On the Topic of Consciousness

[Divine Insight]

Maybe we should break this out.....

This topic is an offshoot from another thread which was on another topic altogether.

This thread is "On the Topic of Consciousness"

I wouldn't pass judgements. My biggest question is why you have a brain type that is willing to jump into the unknown with some assurance, while I seem to have a brain type that doesn't. If I don't know, I leave it at not knowing.

I don't think it comes down to just the brain alone. I think there are many other factors involved. Clearly even from a secular point of view it is recognize that the brain "evolves" as we grow as individuals based much on how we experience life, etc.

For example the very concept of the "unknown" may mean something entirely different to me than it does to you. I mean, sure we could get out a dictionary and look up the term, but that really wouldn't help much because what you believe you know and what I believe I know are going to clearly be two different things. Especially considering my last sentence of the above paragraph. Our knowledge and beliefs evolve in our own brains based upon our own experiences, which clearly are not going to be the same experiences.

Consciousness: I don't know of any scientist that makes his or her living studying it who declares they know what it is.

This is true, but there may be quite a few scientists who feel like Daniel Dennett. Even though he is just a philosopher.

[youtube][/youtube]

I don't disagree with much of what Dennett says about how the brain functions. I don't disagree at all. But he doesn't touch on the real issues as far as I'm concerned. Near the very end of the above video he state a kind of Deepity of his own, "It's not that the Emperor has no clothes, but rather the clothes have no Emperor". The idea intended to imply that we are attempting to push too much onto consciousness that doesn't need to be there.

But for me none of this is satisfying.

I don't disagree with the fact that the brain is indeed a functional portal for the experiences that we have in this incarnated life. Therefore everything he observes and states about how the brain functions and how it "creates" much of our experience, is not in question for me.

But none of that even begins to address the issue of exactly what it is that is actually having this experience. In other words, if the clothes have no Emperor, then what is it that is having an experience? The brain itself?

This becomes a problem for me, because insofar as we know, the brain itself is made of nothing more than matter and energy. If neither matter, nor energy are capable of having an experience, they why should a brain that is made of nothing more than matter and energy become an "Emperor" in its own right?

This is not an easy question, and I wouldn't hesitate to put this question to Dennett himself. In fact, I would like to hear his thoughts on this. Maybe he does address this sort of issue in one of his many lectures. If you find a lecture where he addressed this heart of the matter please share and I'll be glad to take a gander at it.

I've watched several of his lectures, and thus far I haven't been convinced of his conclusions.

To say it is supernatural vs natural seems a leap.

This is statement here goes back to what I had mentioned above, concerning how you and I may very well think differently due to our different experiences in life.

You speak of the term "supernatural" as though that's a meaningful term.

I have been a scientist my entire life. Isaac Newton, and certain Greek philosophies like Zeno and others were my childhood heroes. Albert Einstein was my next hero as I grew in my scientific knowledge. And today I hold many scientists in high regard and marvel at what they were able to discover and prove.

Just the same, in all of this, I have come to the profound realization that to date we cannot say what the true nature of reality genuinely is. Therefore does it even make any sense to speak of the supernatural, when we can't even say with certain what is natural?

So I'm not prepared to accept the insinuation that I'm "jumping off to assume something supernatural". All I'm doing is recognizing that we can't say where the boundaries of the natural world truly are.

So I don't feel that I'm actually leaping anywhere. I'm just recognizing that we can't know that things need to be restricted to what we believe to be a finite physical existence.

In fact, if you go back to Dennett's very argument perhaps you can see an irony there. He is proclaiming that we can't know nearly what we think we can know, yet he seems to think that he can make very clear conclusions from this evidence that our brains clearly trick us.

That's almost an oxymoron right there. If what Dennett says is true, that our brains can fool us considerably, then perhaps the entirety of physical reality is itself an illusion that we are being tricked into believing. What we believe to be "brains" may not be physical entities at all.

My position is that we know consciousness is affected by natural events, and we know nature exists... seems a very small slide to presume consciousness is a natural phenomenon. But not knowing, sure, I can't say it's not - but I haven't been offered ONE example of the supernatural. So, I simply can't presume it's supernatural. I can't even think of why I'd consider the supernatural when the supernatural has such a horrible track record.

Well, our difference of views here may indeed amount to the extremely different way we view the "supernatural". For you to say that the supernatural has a bad track record implies that you associate the term with just about any guess that anyone might come up with (and especially specific claims that have indeed been shown to be false).

