Does God exist? (14 Viewers)

[KFunk]

I don't know - I'd argue that there's a distinction between temporarily losing consciousness and not having the ability to be conscious at all.

But the embryo does has the ability to become conscious given the right conditions. The nature of these conditions differs, of course, from those that are required for the comatose or the sucker-punched to become conscious (though they could be similar, given an appropriate hypothetical).

The analogy is imperfect, as most are, but it is good enough, I feel, to generate a nice ethical conundrum that warrants analysis.

 

[moll.]

I don't know - I'd argue that there's a distinction between temporarily losing consciousness and not having the ability to be conscious at all.

I would argue that the distinction lies in previous consciousness.

 

[KFunk]

I would argue that the distinction lies in previous consciousness.

Certainly, such a distinction can be drawn - but what is its moral significance?

Consider the following hypothetical (which is admittedly unrealistic, though its validity, depending on your taste in ethical theory, likely depends on its mere [meta?]physical possibility):

You lie unconscious. As you lie unconscious scientists/genies scan your brain and nervous system using technology/magic and create a perfect embodied replica of you, flesh and all. The replica-you lacks your precise spatiotemporal location and causal history, but in all structural respects it is identical (which implies identical memories, personality and so forth given the appropriate materialist assumptions). For fun let's suppose that the original-you dies (someone trips on the life support extension plug). What does the lack of previous consciousness imply for the replica-you that lies unconscious?

Whacky, I realise.

 

[Kwayera]

But the embryo does has the ability to become conscious given the right conditions. The nature of these conditions differs, of course, from those that are required for the comatose or the sucker-punched to become conscious (though they could be similar, given an appropriate hypothetical).

The analogy is imperfect, as most are, but it is good enough, I feel, to generate a nice ethical conundrum that warrants analysis.

I don't see the conundrum, honestly. A person has the physiological architecture that allows consciousness (even if only in "the right conditions"); an embryo does not. It doesn't matter that it may have that architecture at some point in the future; as an embryo, it does not.

 

[KFunk]

I don't see the conundrum, honestly. A person has the physiological architecture that allows consciousness (even if only in "the right conditions"); an embryo does not. It doesn't matter that it may have that architecture at some point in the future; as an embryo, it does not.

Fair enough. Perhaps that is the right kind of distinction. But consider another hypothetical:

Suppose that in the future we develop an extremely advanced kind of brain surgery in which we are to revive a specific part of the ascending reticular activating system (ARAS - a set of brain stem structures which, it is proposed, are collectively essential for consciousness) which has been damaged (stroke... trauma... infection... inflammation...take your pick).

It is certainly possible for your ARAS to be damaged - it occurs relatively frequently. Once damaged you lack the neural architecture required for consciousness. But what should be done if we develop a technology which can repair the damage? Should you be cast to the wind because you 'do not have the [architecturally-derived] ability to become conscious'?

More realistically, consider that in cases of relatively limited damage (to the ARAS or similar) the body may have some capacity to replace the damaged cells and restore consciousness (presumably something similar to this occurs in some cases of coma recovery, though I admit I know very little about this area). But in such a case the body(/person)'s ability to later become conscious is not architectural in what I judge to be your sense, but is instead more similar to that found in an embryo - the relevant precursor cells have the genetically encoded capacity to create consciousness-permitting structures given the right conditions.

How should we approach coma patients?

 

[Kwayera]

Fair enough. Perhaps that is the right kind of distinction. But consider another hypothetical:

Suppose that in the future we develop an extremely advanced kind of brain surgery in which we are to revive a specific part of the ascending reticular activating system (ARAS - a set of brain stem structures which, it is proposed, are collectively essential for consciousness) which has been damaged (stroke... trauma... infection... inflammation...take your pick).

It is certainly possible for your ARAS to be damaged - it occurs relatively frequently. Once damaged you lack the neural architecture required for consciousness. But what should be done if we develop a technology which can repair the damage? Should you be cast to the wind because you 'do not have the [architecturally-derived] ability to become conscious'?

