You don't have to believe in "mysticism" or "idealism" to know that consciousness exists.
I never said, nor implied, that consciousness doesn't exist. Your comment seems to be based on this mistaken idea. I also want to point out that I used Idealism in the philosophical sense in which it is the opposite of Materialism, not in the sense of being starry-eyed.
Cartesian dualism might produce unhelpful consequences , but you can't handwave it away simply by saying there's no such thing as mind or consciousness.
The problem with dualism is that mind and body need to be able to interact in some manner. In order for that to happen we have to posit a mechanism for that phenomenon. Until such a mechanism is discovered, or in some other way found to be necessary, then Occam's razor says to ignore it. (Note, that doesn't strictly mean that it doesn't exist, just that you don't posit something you don't need.) Additionally, I never said that there is no consciousness. I said that the question of "Does consciousness cause the brain" is not an interesting question.
If consciousness can't be explained by pure materialism, then pure materialism is an incomplete theory.
This is question begging.
As for the rest of your comment: Positing a spirit/consciousness that exists separate from (and prior to) the material body is magical thinking in exactly the same way as talking about gods and souls and we can write that off as imaginary. The experience that we have of consciousness is not separate from nor prior to the material body. In fact, my experience of consciousness began some years after my experience of body; which is to say that in my earliest memories (experiences of consciousness) I know that I already had a body.
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JimFive
I think the word 'observer' is misleading
I agree with that, I think environment might be better. However, I don't think that the double slit experiment can be explained by saying "something got in the way". That the method of observation affects the results seems pretty clear there. But that doesn't mean that the response to the environment is mystical.
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JimFive
and "free speech" shouldnt be a protection against those laws. kind of like using the 1st Amendment to protect the practice of discrimination, as some have been wont to do recently)
The first amendment contains more than the right to free speech. It also contains the right of free association which is what is used to defend discriminatory practices.
It also contains freedom of the press which I think much more closely fits the situation of Google's search results algorithm. Google is allowed to publish what it wants however it wants, within the bounds of libel/slander and related (e.g. fraud) laws. So, while the results of the algorithm may not be "speech", Google's right to publish those results seems like it should be protected.
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JimFive
A very fundamental question that no one has answered yet and few people even ask is this: does the brain produce consciousness/mind/spirit or is it the other way around?
This is not an interesting question. You are essentially asking if the universe is based on physics or mysticism. Idealism is absurd, Dualism leads to unanswerable questions and Materialism seems to be working out pretty well for us.
It is a known experimental fact that in quantum physics a conscious observer changes the outcome of the experiment. Why is this?
The observer doesn't need to be conscious. While quantum physics is weird, it is not mysticism.
There is no way to find out the function of the software in a computer, no matter how minutely the hardware thereof is examined, unless the complete computer is functioning correctly. Software is a product of the mind and is not physical even though it requires physical hardware to execute the software.
You can if you include the HD and it's magnetic contents as part of the computer hardware. There is nothing non-deterministic about the way a computer loads and executes software.
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JimFive
A suborbital passenger spaceship being developed by Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic crashed during a test flight on Friday at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California, officials said. Two pilots were aboard the spaceship, which was undergoing its first powered test flight since January. It was not immediately known if they were able to parachute to safety.
"I am, therefore I am." -- Akira