Whilst those do indeed qualify as "supernatural", they may not qualify as the type of "supernatural" that I consider. In fact, the type of "supernatural" that I consider is actually quite natural. It simply amounts to nature that we haven't yet discovered or understood, so it's only in that sense that it seems to be supernatural to us, when in reality it may be perfectly natural.

Given this, there only seems to be the natural. Just because we don't know how consciouness works doesn't means it's because of the gods, or the supernatural or something else, or even "natural vs. I don't know".

Nature exists.
Consciousness exists.

Given these two facts, why presume we can't explain consciousness eventually?

I already gave my answer to this earlier in this post. I'll repeat it here for clarity.

Copy and pasted from earlier in this very same post:

But none of that even begins to address the issue of exactly what it is that is actually having this experience. In other words, if the clothes have no Emperor, then what is it that is having an experience? The brain itself?

This becomes a problem for me, because insofar as we know, the brain itself is made of nothing more than matter and energy. If neither matter, nor energy are capable of having an experience, they why should a brain that is made of nothing more than matter and energy become an "Emperor" in its own right?

This is not an easy question, and I wouldn't hesitate to put this question to Dennett himself. In fact, I would like to hear his thoughts on this. Maybe he does address this sort of issue in one of his many lectures. If you find a lecture where he addressed this heart of the matter please share and I'll be glad to take a gander at it.

End of copy and paste

Yes, consciousness exists. And something is having an experience.

But what is it that is having an experience?

Energy and matter?

Electromagnetic fields?

Something else? Many people have suggested that the thing that is having an experience is some sort of "emergent property of complexity".

I suppose this is a valid philosophical idea, but it seems pretty strange to me that an abstract idea of an emergent property could have an experience.

So I'm still left with a deeper mystery.

To simply say that "consciousness" is a natural result of nature, still leaves me asking, "Who is the Emperor that is having this experience?"

If the clothes have no Emperor, then what is it that is having the experience of conscious awareness? The clothes?

It just seems strange to me that the clothes (i.e. matter and energy) should be able to have an experience.

So this simply leaves the door to the "supernatural" (i.e. nature that we simply don't yet understand) wide open.

I'm not saying that the secular view is necessarily wrong. I'm simply saying that the purely secular view seems every bit as strange to me as the supernatural view.

In other words, that view doesn't "hit the spot" as being an obvious conclusion to accept either.

I'm not going to automatically accept Dennetts "Deepity" that "The clothes have no Emperor" as being the profound answer to this question. That's just as absurd as any other Deepity, IMHO.

So this is where I'm coming from.

I'm not claiming that the supernatural necessarily has to exist. But I am claiming that, insofar as I can see, it's on precisely equal footing with any other conclusions at this point.

Seeing that they are on the same footing, I don't mind using intuition and gut feelings to consider one over the other. So with that in mind, I confess that I lean toward the mystical view. But clearly I could be wrong.

[Divine Insight]

But, right now, the state of the evidence for quantum effects being needed for consciousness is non existent.

There are people who say that a lot of Penroses idea of quantum mechanics has evidence against it

http://cogsci.uwaterloo.ca/Articles/quantum.pdf

I'll definitely read the article. In fact I may have actually read it before as I am a fan of Penrose, Hameroff, and Tegmark. I also understand much of where all three of these gentlemen are coming from so this helps me to better understand in what areas they disagree with each other.

One major point I would like to make here is that you state the following:

But, right now, the state of the evidence for quantum effects being needed for consciousness is non existent.

I'm not convinced that everyone is defining what consciousness even means in the same way.

How can we say what is "needed" for consciousness if we aren't even sure what it is?

For example, if you define "consciousness" as simply certain apparent patterns of electrical activity in the brain. Then you don't need anything beyond those patterns to claim that consciousness exists, because that's your very definition of what you mean by consciousness.

However, if you define "consciousness" as a subjective experience of this activity, then it become far less clear that we can say objectively when consciousness is happening and when it isn't.

One scary thing in all of this is that is has been proposed that by using these MRI brain scans we can potentially determine whether a patient who is in a coma is "conscious" or not. And this has even been suggested as being a potential scientific reason to know whether or not to "pull the plug" on a patient that is in a coma.

In other words, if there is no sign of "consciousness" as defined by brain patterns of activity we can safely conclude that the person is indeed "Brain Dead".

One problem with this is that we can actually put a brain into that state of being totally unconscious, and then bring it back to consciousness again. So was it ever truly "dead"?