More realistically, consider that in cases of relatively limited damage (to the ARAS or similar) the body may have some capacity to replace the damaged cells and restore consciousness (presumably something similar to this occurs in some cases of coma recovery, though I admit I know very little about this area). But in such a case the body(/person)'s ability to later become conscious is not architectural in what I judge to be your sense, but is instead more similar to that found in an embryo - the relevant precursor cells have the genetically encoded capacity to create consciousness-permitting structures given the right conditions.

How should we approach coma patients?

A few struts may be knocked out of place but the structure - the ARAS - is still there. You can't repair what isn't there, as in an embryo, so for me, the distinction doesn't disintegrate even with this hypothetical.

 

[KFunk]

A few struts may be knocked out of place but the structure - the ARAS - is still there. You can't repair what isn't there, as in an embryo, so for me, the distinction doesn't disintegrate even with this hypothetical.

The ARAS isn't there if you destroy it. Parts of it may remain, certainly, but these parts are not architecturally sufficient for consciousness. What do you mean when you say that 'the ARAS is still there'?

 

[shadawgz24]

Yes. There is only one God.

 

[Kwayera]

The ARAS isn't there if you destroy it. Parts of it may remain, certainly, but these parts are not architecturally sufficient for consciousness. What do you mean when you say that 'the ARAS is still there'?

You said damaged, not destroyed. If it was irreparably destroyed, I'd argue that that person is no longer a "person".

 

[Kwayera]

Yes. There is only one God.

Thor begs to differ.

 

[KFunk]

You said damaged, not destroyed. If it was irreparably destroyed, I'd argue that that person is no longer a "person".

Terminology can get messy here.

I was viewing damaged/destroyed as amounting to much the same thing. In the former case (damaged) parts of the original ARAS no longer exist and some remain, while in the latter case (destroyed) none of it exists. However, I was asuming that the functional architecture of the ARAS depends on the specific arrangement of its parts such that removing key elements renders it non-functional. Thus it may remain the ARAS anatomically while no longer being the functional-consciousness-sustaining ARAS.

Consider the example of a logic circuit : http://sandbox.mc.edu/~bennet/cs110/boolalg/gate2.gif

The middle-left element with 'B' and 'C' running into it is an 'AND' gate which only sends a signal when both B AND C are on. The bottom-left element is a 'NOT' gate which only fires when D is NOT firing. The gate on the right is an 'OR' gate and so fires if any of the three pathways on the left send a signal.

Thus the gate represents the logical function A OR (B AND C) OR (NOT D)

If you destroy the bottom-left triangular element it will simply become a circuit representing 'A OR (B AND C)'

By eliminating a circuit element you therefore destroy the underlying logical structure. It is more or less in this sense that I mean that you could destroy the ARAS by damaging a small portion of it, because the overall function (which, hypothetically, I am assuming superimposes on logical structure) may well depend on individual parts.

 

[x.christina]

Christina took the What Bible Character are You? quiz and the result is King David
People like you and follow your leadership. You love deeply even though relationships can cause you great pain. You’re sensitive and just want to get along with everyone.

Gotta love facebook quizzes.

 

[BradCube]

Got to say Kfunk, it is nice to see some rationality on the other side of abortion/embryo/stem cell research debate. It amazes me how closely all of these issue are related to the mind/body dilemma. Who ever thought that philosophy had no practical application!

Personally, under the presumption of naturalism/materialism I find it hard to make any clear distinction between what should and should not be classified as human life (apart from the default at conception). All properties given seem ad hoc in that they arbitrarily depend on where the author wants the line to be drawn - consciousness, pain, heart beat, life sustainability etc.

 

[KFunk]

Heya Bradcube, great to see you posting.

Got to say Kfunk, it is nice to see some rationality on the other side of abortion/embryo/stem cell research debate. It amazes me how closely all of these issue are related to the mind/body dilemma. Who ever thought that philosophy had no practical application!

Personally, under the presumption of naturalism/materialism I find it hard to make any clear distinction between what should and should not be classified as human life (apart from the default at conception). All properties given seem ad hoc in that they arbitrarily depend on where the author wants the line to be drawn - consciousness, pain, heart beat, life sustainability etc.

