Well, this diversion into the question of whether communication = consciousness is fun and all, but *someone*, possibly on purpose (squints at Krylex) seems to be forgetting that the central question is whether or not souls exist and we have them, rather than whether animals would also have them if we do. For that, our official pseudo-soulist Krylex (and any real ones who happen across this thread) has to ANSWER the following questions (no more clever escapes into tangential topics, me boyo!)
Now, Kry has defined souls as non-matter entities which are the seat of our consciousness and free will and which remain after we die, so:
1. What do you think the brain *does*, if anything? How do you explain the obvious cognitive changes in people with brain damage?
2. You say your soul is the reason you have free will. What's to say your soul doesn't behave in a predictably reductionist manner, much like our physical brains seem to?
3. What makes you think souls exist?
The "immortal personality pattern" part cannot really be discussed one way or another, since it takes place beyond the observable physical realm, and presumably has no effect upon it, unlike the "consciousness-causing" definition.
Now for my own tangential excursions :)
Kitsune1527 wrote:
Ignore this post, anyone but WI.
I usually read philosophical sf. (Yes yes, I hate the abbr. too, but it's online and I can afford it.) As in, Orson Scott Card's Ender Quartet (and its more recent sequels), Isaac Asimov's Foundation series (all . . . whatwasit? 17, IIRC), Greg Bear, Stephen Baxter, and Simon Green, who really isn't sf, more fantasy in space, but I like him because I've always liked psychic stuff. I like hard sf, but I prefer to read those stories in anthologies, where I can get multiple stories in one sitting, and then I can throw out wild combinations of the theories within to amuse myself.
I consider myself enough of a science fiction fan to realize the major flaws in the genre, and I try to pick books that I know will, if not get rid of them, at least successfully neutralize them that my brain won't be constantly pointing out where the laws of physics take a backseat. Another thing I like figuring out is what other ideas the writers are hiding behind their main concepts.
I realize that's more of what I get out of sf than what I actually get that is sf, but I do tend to ramble.
Hmm.... I actually liked
Ender’s Shadow better than the first book. Well anyway, here’s my top five, authors and novels, in no particular order: (I’m doing this in public in case anyone's after reading ideas)
Vernor Vinge-
A Fire Upon the Deep- The aforementioned best space opera ever.
Greg Bear-
Blood Music,
Slant- One of the most unusual takes on the “ascension of humanity” theme ever, and the second-best cyberpunk novel. He’s also the best creator of 'speculative biology' in the field (
Legacy, in particular is full of it)
Neil Stephenson-
Snow Crash- Best cyberpunk novel, period (and nuts to The Baron, if he’s reading this :P )
Cryptononmicon is actually his best novel, but it’s a bit more of a near-future thriller.
Greg Egan-
Diaspora- Best... um, speculative quantum physics novel. Greg Bear’s
Moving Mars is another good example. The book involves five-dimensional statues, how could I *not* like it?
John Barnes-
Mother of Storms- Best weather-related sci-fi. It blows Bruce Sterling's
Heavy Weather out of the water, in my opinion. It also has a nice Singularity-type excursion, something I have a weakness for. See also his books set during the Meme Wars, the refreshingly dark
Kaleidoscope Century and the more thoughtful
Candle.
Honorable Mention- Douglas Adams, first four books of the Hitchhiker’s Trilogy (he’s not exactly “hard” sci-fi, as he just plants his tongue in his cheek whenever he gets out of his depth, but I’ve still got a soft spot a mile wide for those books.)
2nd Honorable Mention- This one you’ll just have to take my word for, since I can no longer find it anywhere. It was an online novel by the same guy who created
Thee Church ov MOO (that’s a partial mirror, the original site seems to be gone). If Douglas Adams had been an occult Discordian magickian who took some acid shortly after reading Gödel, Escher, Bach and a Phillip K. Dick novel, it’s the type of thing he might have written. It was called
Don Coyote, and though it was uneven and amateurish in places, it was brilliant nonetheless. If anyone knows of a place it’s still online (or how to track down Floyd Gecko, who seems to have disappeared from the face of the net), drop me a line.
There are plenty of others I like who just didn’t make it into the top five, like Gregory Benford (who has interesting ideas, but a condescending tone that annoys me to no end), Phillip K. Dick (King of the Mindfuck), Alfred Bester (the guy was
writing goddamned dsytopian cyberpunk in the *fifties*), Ian M. Banks, early Asimov, Heinlein (
Job was great fun), some of Poul Anderson’s work, Gibson, Sterling, Clarke, etc etc. If you really like sci-fi fantasy, I’d recommend John Varley’s Gaia trilogy (
Titan,
Wizard,
Demon). He has an impish attitude towards sex that I always found amusing. (His
Steel Beach is also pretty good, although unlike everyone else I didn’t really find the society in it very dystopian)
Kitsune1527 wrote:
On another note, this post certainly FEELS like it came out of nothingness--like I actually freely thought it out and wrote it without having to. IOW, it certainly appears to me that I freely wrote these words. If this was out of my control, then why does it feel like I'm missing something, like I forgot to mention something?
While feelings are the only things that matter from a perceptual standpoint, they don’t necessarily have anything to do with the actual nature of objective reality (if we are willing to accept tacitly that there is such a thing, which seems not unreasonable). To use a trivial example, I might feel like I’m flying during a dream, but that doesn’t mean my body is actually going anywhere. Similarly, the fact that your writing seems to “come out of nowhere” could be seen as a demonstration of the fact that you are simply unaware of the inner processes of your own brain as they are happening (and are consequently not in control of them). It would, in fact, be impossible for you or any sentient being we can currently conceive of to be *completely* aware of all the processes which underly their own thoughts, since that would result in a paradoxical Godelian loop. (
Here’s a previous, somewhat related post. Interesting how all the philosophical discussions on this board seem to end up relating to each other...)
IcyMonkey wrote:
http://www.btinternet.com/~neuronaut/ This is fairly interesting.
I think I'd have a hard time respecting him, due to this sentence:
John McCrone wrote:
To understand consciousness demands getting deep into holism, hierarchy theory, biosemiosis, general systems theory, heterarchical causality and other obscure stuff that is guaranteed to blow the gaskets of any reductionist who dares to venture within.
Anyone who would say that has no clue as to what rational reductionism actually constitutes. Or was his point simply that our current brains are unable to properly comprehend a full low-level model of themselves, in which case I can forgive him? (Although it's a pretty damned obvious statement to make). And while I'm not completely dismissive of Psi, as I don't believe there's been enough formal experimentation on it, authors who bring it up around such subjects tend to make me slightly nervous as to their credibility…
IcyMonkey wrote:
As for free will - I think I've finally come to accept the nonexistence of free will, and in fact I now welcome it. I've been studying Taoism lately, and the concept of Wu-wei (literally, doing-not-doing). The idea of wu-wei is that you should not think in terms of you doing things; rather, actions arise naturally. It's a somewhat complicated concept [snip]
Nah, it's pretty simply in and of itself, since it's merely a state of being. The intellectual discourse meant to lead you to that point can be obtuse, but that part doesn't really matter.
-The Wandering Idiot
The only solipsist mystic to go off on anyone who underestimates materialist reductionism…
EDIT: How could I have left out Banks? *smacks self* If I didn't already have Vinge for my space opera category, he might be in the top five.