-physical, they dismiss that notion out of hand as being unscientific and therefore unreasonable and unworthy of consideration.

But that is false reasoning.

Why?

Because modern physics disagrees with their main premise the information can only be supported in a physical state.

On the contrary the very theory of Quantum Mechanics demands that information must necessarily exist within quantum fields which cannot be detected physically until they act in a way to produce detectable phenomena which can be observed.

However, since these quantum fields always produce predicable phenomena (albeit probabilistically) it is concluded (or at least hypothesized) that these non-physical quantum field do indeed contain information.

Thus it most certainly is within the realm of science to believe that information can indeed exist in a non-physical realm.

This is indeed a valid scientific notion contrary to what the Biologists, Geneticists, and "Emergent Property Theorists", have been telling everyone.

Doe this invalid their "Emergent Property" theories. No of course not. But it does violate their claim that there there is no scientific support for a possible non-physical realm of information to exist, because there is scientific evidence and reasons to believe that non-physical information does indeed exist.

In fact the very theory of "Quantum Physics" demands it. And that is indeed a scientific theory.

So to dismiss these spiritual ideas of a possible "non-physical mind" being associated with the brain on pure scientific grounds is actually a faulty claim.

That actually rejects the postulates and premises of "Quantum Theory" which is indeed a scientific theory.

There does exist scientific evidence to support an idea of a "non-physical" realm that can hold and maintain information.

In fact, I just watched a scientific lecture on quantum computing where they are taking quantum computing very seriously and suggesting that they may very well be able to make computations using quantum phenomena that would be impossible using normal methods of classical physics.

Well gee, if Information Scientists are seriously looking into building quantum computers that can take advantage of the non-physical information in quantum fields, then where do the biologists get off claiming that there can be no such thing as 'non-physical' information?

It seems to me that these scientists need to better understand each others fields of study and get on the same thought train.

If scientists can tap into quantum information then maybe the human brain can too?

Or more excitingly, maybe the quantum field (whatever that is) can tap into the brain?

Where does "consciousness truly lie"?

In the brain or in the quantum field?

Science most certainly hasn't ruled out any of this stuff as the biologists are trying to claim!

k jeanie. you win. my bad. "mind" was a poor choice of word's in my description of my thinking on religious issues. maybe this'll be more clear. i think that the human BRAIN is incapable of doing that **** that it's designed to do however it does it and logically conclude that god's, the afterlife or other supernatural phenomena can ever be known to exist. better? sheesh. now, must we discuss the definition of the brain, religious issues ,logic too?






ah, here you do bark up the wrong tree. i didn't name me what i are. not a clue who coined the term "homo sapien" but damned if i don't use the term or some fashion of it such as human when saying what i am. most are not in the least confused by the term. but then ofcourse somebody went and divided humans into men and women, different races, and such. then low and behold but somebody else came up with crap like "self" and "soul" and "spirit". no wonder you're confused but it just ain't my fault jeanie. i didn't do it or if i did confuse you i didn't mean it. what i really meant to do was describe myself as a male human. that's what actually exists. everything else i think i might be exists only in the workings of my brain and, no, i don't know how that works at all or even if mine works right. but there it is. so i'm a white male human who sees no evidence of things like soul, self or spirit and now even the term "mind" is suspect as even that seems to confuse folks. and here's another kicker. tons of people actually seem to think they feel things in their heart to be true or untrue. how rediculous is that? the heart is nothing but a four chambered, two stroke, electromuscular pump designed to provide hydraulic pressure to my circulatory system. my brain doas all my thinking which results in my feelings but damned my brain doesn't feel anything cuz i feel by touching and somebody else coined a phrase, "touched in the brain" and i don't think that's a good thing. oh yeah, having had heart surgery i've learned that if you ever feel anything in your heart get to the emergency room and i mean right now.

sorry about all the deleted posts. thought i was editing but kept clicking quote. duh. abra, brief and concise or i've no interest. perhaps my reply to jeanie will give you some insight as to my thinking.

Okay Jrbogie, you have answered my question.

You identify your "self" as the whole package, the body.

I have no more questions.

You like brief and concise:

It's a false notion that it is 'unscientific' to consider things like "spirit, soul, etc".

That is a misrepresentation of what is actually known by science.