There are certainly a lot of tie-ins here - all aspects of philosophy are ultimately interconnected, and interdependent. Many thinkers have observed how ethics depends on our theories/metaphysics of things like free will, personal identity, consciousness, and so forth. Even fairly dry, technical questions like 'how do we gauge the identity of an object over time?' receive fairly obvious relevance in debates like the above one about the ARAS in the context of consciousness. All those classical mind/body and self/other issues get thrown into the mixing pot too.

I agree that arbitrariness/vagueness is an interesting issue in the case of embryos, especially because we want to arrive at a decision which can guide policy and so be of practical use. Vagueness makes it hard to give our answers with much confidence. Consciousness is a particularly interesting case if you admit that there could be all different forms and degrees of consciousness (awake vs asleep, humans vs birds vs ants vs jellyfish vs thermometers). A particularly cusious idea is panpsychism which would hold that all, or most, forms of matter manifest some minimal degree of consciousness which is somehow built up in complex organisms to generate 'higher' levels of consciousness.

An example of a proposal with a panpsychist bent is David Chalmers' suggestion that consciousness supervenes on the representation of information - that is, any system which represents information in some way has a corresponding conscious experience. His basic example is the thermometer which, as a physical system, represents information about temperature and so possesses a structurally similar spectrum of conscious states.

Interesting stuff, though this way crack-heads lie.

 

[BradCube]

bradcube is back with some hardcore krump!

Not sure whether I should be please or offended by such an analogy

There are certainly a lot of tie-ins here - all aspects of philosophy are ultimately interconnected, and interdependent. Many thinkers have observed how ethics depends on our theories/metaphysics of things like free will, personal identity, consciousness, and so forth. Even fairly dry, technical questions like 'how do we gauge the identity of an object over time?' receive fairly obvious relevance in debates like the above one about the ARAS in the context of consciousness. All those classical mind/body and self/other issues get thrown into the mixing pot too.

Not sure if I would regard identity over time as a "fairly dry" question! I find it quite interesting when it is tied in with all of these issues (as I am sure you to do!). Indeed, identity over time I have often seen used in defense of a dualist view of human persons.

I agree that arbitrariness/vagueness is an interesting issue in the case of embryos, especially because we want to arrive at a decision which can guide policy and so be of practical use. Vagueness makes it hard to give our answers with much confidence. Consciousness is a particularly interesting case if you admit that there could be all different forms and degrees of consciousness (awake vs asleep, humans vs birds vs ants vs jellyfish vs thermometers). A particularly cusious idea is panpsychism which would hold that all, or most, forms of matter manifest some minimal degree of consciousness which is somehow built up in complex organisms to generate 'higher' levels of consciousness.

An example of a proposal with a panpsychist bent is David Chalmers' suggestion that consciousness supervenes on the representation of information - that is, any system which represents information in some way has a corresponding conscious experience. His basic example is the thermometer which, as a physical system, represents information about temperature and so possesses a structurally similar spectrum of conscious states.

Interestingly enough, I find that the person in support of pro-abortion and embryonic stem cell research is also going to have to refute the complete opposite of this and find some middle ground between them. I think one could defend a position in which new born babies are not conscious. Much of the debate will have to do with what we mean when we talk of consciousness in general (and whether consciousness should and can even be used as a measure of human life and worth).

Just a quick dictionary.com search (which may not be the most relevant definition for a philosophical topic) reveals:

Conscious

1. aware of one's own existence, sensations, thoughts, surroundings, etc.
2. fully aware of or sensitive to something (often fol. by of): conscious of one's own faults; He wasn't conscious of the gossip about his past.
3. having the mental faculties fully active: He was conscious during the operation.
4. known to oneself; felt: conscious guilt.
5. aware of what one is doing: a conscious liar.
6. aware of oneself; self-conscious.
7. deliberate; intentional: a conscious insult; a conscious effort.
8. acutely aware of or concerned about: money-conscious; a diet-conscious society.
9. Obsolete. inwardly sensible of wrongdoing.

