Is the mind all chemical and electricity? - Page 12

On July 01 2013 10:17 teddyoojo wrote:
everything is physics (and physics is math)

On July 01 2013 19:48 NukeD wrote:


I want to ask you; do you think insect, animals, babies have a consciousness?

"Soul" is a risky word for a hard core forum like TL. Its an invitation to get destroyed is it not?

Also Im not dismissing your claim that "you are your brain". I could very well be true. Im a bit experienced with all that trippy stuff like astral projection and ive come to a conclusion that you are not your brain. Brain is just an organ like every else. It does what its made for doing, thinking, learning, etc. "You" on the other hand are this tiny dot that cant really be explained in any way called consciousness. Everything makes sense for me when I think in those terms.

On July 01 2013 19:49 Tobberoth wrote:

By my definition of soul, anything which is self-concious has it, even including a theoretical synthetic lifeform. We obviously can't know to what degree insects are concious though. If something is alive and can ponder it's unique individualism, it has a "soul", something which differentiates it from any other concious individual.

On July 01 2013 20:01 DertoQq wrote:


Isn't this simply intelligence ? Any animals having a brain powerful enough will be self-conscious. It is simply a step between "I want to eat" to "who am I ?", overall the though process isn't that different.

The brain of a new born baby human isn't developed enough to be self-conscious. By your logic, does it mean that by growing up, some immaterial stuff will go "inside" the baby allowing him to get self-conscious ?

On July 01 2013 19:54 DertoQq wrote:


If your brain does the thinking, then what is the use for "You" ? Consciousness is part of the thinking. Thinking about who you are.

(I used the word soul because I was responding to the poster above me and he used it)

On July 01 2013 19:59 marconi wrote:
I think some people here need to experience psychedelics. Otherwise we all gonna turn into "biological computers".

On July 01 2013 20:17 Tobberoth wrote:

No, nothing immaterial goes inside. It develops with the complexity of the brain. Just like you're uncoucious when you're asleep, but concious when you wake up. Nothing immaterial entered your body, but your experience is completely different.

As for whether or not this is simply intelligence... maybe. What is intelligence? It will depend on your definition of intelligence. A dog might be intelligent and understand how to handle a certain situation, but will still not realize a mirror is showing an image of the dog itself (showing a lack of self-conciousness).

On July 01 2013 20:32 DertoQq wrote:


Then there is nothing non-material about you. Everything happens in the brain, the more developed your brain is, the more information you can process (your degree of intelligence), to a point where you can understand more complicated stuff (like a mirror).

There is no black/white self-conscious/not self-conscious. There is a huge numbers of animals in the world and they all have a different degree of consciousness depending on the development of their brains. As humans we simply happen to have the most developed brain that allow us to process information about our own brain, nothing more than that.

On July 01 2013 19:52 ain wrote:


I realise I'm replying to a post from the first page, but this is just wrong.

Physics is a model, nothing more and nothing less. Physics is NOT the reality, it's simply a tool we use to understand reality.
Likewise physics is NOT maths. It's a model using mathematics as a language.

On July 01 2013 20:19 papaz wrote:
As far as we know yes everything is just matter.

However experiencing of the "I" is not.

And here is why. If "you" (conciousness or whatever is the best term for this) is only matter than by any thought experiemt you should be able to be created.

However any such thought experiemt will lead you to the duplicate problem.

If there was an all powerful machine that could assemble a perfect copy of you in a current state it would still be a copy of you. Your "self" would not suddenly see the world from two different perspectives.

So any attempt of "teleporting" whether your matter is teleported or you are recreated is still just copies of you.

So despite "you" only consisting of matter there is no way of re creating you. It would be "someone else". Hence the "I" can not only be explained by matter.

That being said I'm not suggesting anything supernatural or soul or anything alike. I'm simply stating that a materialistic view isn't enough to explain the "I" but there has to be some "interaction", "continuity of the mind" to explain how one feels the "I".

This of course leads to the obvious and sad conclusion that ones your are dead you are really gone, as in even if there was an almighty that assembled your atoms back, the person waking up wouldn't be you

On July 01 2013 20:55 DertoQq wrote:


If you make a copy of yourself, you're just creating a new human with exactly the same brain as you. After this point, he is himself and you are yourself. You can't "copy yourself" simply because "you" don't exist.

Let's take your example but use the cloning device on a pen.
If you make an exact copy of a pen, you would get 2 pens.
Are those 2 pens the same pens ? no, because there is 2 pens now !
Does this mean there is something more than matter to a pen ? no.

But yes, I get your point, I actually tried to explain the same thing to someone a few years back. It's something weird to think about.

On July 01 2013 21:02 sabas123 wrote:

but if your "self" was just made up by a series of responses of if A happens i will do B it wouldn't be a problem right since that would be all be patterned in your brain anyway.

but i geuss just the biggest factor we need to know to anwser anything related to conscioussness is what it is and what it is formed by.