[/end of Brevity]

~~~~~~~

I'd just like to comment also on the following statement:



Surely you realize that when people say they feel something in their "heart" they aren't speaking of the actual physical organ?

Intuition has merit. Hell's bells, even great scientists have made great discovers by following their intuition. In fact, that's probably the single most contributing factor to gaining profound insight in the sciences.

The scientific method basically ends up being nothing more than a tool that they use to prove that their intuition was indeed correct.

In fact that's how Max Planck "discovered" Quantum Physics.

That's how Albert Einstein "discovered" Relativity.

The list goes on and on.

If?

That's how Albert Einstein "discovered" Relativity.

If he did that is quite Real.. If Relativity transforms from Reality then would you know the beginning from the end.. Everything is now real thier in that Reality..Blessings...Miles

Well it's crystal clear that he did. There can be no question about that.

Albert Einstein had to seek out help from mathematicians to put his thoughts into mathematical statements that other people could understand. He didn't use mathematics to derive his ideas, his ideas were totally intuitive and he sought out mathematics to simple explain to other people what he intuitively knew to be truth.

In fact in some cases they actually had to create new mathematics just to explain Einstein's ideas.

Also, his "theories" were confirmed experimentally using the scientific method until decades after he had intuitively realized them.

Ironically they still call it a "Theory" of Relativity, but for all intents and purposes it's been proven to be the true "Laws" of physics. All of the predictions that his theory makes have been totally verified to be true experimentally with absolute total precision and agreement with his predictions. So it should now be called the "Law of Relativity" but they don't do that anymore because things can always been improved on in the details, so it's not considered to be a "Law" just a theory. (i.e. an explanation)

Of course, it's true that Einstein most certainly used reason and logic as well, but so did all the other scientists! It was Einstein's intuition that set him apart from everyone else. He wasn't afraid to follow his intuition.

jrbogie,

If science could use nano technology to create an exact copy of you that resembled you in every way down to the last atom, and that artificial person also had all of your memories...

Which one is you, and how would you even tell the difference??

that you say it's a false notion for science to not consider the soul, spirit, etc., doesn't make it so.

intuition has nothing to do with science. it all begins in science with a hypothisis. yes, the scientific method is nothing but a tool. but nothing in science can every be proved absolutely. hawkings again.

einstein didn't discover relativity. he theorized it. not proved.

when science can do that, jeannie, i'll cosider it. until then it's hypothetical. i don't do hypothetical.

But that's not what I said. I said, "It's a false notion that it is 'unscientific' to consider things like spirit, soul, etc."

The very postulates of Quantum Theory are proof of this. Without those postulates Quantum Theory would not stand.

And the postulates that I'm speaking of is simply the face that non-physical information must necessarily exist in order for Quantum Theory to work.

So in a very real sense scientist are already relying upon a concept of the "supernatural" (or non-physical) in their current theories.

So for them to suggest that such things are beyond science is simply false. Their theories already depend on a postulation of the existence of the unknowable and unobservable.

So they are already there whether they realize it or not.



Einstein's hypothesis that time could dilate was totally irrational by standard. That was as unthinking to most scientists at the time as an idea of ghosts or goblins. Yet Einstein's hunch turned out to be true.



But the predictions of this theory have indeed been proven since. Time truly does dilate. Modern physics would not even work if this wasn't true. We see this everyday in particle accelerators.

Einstein most certainly did "discover" the relative nature of nature.

He discovered "relativity" to be a very real property of the universe in which we live. He "discovered" a property of our universe.

He didn't just make up an unprovable theory. Had that been the case no one would even know who Albert Einstein was.

No. He "discovered" a physical property of our universe that has since been confirmed to be true beyond any shadow of a doubt. And his discovery only happened because he dared to imagine the unimaginable - the idea that time is not at all what we thought it was.

Albert Einstein "discovered" that time is a physical fabric of our physical reality and it can be warped and stretched just like space.

That's nothing to sneeze at.

In fact most people even today do not fully grasp what he did. Even many people who are educated scientists. They can calculate time dilation, but they still don't seem to fully grasp the significance of the actual physical nature of it.

Albert Einstein showed the time is just as "physical" as anything else in this physical universe. And it is malleable!

That's truly WILD!

Why not?

I can understand not answering hypothetical questions in a courtroom, but we are just using our imaginations here.

Its not a test, its just a question.

It is an exercise in your imagination. Do you have any imagination? Or are you simply an observer who accepts nothing except what you can see, feel, hear, and what is proven with evidence by science?