I certainly do not have any memory of being conscious as a baby. My first memories kick in at around age 3. Having said that, it is quite possible that memories don't kick in until this age, but consciousness was prevalent from birth - one may not entail the existence of the other.

Back to the original point though, the pro-choice or embryonic stem cell supporter will have to propose a view of consciousness that neither affirms consciousness in all things while also not affirming that consciousness comes after birth. Not only do they need to find some rational reason for this middle ground, but they need to show that consciousness is intimately tied to the vale of human life and then demonstrate when this consciousness kicks in during human development in the womb. I would love to see someone undertake such an explanation here.

Interesting stuff, though this way crack-heads lie.

Not quite sure what you mean by this!

Do you mean that those who affirm this view of consciousness are often crack-heads? (As though to say that these crack heads lie in the field of this view of consciousness).

Or do you mean to say that crack-heads (drug addicts) lie or deceive when they say that they were not conscious (since under this view almost all things pertain to some degree of consciousness)?

 

[Kwayera]

Terminology can get messy here.

I was viewing damaged/destroyed as amounting to much the same thing. In the former case (damaged) parts of the original ARAS no longer exist and some remain, while in the latter case (destroyed) none of it exists. However, I was asuming that the functional architecture of the ARAS depends on the specific arrangement of its parts such that removing key elements renders it non-functional. Thus it may remain the ARAS anatomically while no longer being the functional-consciousness-sustaining ARAS.

Then, to me, it's destroyed and if it is irreparably so, that person is no longer a "person" in any sense of a conscious, sentient being.

Consider the example of a logic circuit : http://sandbox.mc.edu/~bennet/cs110/boolalg/gate2.gif

The middle-left element with 'B' and 'C' running into it is an 'AND' gate which only sends a signal when both B AND C are on. The bottom-left element is a 'NOT' gate which only fires when D is NOT firing. The gate on the right is an 'OR' gate and so fires if any of the three pathways on the left send a signal.

Thus the gate represents the logical function A OR (B AND C) OR (NOT D)

If you destroy the bottom-left triangular element it will simply become a circuit representing 'A OR (B AND C)'

By eliminating a circuit element you therefore destroy the underlying logical structure. It is more or less in this sense that I mean that you could destroy the ARAS by damaging a small portion of it, because the overall function (which, hypothetically, I am assuming superimposes on logical structure) may well depend on individual parts.

And here I betray my ignorance; I have no idea what any of that means

 

[KFunk]

Then, to me, it's destroyed and if it is irreparably so, that person is no longer a "person" in any sense of a conscious, sentient being.

But that was the linchpin of my hypothetical: that it is possible for the ARAS to be (functionally) destroyed, but not irreparably so. Thus like the embryo an individual can lack the neural architecture required for consciousness but may have a genetically encoded capacity for cells to create this architecture (or, for example, through something like stem cell technology).

And here I betray my ignorance; I have no idea what any of that means

It doesn't really matter, I'm sure you caught the point without needing the example. The idea with logic circuits is that you can take statements in propositional logic and translate them into circuitry. The circuit above was equivalent to:

A or (B and C) or (not D)

(e.g. Either I am inside, or I am outside and I am holding an umbrella, or it is not raining)

Each proposition (e.g. A = 'I am inside', B = 'I am outside'...) has a truth value of either 1 or 0 - true or false. The truth value of the whole sentence (0 or 1) is a function of the truth values of the individual propositions A, B, C, D. The idea behind logic circuits is that you can design an isomorphic circuit with multiple inputs representing propositions (on = 1 = true, off = 0 = false) and a single output representing the truth value (0 or 1) of the sentence which functions in the same way as the corresponding logic sentence.

Why I find it interesting is that it is a clear example of how you can express conceptual, logical structures in real physical systems (think networks of neurons). The idea was to show how the destruction of a single element in a complex system (think neural networks) can disrupt the (truth?) function of that system. However, the hidden premise which could be attacked is that 'consciousness supervenes on logical structure'.

