are any of our thoughts conscious themselves?

[Prawn Connery]

Modern humans have been around for about a quarter million years. Reptiles are considered one of the less evolved animals on the planet. Crocodiles have not evolved for over 200 million years.

Now consider the amount of planning, execution and "instinct suppression" crocodiles are capable of. A crocodile will observe behaviour looking for patterns, and then wait for days – sometimes weeks – waiting for that behaviour to repeat itself so that it can take advantage of it to launch an attack. For example, crocodiles will observe drinking mammals or nesting birds and then wait underwater near the water's edge until the mammal or bird is in range before launching itself out of the water to seize its prey. This takes an incredible amount of planning and patience and is not at all "instinctual".

Once the crocodile has its prey, it has the sense to drown it – again, you could argue this is not instinctual. And once its prey is dead, crocodiles will find a ledge in the bank underwater and store the remains until they are ready to eat it – again, this is planning and foresight. And it is comes from an animal with one of the simplest brain structures we have observed.

To say that animals only act on instinct, or cannot suppress those instincts, is simply not true. Humans are really not that much removed from other animals. There are plenty of examples of humans being outsmarted by animals. We are not that special.

[ben ttech]

humans are greedy with the word consciousness

bees recognizes faces with so little computational power that we couldnt write the software it would take to do the same on what they have to work with


super cool yall are interested in this but

i was wanting to talk about the idea that subroutines of greater systems could possess consciousness fundamentally equivalent to what they higher systems assuming their just data point feels and they they own alone

[Solid Gold Butt Plug]

What does instinctual even mean when you’re a determinist..?

[Prawn Connery]

What does instinctual even mean when you’re a determinist..?

It's a good question, because you could argue that if we have no control over what we do, then everything is instinctual. But you could also argue that everything is wilful. The problem arises when you associate actions with free will – which assumes we do things for reasons that cannot be explained. However, at some level, everything can be explained. So if that's the case, then we were always going to do what we do – whether you call it instinct or otherwise.

Just because we don't know why we do something doesn't mean there's no reason for it.

If anything, there really is no separation between instinct and wilful action – which is even more evidence of humans being no different to animals.

If the question is "Why do I make the distinction between instinct and rationalisation?" then the answer is "It's simply juxtaposition to draw an argument". Because if instinct can be rationalised at some level, then it's no longer instinct.

[dill786]

Blaise Pascal the French mathematician and philosopher said if he had a divine calculator he could determine anything, so everything is determined by a higher force...

[ben ttech]

everythings determined,
but WE are given a free enough hand in it that it would seem arguable...

[roller24]

If all crocodiles hunt this way, then it is instinct.
if one of those crocodiles contrive a more efficient method, this would be intelligence.
I suspect your insistence upon this absurd assumption is to bolster your atheism.

[dill786]

everythings determined,
but WE are given a free enough hand in it that it would seem arguable...

Muslims believe that Human will is absolutely free from any kind of Compulsion but it is not free from the Laws of Causation.

[ripper5]

Atheism isn't in need of bolstering, but religious beliefs often are.

The Argument from Reason
by Richard Carrier

The Argument from Reason comes in many forms but the basic idea is this: natural selection, or indeed even physics, cannot explain how humans reason as they do; whereas a God who installed that as a supernatural power in us would explain it entirely; therefore, the fact that humans reason as they do proves God exists (and arranged our minds to exist as they do). Neither premise of this argument is true. And I do not merely mean to say that the apologist has failed to prove either premise is true (which alone would be enough to render the argument unsound, as premises not known to be true can only produce conclusions not known to be true). I am saying both premises are provably false. By which I only mean, of course, that both premises are demonstrably too improbable to credit, not that they are logically impossible; but that a claim about reality is too improbable to credit is what we all actually mean by saying a claim “is false.” So, false it is.

The Argument from Reason attempts to go from the claim that rational thought, or some aspect of it, cannot be produced by purely physical machines (whether transistors or neurons), to the conclusion that it must therefore come from God. Which inference isn’t even valid—you actually can’t get to God from that premise even were it true. But the premise is also bollocks. We not only can explain how all observed aspects of rational thought are produced by physical machines, we have explained it, and demonstrated those explanations probable with vast quantities of empirical and scientific evidence.

https://www.richardcarrier.info/archive ... fdO_rsLmlg

Neural foundations of logical and mathematical cognition
O. Houdé, N. Tzourio-mazoyer
Published 1 June 2003
Psychology
Nature Reviews Neuroscience

Brain-imaging techniques have made it possible to explore the neural foundations of logical and mathematical cognition. These techniques are revealing more than simply where these high-order processes take place in the human cortex. Imaging is beginning to answer some of the oldest questions about what logic and mathematics are, and how they emerge and evolve through visuospatial cognition, language, executive functions and emotion.

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/N ... 203d4ab8aa

[Prawn Connery]

Blaise Pascal the French mathematician and philosopher said if he had a divine calculator he could determine anything, so everything is determined by a higher force...

I agree with the concept, though we may disagree on the definition of "higher force". The term "force" implies some sort of divine intervention that can be applied at any point, whereas determinism just "is". We are all a part of it.