In fact, one doctor does this repeatedly during heart surgery. He basically cools a brain down to a very low temperature to where basically all brain activity stops (certainly any major brain activity that could be recognized as patterns of consciousness). He does this to keep the brain from being damaged due to lack of oxygen during his long surgery on a heart where blood flow has to be stopped for extended periods of time.

Yet after all this time he then brings the brain back up to temperature, and the consciousness returns. So was the brain ever truly "dead"?

Was the "consciousness" ever truly dead?

The pattern that scientists are calling "consciousness" was certainly gone.

This actually brings up a very interesting sci-fi scenario. If consciousness truly is nothing more than specific patterns of physical activity in brains, then potentially everyone can be resurrected from the dead, simply be reestablishing their physical brain patterns.

Of course, I guess I shouldn't say "simply" since this is far beyond our capability. But the bottom line is that given sufficient technology it should be possible. And that opens up a truly strange truth.

This means that science is confirming that a "God" or "sufficient powerful technological being" could, in principle, resurrect a human being, precisely as they were at any point in their life.

For example, you could be "resurrected" precisely as you were when you were a teenager. And that resurrected person would be you right down to being the very same entity that had the experience of being you as a teenager.

In other words, this scientific observation actually shows how a "God" of sufficient capabilities could indeed 'resurrect' any soul that it so desires to resurrect in any state it so desires to resurrect it.

A God of sufficient power could resurrect your teenage body completely with your now mature mind contained within that younger brain.

So science is actually telling us that these things we think of as being potentially miraculous, could actually be pulled off in complete harmony with the laws of physics that we currently are aware of.

And our current understanding of reality and physics is truly infantile.

We even know this to be the case. We aren't anywhere near understanding reality.

Anyway, I'll take a peek at that article and common on it later.

[Divine Insight]

While this conversation has move on since I was last engaged there seems to be a bit of wheel spinning happening.

On the one hand you previously seemed of the opinion that the idea of a separate self was illusory, the separate self being a result of relationship with the universe, and now claiming that we don’t make our own reality.

It is clear that we do…to her lover a pretty girl is an attraction, to an ascetic a distraction and to a wolf a good meal.

I don't see the dichotomy you are suggesting here. I was speaking to the issue of "physics" and creating the physical world. But you are clearly speaking in terms of subjective perceptions, and personal judgments.

I think it should be clear to almost everyone that we do indeed create the latter. Although many people would even argue that we don't even do that. Some people have claimed that if a lover thinks his girl friend is pretty, he is not making that choice at all, but rather that has already been predetermined by the configuration of his brain. He as "NO CHOICE" but to think his lover is pretty.

You say, "It's clear that we do make our own reality". But even with respect to the totally subjective opinions that you point to, a secularist will argue that there is no choice there, it only appears that there is a choice.

You revert to the idea of a quantum mind, some universal consciousness of which we individuals are a manifestation…the Brahman/Atman situation.

On what basis?

The basis is a follows:

IF the world is indeed a product of consciousness or mind, THEN there necessarily must be a SUPER MIND that created the physical universe in which the portals of human consciousness arose.

Hopefully this gives you more insight into the model I'm proposing.

I'm saying that everything that we think of as being physical actually arose from mind.

So it's far more complicated than Stenger allows for.

Stenger is treating it like a big YES or NO. We are either quantum consciousness in its entirety and thus we should have the POWER of GOD, or there is no such thing and we must just be an emergent property of otherwise consciously inert matter.

I don't think it's as simple as Stenger demands. There could be other explanations as well.

I too get warning bells going off when I see a yes/no option…it smells of a false dilemma…I am interested in the other explanations.

And I go for the simplest. The universe is emergent. Evolution, across al levels of existence, over deep time has led to the inevitable emergence of consciousness through a process of coherence and complexification.

You don't know this. All we can say with any confidence is that this is how the physical world appears to unfold. But I would hold that it's not merely a simple process of evolution that it appears to be.

At the base of ‘reality’ have sub-atomic particles which, as they pop in and out of existence, cohere and complexify into atoms and molecules, and so ‘up’ through the layers of existence the bottom up approach.

You seem to be claiming a top down approach. There is an ‘awareness’, some, yourself included perhaps, call ‘god’, from which all or ‘reality’ has manifested.

Until the three sources of knowledge available to me point me in another direction…and they may well do…I will hold with, and can only hold with, my original interpretation. We are biological creatures who have evolved in consciousness to a level of self-reflection. Not only do we know things but we know that we know.