 

[KFunk]

Interestingly enough, I find that the person in support of pro-abortion and embryonic stem cell research is also going to have to refute the complete opposite of this and find some middle ground between them. I think one could defend a position in which new born babies are not conscious. Much of the debate will have to do with what we mean when we talk of consciousness in general (and whether consciousness should and can even be used as a measure of human life and worth).

Just a quick dictionary.com search (which may not be the most relevant definition for a philosophical topic) reveals:

Conscious

...

I certainly do not have any memory of being conscious as a baby. My first memories kick in at around age 3. Having said that, it is quite possible that memories don't kick in until this age, but consciousness was prevalent from birth - one may not entail the existence of the other.

Back to the original point though, the pro-choice or embryonic stem cell supporter will have to propose a view of consciousness that neither affirms consciousness in all things while also not affirming that consciousness comes after birth. Not only do they need to find some rational reason for this middle ground, but they need to show that consciousness is intimately tied to the vale of human life and then demonstrate when this consciousness kicks in during human development in the womb. I would love to see someone undertake such an explanation here.

Yeah, I agree with the way you characterise the situation. Even if consciousness is present in all things it may still be possible to argue that only consciousness of a certain kind warrants models moral consideration - for example, note the difference between a hazy sensation of light, pain, shame, and the experience of a beloved object or person.

On memory: there are experiments claiming to show that a baby can have memories of experiences in the womb. For example, if you play them a certain poem or piece of music regularly they later exhibit preference for that same poem/tune over similar poems/music. Another question arises here - is conscious experience necessary for memory? (possibly related to the implicit/explicity memory distinction) Consider this in relation to the ability some computers have to store and later recognise things like a human voice or a finger print.

Not quite sure what you mean by this!

Haha, don't think to hard about it.

 

[BradCube]

Yeah, I agree with the way you characterise the situation. Even if consciousness is present in all things it may still be possible to argue that only consciousness of a certain kind warrants models moral consideration - for example, note the difference between a hazy sensation of light, pain, shame, and the experience of a beloved object or person.

Even if we can differentiate between different forms of consciousness, I think the pro-choice supporter assumes the burden of proof in showing why their view of what counts as consciousness is valid while the others are not. Plus, they still have to demonstrate why consciousness should be used as a measure of human worth in the first place! As you have mentioned, we arrive at all sorts of problems when we note loss of consciousness for adults (sleeping, being "knocked out" etc). Are we too conclude that these people are no longer human persons? Of course not! The supporter may retort by claiming that they have potentiality for consciousness in the future, but then, why think that the potential consciousness of a sleeping person is any different to the potential consciousness of an unborn baby? Proposing an exception by claiming previous consciousness seems completely ad hoc and without relevance.

On memory: there are experiments claiming to show that a baby can have memories of experiences in the womb. For example, if you play them a certain poem or piece of music regularly they later exhibit preference for that same poem/tune over similar poems/music. Another question arises here - is conscious experience necessary for memory? (possibly related to the implicit/explicity memory distinction) Consider this in relation to the ability some computers have to store and later recognise things like a human voice or a finger print.

Interesting, although I think we are talking about two different sorts or uses of memory in relation to consciousness. What you're referring to seems to relate to Phenomenal consciousness, while introspective memory analysis (to which I was originally pointing to) seems to be associated with access consciousness. Not sure what the implications of this upon our current discussion are though...

 

[hermand]

do you believe in any god/deity?

i wanted to know the numbers of who believes in god and who doesn't on BoS. this isn't supposed to be a discussion as to why, or to tell everyone what you think, just simply, do you believe in god? so, a yes/no question. there's no unsure/maybe option because, apparently, there's no "sitting on the fence about god", so i want a yes or a no answer.

so, at this point in your life, with the knowledge you have now, [no projected thoughts, no 'if god reveals himself i'll believe in him', etc], do you believe in god?

mods, this is different to the does god exist thread, so please don't merge!! also, if there is another thread about this, feel free to delete it or whatever, but i searched and it came up with nothing...