What do you guys think of downwards causation?

what does that mean?

also cute pic

>>9040332
>What do you guys think of the word "downwerdz"
It's illiterate as fuck.

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>>9040333

That an emerging higher level property could affect its constituents.

Basically, whether or not your mind can have an affect on your brain, or if whatever you're experiencing on consciousness (or just the emergent level of the brain) is only a result of the complex web of atoms that interact at the lowest possible level and are never acted upon by what they constitute.

Only in the same way that a spoon that holds warm water causes its constituent atoms to become water, and wouldn't have held it if they didn't form a spoon.

In the end, there is no spoon - it's all just atoms playing by their rules until that happens to look like big things having an effect on little things. Calling a collection of atoms a spoon just helps the mind make sense of the world.

In Conway's Game of Life, very simple rules still allow a Turing Machine to be built, which could simulate a universe, which could contain a mind, which could ask itself OP's question, and the answer would be "Bullshit" in that universe.

Our universe sure looks like its fundamental rules tend towards simplicity.

>>9040354
>become water
*become warmer, dammit.

>>9040354

You don't think comparing a spoonful of water with a conscious brain is a bit much?

>>9040362
How'd you test your theory, if not by having it make predictions about situations so simple even we can understand them?

>>9040332
>>9040345
moar?

>>9040345
That's a really stupid way of saying "conciousness does not transcend physical reality."

>>9040683
It has nothing to do with physical reality, though. If consciousness as an emergent property had causal powers over the atoms that make it up, it would be not undermine physicalism in any way that I can tell.

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>>9040332
>>9040345
>>9040683
>>9040713
Is this another thread of the consciousness bullshit?
Stop giving people hope that their lives are anything beyond suffering and death.

>>9040867
Smoking is bad for your health, especially for someone engaged in rigorous physical activity like a soldier. It could be said that the vasoconstriction caused by smoking in conjunction with that level of exercise might even increase the chance of stroke or stroke-in-miniature (transient cerebral ischemia).

It is no longer recommended to dispense cigarettes or tobacco products to military members or as part of a standard rations package though it was historically done because of lack of medical knowledge of the harmful effects and popular demand from the soldiers themselves. (this demand was interpreted to be at a needs-level equivalent to food, because of lack of understanding of addiction. Nowadays such non-food needs would be answered by a substitute like a nicotine skin patch.)

>>9040879
cigs were given to the troops not because we did not have medical knowledge, but because they're outstanding for stress relief, and getting shot at causes quite a bit of stress

>>9040713
I know you can argue that conciousness has an affect on "atoms" (which is what I mean when I say "physical reality.") Schrodinger's cat pretty much proves that.
But you can't possibly argue that the reverse isn't also true. So I'll ask, where does it start?

>>9041102
>>9040713
To be clear, I'm asking which came first, the chicken (human conciousness) or the egg ("atoms"/physical reality)?

>>9040332
Sit properly at the table, you silly bitch. We can fuck later. I want to eat my steak while it's hot.

>>9040345

Your mind (program running on your brain) affects your body through electrochemical signals, so it's fair to say your mind affects your brain as well.

>>9040332
>>9040345
Provide a potential mechanism of action for your "downward causation" that doesn't sound like Cartesian dualism voodoo bullshit and I'll consider entertaining the notion.
For now, though, it only makes sense to me to think of causation as only moving up - emergent phenomena are affected by their substrate, but cannot affect their substrate in the same way due to the fundamental relation they share.

>>9041112
>Conway's Game of Life

Try reading "Incomplete Nature"

>>9040332
sauce?