And who is it that knows? Who is it that self-reflects? Who is it that has any experience at all?

How does complexity of any kind explain the emergence of something that can actually have an experience?

What is it that is having this experience? The consciously inert material that has become complex?

The complexity itself? <--- That's getting pretty abstract there already.

If we can imagine a totally abstract complexity having an experience, then what is so difficult in imagining a totally abstract mind that gave rise to everything in the first place? Where have we actually gained any ground by giving an abstract notion of complexity the ability to have an experience?

Why is that abstract notion any more valid that the former notion that the stuff that came into being in the first place has the innate ability to have an experience?

Other than that, all thoughts, ideas, concepts, beliefs etc, including the idea of a separate self, are, and can only be mental constructs.

How can experience be a mental construct?

For me, that's the paramount question.

That we cannot yet explain how these sub-atomic particles emerge into a being that can “See Red� is no reason to assume “Seeing Red� is the result of some ‘universal awareness’ on which all else is dependent.

But what is it that is experiencing seeing red?

A emergent property of complexity?

What sense does it make that an emergent property could experience anything?

[bernee51]

On the one hand you previously seemed of the opinion that the idea of a separate self was illusory, the separate self being a result of relationship with the universe, and now claiming that we don’t make our own reality.

It is clear that we do…to her lover a pretty girl is an attraction, to an ascetic a distraction and to a wolf a good meal.

I don't see the dichotomy you are suggesting here. I was speaking to the issue of "physics" and creating the physical world. But you are clearly speaking in terms of subjective perceptions, and personal judgments.

I think it should be clear to almost everyone that we do indeed create the latter. Although many people would even argue that we don't even do that. Some people have claimed that if a lover thinks his girl friend is pretty, he is not making that choice at all, but rather that has already been predetermined by the configuration of his brain. He as "NO CHOICE" but to think his lover is pretty.

You say, "It's clear that we do make our own reality". But even with respect to the totally subjective opinions that you point to, a secularist will argue that there is no choice there, it only appears that there is a choice.

Seen from the physiosphere the pretty girl is a bunch of cohered and complexified sub-atomic particles. In the biosphere she is a meal. It is not until the noosphere arises that she becomes a pretty girl.

And I agree wholeheartedly…habitual patterning, vasana, guide whether she is a pretty girl or a distraction.

The ‘physical world’ is nothing more or less than a complex arrangement of cohered sub-atomic particles. It takes an ‘awareness’ to make it into anything beyond that.

You revert to the idea of a quantum mind, some universal consciousness of which we individuals are a manifestation…the Brahman/Atman situation.

On what basis?

The basis is a follows:

IF the world is indeed a product of consciousness or mind, THEN there necessarily must be a SUPER MIND that created the physical universe in which the portals of human consciousness arose.

Hopefully this gives you more insight into the model I'm proposing.

I'm saying that everything that we think of as being physical actually arose from mind.

You seem to be offering the same as Adi Shankara who wrote:
Brahma satyaṃ jagat mithy�, jīvo brahmaiva n�parah

Brahman is the only truth, the spatio-temporal world is an illusion, and there is ultimately no difference between Brahman and Atman(individual self).

On what basis can you see a movement from IF to IS?

So it's far more complicated than Stenger allows for.

Stenger is treating it like a big YES or NO. We are either quantum consciousness in its entirety and thus we should have the POWER of GOD, or there is no such thing and we must just be an emergent property of otherwise consciously inert matter.

I don't think it's as simple as Stenger demands. There could be other explanations as well.

I too get warning bells going off when I see a yes/no option…it smells of a false dilemma…I am interested in the other explanations.

And I go for the simplest. The universe is emergent. Evolution, across all levels of existence, over deep time has led to the inevitable emergence of consciousness through a process of coherence and complexification.

You don't know this. All we can say with any confidence is that this is how the physical world appears to unfold. But I would hold that it's not merely a simple process of evolution that it appears to be.

I agree entirely with the bolded part.

On what basis can you claim it is more than a process of evolution?

At the base of ‘reality’ have sub-atomic particles which, as they pop in and out of existence, cohere and complexify into atoms and molecules, and so ‘up’ through the layers of existence the bottom up approach.

You seem to be claiming a top down approach. There is an ‘awareness’, some, yourself included perhaps, call ‘god’, from which all or ‘reality’ has manifested.

