"" I would just like to point out that you came to thread about creatures being programmed, argued that they are programmed, and then called the premise of the thread misguided. Where did we go wrong? Is it because we didn't sprinkle spirituality and mysticism on it? ""

Yes, all things are "programmed", but mechanical programming does not answer all of the questions,
in fact, it's become almost boring and clinical for the most part.

The 2 "extremes" are either complete denial of any concept that is not "mechanical" and
purported to be "the only viable answer" because, "I'm a Scientist", and therefore,
any other conclusion can not possibly exist,
or,
the people who are quite often delusional, and have "beliefs",
that are usually born out of fear of the unknown.

In the middle, there are people who find very useful utility in employing concepts or rules which
are normally excluded in a derogatory and "off-hand" manner by supposed "Scientists",
( or various unseen dark influences ),
who get paid to find "Profitable-Solutions" .
Profitable-Solutions are not inherently "bad",
but they are most emphatically not geared towards
finding answers to any phenomenon that is unprofitable to "ME" or "my interests".
It must be noted that the term "profitable", as used here, is not limited to just "more Currency",
it also includes the concept of influence, and/or, POWER.

The people "in the middle" usually are smart enough to realize that other people,
who may be "stuck-in-their-ways", or severely brainwashed/gas-lighted, or living in fear,
will be impossible to reach with any concept that does not conform to their "beliefs",
so they simply remain quiet, until someone expresses a particular interest in
"something that You cannot see" ( like Electricity !!! )
but never-the-less, a phenomenon that You most certainly can experience,
and demonstrate to your own satisfaction.

If You have an interest in "something-in-the middle",
start asking questions,
and don't be concerned about what other people may think of You.
You will sometimes receive some seemingly bizarre responses,
this is because everyone has their own unique history,
and, only accept what seems to be of value or interest to You.
Reject authoritative demands, as they are quite often completely misguided, or even malicious,
while keeping in mind that You can learn something, from anyone, even your Dog.
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But the example of electricity is a terrible analogy. The effects of electricity on the objects around the original researchers were detectable, measurable, and had no other explanations. This is certainly not true for suggestions there are gaps in neuroscience that permit "something else" to be added.

There is a fundamental problem with approaches that wish to add in, literally, supernatural aspects to human consciousness. That is, there is no way to measure this new component and no proposed mechanism for how something that cannot be measured could be interacting with our measurable, physical world.

It is also basically incorrect to suggest there is insufficient complexity to explain consciousness based on the physical brain. The best theory I know of that doesn't try to abandon physcialism is panpsychism. Panpsychism attempts to suggest a mechanism for the appearance of consciousness based purely of physical matter and so doesn't have the dualism problem that is absolutely a show-stopper for the mind-spirit genre.

A real problem, in my opinion, for people trying to integrate all of the detectable phenomena around human consciousness are qualia. Qualia—what is like to see a color, or smell something—is problematic because each of us detect these things but there is nothing at the brain-structure level that can explain them since they are purely private and can't be otherwise detected (at this time).

This leads some researchers to conclude that qualia don't matter, that they are not a thing, or even they don't exist. But you and I both know what have personal experiences. This is a hard problem at this point for anyone not willing to simply toss out th significance of human experience.

In any case, the human brain is incredibly complex, and the way it encodes experience and uses it to stimulate behavior is only starting to be understood—but it is a lot further along than some would credit. There is new (last 10 years) research that is mostly only known to active researchers (or people who choose to follow them instead of "skeptics") thanks to new techniques like functional brain imaging which gives us more insight and new directions to pursue in areas around consciousness.

The "skeptics" generally quote old research, and poorly integrated theories that can be actually contradictory if taken whole. Breaking up a complex area of research into suggestive, popularized chunks creates a rhetorically convincing "theory" for people prone to wanting the conclusions of it to be true. But the problem is, it's not defensible when compared to the corpus of research and more recent developments by active researchers.

I think there has been a serious flaw in the mystical approach to these things which started long and persists to this day. The idea of "as above, so below" is so hard-coded into mystical systems the obvious and critical need to question the accuracy, and necessity, of that idea is completely masked for the mystically inclined.

