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ultima on 30 October 2009
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Slimebeast said:
Final-Fan said:
Slimebeast said:
Final-Fan said:
But why would the soul have free will? How could it? -- wouldn't the impulses from our soul also need a cause deterministically?

Free will compared to the physical world, or free will compared to your physical body. It's the conciousness part that is biggest 'evidence' of a soul to me. At least there's a spark of free will or force that is untied to the neuronal network.

I can't see a comp get what we call a mind or conciousness, even if it's designed as an electrical network and has access to lots of outside stimuli input sources (like hearing, sight, smell etc). I feel it hard to imagine a comp having emotions for example. How does a comp feel pain or joy or anger like living organisms do? I have a hard time imagining that.

Wait, wait. This is simply the "argument from personal incredulity" fallacy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance What does feeling pain have to do with free will anyway?

That's how it is. I can't sit and wait for evidence that won't appear in my lifetime. I have to solve these things right here and now, and try to answer questions like if there exists a soul or not. From the evidence we do have I can't see that biology alone explains conciousness. So if we are to make an argument at all on this topic, it must be an 'argument from ignorance' or no argument at all.

I deduct things from each other. Free will is derived from the theory of the mind being partly independent from matter. Pain is a very interesting emotion. I can't imagine a comp feeling pain. I can imagine a comp reacting to potentially harmful stimuli, but I can't imagine a comp experience the feeling of pain.

If I come to the conclusion that a comp can't get a human mind, I deduct from that conclusion that the human mind must have something that is independent from the electrical activity in the neural network.

It's fine that you don't want to sit around for evidence that may not appear in you lifetime, but why neglect evidence that is present? There is a proof of randomness, and you claim it to be false in favor of, IMHO, a completely ridiculous theory (that has no evidence for it).

And a computer is very different from a human brain. I don't think it's fair to compare them this way. A CPU has an ALU that makes it lightning fast with mathematical and logical calculations. We don't have that. What makes you think that our brain doesn't have a certain component that's responsible for consciousness, that isn't present in CPUs (which would explain why computer don't have feelings)?