Until the three sources of knowledge available to me point me in another direction…and they may well do…I will hold with, and can only hold with, my original interpretation. We are biological creatures who have evolved in consciousness to a level of self-reflection. Not only do we know things but we know that we know.

And who is it that knows? Who is it that self-reflects? Who is it that has any experience at all?

How does complexity of any kind explain the emergence of something that can actually have an experience?

What is it that is having this experience? The consciously inert material that has become complex?

The complexity itself? <--- That's getting pretty abstract there already.

The ‘knowing’ is a construct on awareness. The ‘knowing’ itself is emergent.

If we can imagine a totally abstract complexity having an experience, then what is so difficult in imagining a totally abstract mind that gave rise to everything in the first place? Where have we actually gained any ground by giving an abstract notion of complexity the ability to have an experience?

Why is that abstract notion any more valid that the former notion that the stuff that came into being in the first place has the innate ability to have an experience?

It is not difficult to imagine at all…in fact just the opposite. It provides a potential answer to a difficult, if not unanswerable, question. But it is not necessary to imagine it in order to understand the nature of being.

It also complicates a la Occam.

Other than that, all thoughts, ideas, concepts, beliefs etc, including the idea of a separate self, are, and can only be mental constructs.

How can experience be a mental construct?

For me, that's the paramount question.

Known as, or at least somewhat similiar to, the, “hard question�.

Experience is emergent, in the 'now'. It becomes a construct when it attaches to what is known as 'ego'. In this sense all thought is 'old'.

That we cannot yet explain how these sub-atomic particles emerge into a being that can “See Red� is no reason to assume “Seeing Red� is the result of some ‘universal awareness’ on which all else is dependent.

But what is it that is experiencing seeing red?

A emergent property of complexity?

What sense does it make that an emergent property could experience anything?

Perhaps the experience itself is ‘emergent’.

Red is not so much being experienced as the object experiencing is “redded�.

Humphrey goes into this in Seeing Red

[Divine Insight]

You don't know this. All we can say with any confidence is that this is how the physical world appears to unfold. But I would hold that it's not merely a simple process of evolution that it appears to be.

I agree entirely with the bolded part.

On what basis can you claim it is more than a process of evolution?

I'm not sure how to communicate this in words, but I'll try my best using the following to examples.

I was very fortunate to have a really good physics teacher early on in my education. On day one of class he held up a ball, and asked "What is science?"

Then he explained. Science will tell us how this ball behaves and how it will react in various different situations with respect to interacting with other things. It will even tell us about the fundamental constituents of the ball and what happens if we try to dissect it to the infinitely small.

However what science cannot tell us is why the constituent of this ball have the properties they have, or how they came to be in the first place.

I have really taken this wisdom to heart and realized the truth of this. For me, this does not diminish science in any way, however, it does make me vividly aware of the limitations of science, and rightfully so! Any scientists that are under the belief that science is unbounded or unlimited in it's potential is actually kidding themselves.

So how does this fit in with your question?

Well, you ask me, "On what basis can you claim it is more than a process of evolution?"

Because evolution itself is nothing more than the observation of how the universe unfolds. But it tells us absolutely nothing about what causes the universe to unfold in the first place.

In other words, evolution is a behavioral observation. I don't disagree with that at all. But is far from being an 'explanation' of anything. This idea that evolution explains anything in terms of the deepest questions of reality is itself a totally groundless idea. It does no such thing.

So pointing me to evolution, whether it be the evolution of the universe, the elements within the kitchen of stars, or biological evolution does not answer anything. I'm fully aware of all manner of evolution and I have no problem accepting it and even understanding how it works (GIVEN the initial constituents). But the properties of those initial constituents is far from being explained (or even included in) any models of evolution.

So evolution is NOT an answer. It's merely an observation of how things unfold. Just as understanding how balls move is not an answer for why they exist in the first place.

As a second example of what I'm trying to get at allow me to quote Stephen Hawking

"Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?" - Stephen Hawking

All the explanations of evolution and the mathematical descriptions don't really tell us anything at all about reality other than it appears to behave in a way that is quantifiable. So, yes, it does seem to suggest that we can say that there is some sort of structure beneath all of this observed behavior, but that doesn't tell us much at all about what it was that breathed fire into the universe to make it a place where it could be described in the first place.

~~~

So I guess I'm really saying that the scientific explanation that the universe has evolved is not very impressive to me. So big deal? We can say something about how the universe behaves. Why should I take that to jump to a conclusion that conscious awareness must then emerge from this?

Where is that connection?

On what basis do you make that claim?

It seems like one whale of a jump to a conclusion to me.

For me the universe appears to have evolved from a roll of cosmic dice, and everything that comes up in the universe is just a number rolled by those dice. Therefore even if consciousness does come up as a matter of a roll of the dice, it still had to have been on the dice before they were rolled.

In other words, the potential had to be there before the dice were rolled.

How could you roll a 13 on a pair of dice that only have 1 thru 6 on their sides to begin with?

Yet this seems to be what this "emergent property theory" is suggesting. It's kind of suggesting that things could come up on the cosmic dice that aren't innate to the dice to begin with.

I don't see the justification for that conclusion.

Any "emergent property" must ultimately be innate to the thing from which it is emerging.

So pointing to evolution and talking about emergent properties, whilst an interesting theory, is certainly not conclusive by any stretch of the imagination.

Especially when we are talking about something starting to have an experience whilst claiming that the dice themselves are incapable of having an experience.

I mean if you roll a Ferrari that's understandable because that's merely a configuration of the dice.

But if you claim to have "rolled conscious awareness" that just seems to me to be something far more than just a mere configuration of matter. Now you have a configuration of matter that is having an experience. That's a HUGE difference.

So, these claims that it's just a roll of the evolutionary dice just don't impress me.

Especially when they are being presented like, "Can't you see that this is the obvious answer?"

No, I don't see that as being an obvious answer by any means.

Like I say, rolling a Ferrari is one thing. Rolling conscious awareness that can actually have an experience is something totally different IMHO.

What is it that is having this experience? The consciously inert material that has become complex?

The complexity itself? <--- That's getting pretty abstract there already.

The ‘knowing’ is a construct on awareness. The ‘knowing’ itself is emergent.

That does not answer the question. All you're doing is his presuming that a configuration of matter can actually "know" something and even be aware that it knows it.

It seems to me that there is one whale of a lot of assumptions going on there.

It is not difficult to imagine at all…in fact just the opposite. It provides a potential answer to a difficult, if not unanswerable, question. But it is not necessary to imagine it in order to understand the nature of being.

What potential answer? How is this an answer? It just presumes that a configuration can have an experience. How is that an answer? It's just a presumption.

It also complicates a la Occam.

In some ways I think the mystic dice that already have an ability to be aware and have an experience is less complicated.

The model you are proposing is every bit as mystical, if not more so.

My model simply says that there is something mystical going on from the get go (i.e. the dice themselves are mystical)

Your model actually contains far more mysteries. You begin with supposedly non-mystical dice (i.e. no explanation where anything came from in the first place in order to even evolve). And then you have this non-mystical stuff evolving into configurations that can magically suddenly have an experience through some idea of an "emergent property".

How is your model any less mystical than mine, or even less complex?

If I have mystical dice I'm done before they are even rolled. It doesn't get any simpler than this. The dice themselves are mystical. Period. We're done.

If you have non-mystical dice that came from nowhere and accidentally evolved, then you need to claim that conscious awareness magically arose from this non-mystical stuff and can somehow have an experience.

How is that any less complex?

How can experience be a mental construct?

For me, that's the paramount question.

Known as, or at least somewhat similiar to, the, “hard question�.

Experience is emergent, in the 'now'. It becomes a construct when it attaches to what is known as 'ego'. In this sense all thought is 'old'.

I'm sorry but this makes no sense to me at all. How can experience be emergent? If it is emerging from something then shouldn't the thing that it is emerging from being having the experience? But what thing could that be? There is nothing in this universe but energy. E = MC².

Even matter is just an illusion caused by standing waves of energy. Is energy even physical really? I don't even think we truly understand what energy is other than a potential to do something. Just about every physics equation describes energy as a potential to do something.

Maybe reality isn't physical at all but rather it's just pure potentiality. And the whole of reality is just an "Emergent Property" of this underlying pure potentiality.

There, you should find that quite attractive because if offers you the same concept of an "Emergent Property".

Everything emerges from this underlying non-physical field of potentiality.

These would be my mystic dice.

Perhaps the experience itself is ‘emergent’.