My previous interest in mystical traditions was piqued and sustained by the consonance of some of the ideas and conclusions I read in the texts with my own, independent observations. I was also struck by the utility (yes, actually application kind of thing) of some of it. I used it to great effect (and still do, but with a new perspective) in engineering(!), really.

But the top down nature that was asserted for it was always a stumbling block, it prevented me from being able to integrate what I knew of physics and other scientific disciplines, and believed based results not faith. One day, I had an epiphany which changed everything and I went from a being a non-materialist idealist in my philosophy to being a strict physicalist idealist. These are technical descriptions.

I previously disputed materialism not only because of my mystical bent but because it seemed terribly "unscientific" in precisely the way some approached to spiritualism is. Materialism as epitomized by Kant's "thing-in-itself" where he has to postulate a completely undetectable (save by it's effects) thing-in-itself because he finds the consistent agreement of people about what "exists" to offer no other explanation:

And we indeed, rightly considering objects of sense as mere appearances, confess thereby that they are based upon a thing in itself, though we know not this thing as it is in itself, but only know its appearances, viz., the way in which our senses are affected by this unknown something.

— Prolegomena, § 32

The obvious problem with this is that the thing-in-itself can never, ever be shown to exist except to satisfy this consistency concerning which things we all bark our shins on. This is so compelling in, in fact, that despite clear arguments against this necessity by presenting equally provable and plausible alternatives we as people raised in a western society have little success in even understanding these alternative proposals.

Famously, Doc Johnson's biographer and sycophant Boswell related a story that happened after the two had been to a lecture by Bishop Berkley, a proponent of idealism that was directly opposed to the Kantian approach:

After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it—"I refute it thus."

—Life of Johnson by Boswell

There are two problems with this story. First, Berkley never attempted to "disprove the existence of matter" rather he argued against the necessity for "the material" which is Kant's version of "matter". It is very important not to conflate or confuse the two. Unlike the assumption made by Johnson, that Berkley's Idealism required the non-existence of physical objects and so showing that a rock is "there" is a refutation, Berkley himself responded to this objection by explicitly saying that just because he rejects Kant's version of reality doesn't mean he believes he can pass through a physical object.

His version allowed for, and stipulated, all observable phenomena. Something physical was still physical and in Berkley's world Johnson's foot would rebound just as robustly as in Kant's.

So, for me, physicalism (and the differences from the philosophical materialism can be subtle but they create a huge gap in understanding the world nonetheless) slapped in the philosophical face and turned everything upside down. I realized that not only was there no reason to postulate a thing-in-itself out of the hubris to think it was the only solution to a problem, my "belief" in the "above" of mysticism suffered a similar fate.

In fact, without changing any of my moral, "religious", or philosophical conclusions (that is, those I felt I could accept as without logical or scientific trouble) I could rely entirely on the physical world for answers to everything. I went from "as above" to "from below". I realized that the simplest physical interactions are the foundation for later upon layer of increasing complexity and that when the scale gets to the very highest levels of abstraction it is possible for "entities" that exist in the configuration of society, as if they have an independent existence are all around us.

Briefly, take the example of an ant colony. There is a behavior we can attribute to the colony, as if it is "making decisions" or "doing things" but if we look only at ants there is nothing to suggest that. We have to choose the right level to see the structures these complex collections support.

In human terms, we have corporations. They are just made of people yet they often outlive anyone who started them, and they "behave" in ways beneficial to the corporation and out of the control of any particular human, with the level of influence on the behavior varying from absolutely none to very little (even at the highest levels of management). The corporation has an independent "will to live", it "wants" to grow, it "defends itself". It acts like a "meta-human" nearly as independently as an ant colony is independent of the ants.

The same can be worked out for non-living systems that comprise many interlocking parts. They are not just the sun of those parts, and they can exhibit homeostasis in cases where the parts might act differently.

So, bottom line, hand-waving to take advantage of "the gaps", and to hide the same in the informal, unprovable (literally), and unjustifiable (logically) theories that depend on the literal supernatural is not arguing, it's mere rhetoric. Occam's Razor is a heuristic not a law, but it is a very useful one. Before resorting to the mysteries and "ancient wisdom" to fill in the gaps, it's necessary to show there are gaps. And even after that, the "alternative view" has to offer some explanatory power that is testable and repeatable.

It is ironic that there is no reason at all to abandon fundamental philosophical or religious beliefs to comport with the measurable world—only the old, and literally ignorant explanations that don't explain and aren't necessary for the really important bits of a philosophy or religion. People can still be the center of everything important because, after all, "importance" is a purely human creation. Morality can still be demanded of people, the only difference being that it can no longer be an arbitrary set of rules that condemns some and elevates others for things outside their control.

We don't need manufactured mystery to find the world wonderful and fascinating, and to act toward people in ways that reflect our compassion and sense of justice—two things of purely human origin, so far as we can ever know, and it doesn't diminish the essential nature if it is so.

 

Quite an elegant dissertation .......

I've simplified things a great deal
over the last ~45-years or so of holding many concepts as greater, or lesser "probabilities".
This method has served me very well.
The simple method that I use is,
does the thing, or concept, have a demonstrable effect in making the World overall, a better place.
Because, if my actions do not, in some small way, improve the quality of life for EVERYTHING,
( or sometimes in some small area ),
then my actions, ultimately, will reduce the quality of life on this Earth in some way.

Being able to "prove" this to anyone is completely irrelevant to me.
I don't worry about being absolutely "correct",
because it's completely impossible for anyone to be absolutely "perfect".

The better-off that all forms of Life become,
( in their own individual estimation ),
the more I personally benefit.
It's a "Win-Win" situation for me to be of service to others.

You must always ask yourself,
what if everybody on this Planet was exactly like me ?

You can't "force" anyone to be "better", or "good",
all You can do is to always set the best example that You can muster.

A stimulus/response mechanism, such as a "Brain",
can not compute such esoteric concepts,
but a "Mind" can.
A "Mind" is not a physical object like a "Brain",
but is an organized "Energy", or "Force", ( for lack of better terms ),
which mankind has very little concept of.

Multiple "Brains" can interact with a single "Mind", and vice versa.

A "Mind" is a tool created by a Spiritual-Being in order to create a unique identity for himself,
and to create games or challenges to overcome.

A serious "problem", is simply a game that You don't want to play anymore.

A Spiritual-Being can look into, and experience, other Minds,
and even "steal" part, or all, of another Spiritual-Being's Mind,
and therefore, can "know" what the other Mind is "thinking".
This is normally "against-the-rules", and is only "acceptable" under certain special circumstances.
If You are playing a game, and You know exactly what the other guy is thinking,
then there is no longer a game.
Games are a highly desirable thing, so,
in order to have any sort of an actual game, pretended "Amnesia" is required.
Everyone desiring to enter into this game, on this planet, must agree to this "Amnesia" and
start on an even playing-field.
The Games can get extremely complex,
You are probably playing hundreds or thousands of these widely varying Games right now.

Death is simply being temporarily removed from the playing field,
and nobody wants to be thrown out of the Game !!!,
that is, until they get the idea that they are just "loosing too much" and/or "can't win anything",
that's when they supposedly "Die" or commit suicide.

As wild as the above scenario appears to be,
it answers a lot of very sticky questions perfectly, and "in-Spades",
and therefore, starts to become quite plausible.
Please notice that I did not say that any of this is "true" or "absolute".
The exact details of how all this may, or may not, work, are, of course, debatable,
at least while you're currently "in the game".

In addition to this, there are vast quantities of "rules" that go along with this scenario,
which causes a great deal of upset for everyone involved in a "rule-breaking-incident".
The "Rules" are usually contained in various Religious-Texts, or
other various significant "Codes of Conduct", such as "Moral-Codes",
( which are ALL quite often completely bastardized, or applied out-of-context, or both ).

I hope that this information is helpful to anyone seeking this type of information and
is tired of the sometimes arrogant, "Ivory-Tower" intellectuals.
Works really well for me.
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