Red is not so much being experienced as the object experiencing is “redded�.

Humphrey goes into this in Seeing Red

I wish I had time to read all these different philosophies, they are endlessly interesting, but in truth I'm getting burned out in this thread.

I'm happy with my mystic dice philosophy and I haven't been spending enough time on my music. So maybe I'll go off and roll the cosmic saxophone for a while instead of the mystic dice.

That's always relaxing.

[Mithrae]

Fascinating topic! I should look at the Philosophy forum more often I've only looked over the first and last couple of pages, but I find myself agreeing with most of Divine Insight's views - some of the mystical stuff is a bit out there for me, or perhaps it's just the way it's phrased. I've posted my own views in plenty of threads previously of course, but briefly summarized I'd say:

> Consciousness (ie awareness, or subjective experience) is a known phenomenon; in fact it's the most certainly known thing of all (cogito ergo sum)

> We can't observe the presence of consciousness in other humans; we infer its presence from similarity or analogy of structure (birth/bodies/brains) and behaviour, particularly their behaviour of self-reported experience

> Hence we can't observationally confirm the absense of consciousness in snakes or fish, insects or bacteria, rocks or planets or atoms

> Consciousness remains a profound mystery in physicalist terms; we are not even close to explaining how certain complex arrangements of organic molecules could produce consciousness (see for instance this article by noted atheist and neuroscientist Sam Harris)


Stripped of various religious dogmas and mystical phrasing, as I see it the question is
Is consciousness a basic aspect of reality?

I see no reason to think it is not - aside from our distinction in infancy of our 'self' as different from everything else, from which we only gradually recognise even other human selves. On the other hand proposing the production of consciousness from nonconscious components, the development of subjective experience from a reality of objects only, seems to vastly deepen the mystery.

Since we can't observe or truly know one way or the other whether reality in general possesses characteristics akin to our consciousness, why would our assumption tend towards negating in everything else what we experience in our own tiny sphere of existence, rather than extrapolating from our experience?

[instantc]

Fascinating topic! I should look at the Philosophy forum more often I've only looked over the first and last couple of pages, but I find myself agreeing with most of Divine Insight's views - some of the mystical stuff is a bit out there for me, or perhaps it's just the way it's phrased. I've posted my own views in plenty of threads previously of course, but briefly summarized I'd say:

> Consciousness (ie awareness, or subjective experience) is a known phenomenon; in fact it's the most certainly known thing of all (cogito ergo sum)

> We can't observe the presence of consciousness in other humans; we infer its presence from similarity or analogy of structure (birth/bodies/brains) and behaviour, particularly their behaviour of self-reported experience

> Hence we can't observationally confirm the absense of consciousness in snakes or fish, insects or bacteria, rocks or planets or atoms

> Consciousness remains a profound mystery in physicalist terms; we are not even close to explaining how certain complex arrangements of organic molecules could produce consciousness (see for instance this article by noted atheist and neuroscientist Sam Harris)


Stripped of various religious dogmas and mystical phrasing, as I see it the question is
Is consciousness a basic aspect of reality?

I see no reason to think it is not - aside from our distinction in infancy of our 'self' as different from everything else, from which we only gradually recognise even other human selves. On the other hand proposing the production of consciousness from nonconscious components, the development of subjective experience from a reality of objects only, seems to vastly deepen the mystery.

Since we can't observe or truly know one way or the other whether reality in general possesses characteristics akin to our consciousness, why would our assumption tend towards negating in everything else what we experience in our own tiny sphere of existence, rather than extrapolating from our experience?

In essence, if I understood correctly, you are asking why one should presume that a rock is unconscious rather than conscious like us, since consciousness cannot be objectively observed.

Remember that our consciousness manifests itself in the physical world, we observe the world through our physical machinery and we interact with the world in a way that entails awareness. Whatever the essence of a rock or a pig is, it doesn't seem to me that either of those things is aware of the world around them in the same way we are.

[Divine Insight]

Whatever the essence of a rock or a pig is, it doesn't seem to me that either of those things is aware of the world around them in the same way we are.

This is true. But consciousness doesn't necessarily need to be "self-awareness". Especially not in the very abstract sense that humans are self-aware.

In a very real sense the Buddhist view that we create that level of "abstract self" is very true.

I feel confident that animals like dogs and cats have an experience. They are actual aware of their "self" in terms of experiencing life. They just haven't intellectually abstracted that "self" into a clearly defined ego.

They also have no "theory of mind' in the psychological sense. Theory of mind in the psychological sense actually an ability or state of consciousnesses to be able to recognize that other minds may intentionally deceive.

For example, even humans do not reach this state of awareness until the age of about 3 or 4 years old. In other words, very young babies are totally incapable of understanding when they are being purposefully deceived. Kind of like Adam and Eve were supposed to be before they ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This is why it makes no sense to blame Eve for having been deceived by an evil serpent. That would be like blaming a very young baby for having been deceived by a savvy adult.

Animals are believed to never even reach the stage of "theory of mind". In other words, many people claim that even this level of consciousness is beyond the capability of animals. I'm not convinced of this. If you play a trick on a cat or dog, it doesn't seem to take them very long to catch on to the fact that you are deceiving them. So they seem to have some ability to recognize deception at some level.

I do believe that my cat is actually having an experience and experiences what it consciously perceives. Of course I can never prove that, but I think it's a fair assumption.

So humans are no unique in having a "self-awareness". What they are unique in is being able to "abstract" this idea into a full blown ego. And this is actually a good thing. Having egotistical awareness is actually a very good thing to have. We often think of the ego as being a derogatory term, but that's because we use it to mean 'over-bearing arrogance' etc.

But really all it means is a very keen self-awareness that has been abstracted to the hilt. And that can indeed be a very good thing. In fact, it is actually the ego sets humans apart from the other animals.

The ego is ironically the thing that makes humanity SPECIAL.

Without an ego, we'd just be another animal.

But we'd still be experiencing life and have "consciousnesses'. We just wouldn't have the higher level of abstraction required to form a abstract ego.

And that is what we as humans love. We LOVE our egos. And we should. Especially if we have created a lovable ego.

It's only when we create extremely arrogant overbearing egos is when things go down the drain.

[Mithrae]

Stripped of various religious dogmas and mystical phrasing, as I see it the question is
Is consciousness a basic aspect of reality?

I see no reason to think it is not - aside from our distinction in infancy of our 'self' as different from everything else, from which we only gradually recognise even other human selves. On the other hand proposing the production of consciousness from nonconscious components, the development of subjective experience from a reality of objects only, seems to vastly deepen the mystery.

Since we can't observe or truly know one way or the other whether reality in general possesses characteristics akin to our consciousness, why would our assumption tend towards negating in everything else what we experience in our own tiny sphere of existence, rather than extrapolating from our experience?

In essence, if I understood correctly, you are asking why one should presume that a rock is unconscious rather than conscious like us, since consciousness cannot be objectively observed.

Remember that our consciousness manifests itself in the physical world, we observe the world through our physical machinery and we interact with the world in a way that entails awareness. Whatever the essence of a rock or a pig is, it doesn't seem to me that either of those things is aware of the world around them in the same way we are.

Not in the same way, of course - there are even some humans whose awareness of the world comes through different perceptions (colour blind or the like). But these days I think pretty much everyone would agree that pigs do have conscious awareness - and probably snakes and fish too! - even though they may partly or wholly lack some of our more complex mental functions such as detailed memory of their experience and the abilities to evaluate and extrapolate from it.

I question the view which asserts that we can at some point say "There's no consciousness or experience here" - materialism or physicalism, in short.

[instantc]

Animals are believed to never even reach the stage of "theory of mind". In other words, many people claim that even this level of consciousness is beyond the capability of animals. I'm not convinced of this. If you play a trick on a cat or dog, it doesn't seem to take them very long to catch on to the fact that you are deceiving them. So they seem to have some ability to recognize deception at some level.

A chess playing computer learns from its opponents, it corresponds to your moves and systematically develops its strategies in accordance with the way you play against it. That is also how us humans play chess and get better at it. The difference between a conscious mind and a computer playing chess cannot be deducted from the behavior, it is what we call a qualitative difference. Neither does the behavior you observe with cats and dogs necessarily require that they experience consciousness.

[Goat]

Animals are believed to never even reach the stage of "theory of mind". In other words, many people claim that even this level of consciousness is beyond the capability of animals. I'm not convinced of this. If you play a trick on a cat or dog, it doesn't seem to take them very long to catch on to the fact that you are deceiving them. So they seem to have some ability to recognize deception at some level.

A chess playing computer learns from its opponents, it corresponds to your moves and systematically develops its strategies in accordance with the way you play against it. That is also how us humans play chess and get better at it. The difference between a conscious mind and a computer playing chess cannot be deducted from the behavior, it is what we call a qualitative difference. Neither does the behavior you observe with cats and dogs necessarily require that they experience consciousness.

There is a huge difference between a computer, and , for example, a mammals.
The chess playing computer is a very narrow range of instructions. Animals can react to the environment, and figure out new solutions to a brand new problem. They can recognize individuals, and react differently to different people. They exhibit emotions. they can communicate desires

A number of animals will also pass the 'mirror test' and recognize themselves in the mirror.