QED
Nick_A, from what I can see the construction of an OP like yours only makes sense when it's framed without a-priori knowledge of intent behind our existence. This is why I raised the WAP in post#61. I don't understand how you can press on with your arguments without first addressing the fundamental ambiguity is or isn't there clear evidence of intent behind the universe.
I thought it ws addressed. I contend that beyond feeling the truth of it. the obvious orer and mathematical consistancy of universal laws proves the spiritual or conscious basis of it.
"Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe - a spirit vastly superior to that of man...In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is indeed quite different from the religiosity of someone more naive." [Letter to a child who asked if scientist pray, January 24, 1936; pg. 152 Calaprice]
If you won't open yourself to what he is saying there is nothing i can do.
"I believe in a Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists, but not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and actions of human beings." Telegram to a Jewish newspaper, 1929; [pg.147, Calaprice]. (Spinoza believed the more one studies and understands the universe the better one understands God)
Of course this is ID but i'm almost afraid to post this quote. If certain people find out about it they sill strive to have his name removed from science texts because of not being politically correct in this matter.
Simone Weil in the OP gives an inspired artisitic visual image of the results of laws that for us appear as chaos. She grasps what Einstein did. For me, the creation of universal laws is proof of intent.
There are many different approaches to the concept of consciousness - I wonder if (for balance) you ever pick up books by contemporary researchers and philosophers like Stuart Hameroff, Douglas Hofstadter and David Chalmers? I know bernee51 has a wide reading of current theory in addition to the classics on the subject. I personally find it a fascinating subject because I can't see anything else breaking the ambiguity about intent: I would say that cosmology and evolution are pretty much "in the bag" now whereas, less than 100 years ago we could look upon life as being utterly inscrutable and we didn't even know that we were located in a thing called a galaxy in an expanding universe. It strikes me that if there's anything properly supernatural to be found then it'll be going on inside everyone's cranium -- at which point we may have evidence for intentionality.
A lot of this is research into the production of reactive consciousness of "contents of consciousnesss." It doesn't answer the question of what consciousness is without objects of consciousness.
People like Franklin Merrell-Wolff, because of personal experience have given their conclusions which are admitted as only for them. A person then can come to try and experience it.
http://www.integralscience.org/gsc/
Wolff's term "Consciousness" here does not mean consciousness as opposed to unconsciousness. Nor does Wolff use the word "Consciousness" here as a consciousness involving any particular structure or mode of experience, such as the structure of intentionality, or the mode of our typical experience based on the distinction between subject and object. Rather, the meaning of the term "Consciousness" here is THAT which is the primordial ground and essential nature of all modes and forms of experience, both subjective and objective. In Wolff's words,
The One, nonderivative Reality, is THAT which I have symbolized by 'Consciousness-without-an-object.' This is Root Consciousness, per se, to be distinguished from consciousness as content or as state, on the one hand, and from consciousness as an attribute of a Self or Atman, in any sense whatsoever. It is Consciousness of which nothing can be predicated in the privative sense save abstract Being. Upon It all else depends, while It remains self-existent.
Thus, Consciousness is primary, i.e., it is first, prior to everything. Not before or first in the sense of time or temporal sequence, but prior in the sense of not being secondary to or derivative from anything else. Hence, Consciousness is self-existent, i.e., it does not depend upon anything else for its being and is entirely self-sufficient and complete. In particular, Consciousness does not depend upon, and is not derivative from, matter, energy, or any other substance. On the contrary, all experience and all objects are derivative from Consciousness. Thus Consciousness is constitutive of all things, i.e., all things are, in their ultimate nature, nothing but this Primordial Consciousness itself.
2. The Subject to Consciousness transcends the object of Consciousness.
To understand this philosophical proposition, we need to first clarify Wolff's use of the terms subject and object. Our experience is normally conditioned or structured by the distinction between a subject to consciousness and objects of consciousness. The subject to consciousness is that which is aware of objects or appearances in consciousness. Objects of consciousness are distinct states or appearances in consciousness, ranging from the most concrete to the most subtle. A concrete object in consciousness might be a visual perception of a chair or a sensation of pain in our foot. More subtle objects are appearances in consciousness such as a thought or memory, an intuition about something, or a state of consciousness such as an experience of the world that is permeated by a subtle sense of bliss. It is important to note that the term "object" as used here by Wolff includes our thoughts, feelings, and other inner experiences. Such inner phenomena are still objects in consciousness just as much as outer phenomena are.
In contrast to objects in consciousness, the subject to consciousness is the principle or aspect of consciousness by which there is awareness of objects. Because an object cannot be reasonably said to be in consciousness if it is not an object of awareness, the existence of any object in consciousness necessarily implies a subject to consciousness. At the basis of our relative experience, therefore, is a distinction between subject and object. The second fundamental of the philosophy states that the subject transcends the object, i.e., that the subjective principle or aspect of consciousness is more fundamental to consciousness than the objective appearances in consciousness. This philosophical proposition derives from the insight that, on the one hand, the objective appearances of consciousness vanish in the transcendent nirvanic state of consciousness, while, on the other hand, the subjective principle of consciousness, i.e., the capacity of awareness, is common to both relative and transcendent levels of consciousness. The subjective principle is therefore transcendental, while the objective principle is not.
A typical denier will say "prove it." this cannot be done since it is an inner experience. If a person not only denies but lacks both the need and will to grow in understanding, that is OK. The trouble is that their denial tends to act as a spirit killing influence to those around them.
I resonate more with Prof. Needleman's simple explanation of consciousness
http://www.rawpaint.com/library/jneedleman/jnch1d.html
I realize that our task would be much easier if from now on we could be working with a precise definition of the word "consciousness." But it is important to stay flexible toward this question of the nature of consciousness. The word is used these days in so many different ways that out of sheer impatience one is tempted to single out one or another aspect of consciousness as its primary characteristic. The difficulty is compounded by the fact that our attitude toward knowledge of ourselves is like our attitude toward new discoveries about the external world. We so easily lose our balance when something extraordinary is discovered in science or when we come upon a new explanatory concept: Immediately the whole machinery of systematizing thought comes into play, Enthusiasm sets in, accompanied by a proliferation of utilitarian explanations, which then stand in the way of direct experiential encounters with surrounding life.
In a like manner, a new experience of one's self tempts us to believe we have discovered the sole direction for the development of consciousness, aliveness or--as it is sometimes called --presence. The same machinery of explanatory thought comes into play accompanied by pragmatic programs for "action." It is not only followers of the new religions who are victims of this tendency, taking fragments of traditional teachings which have led them to a new experience of themselves and building a subjective and missionary religion around them. This tendency in ourselves also accounts, as we shall see later, for much of the fragmentation of Modern psychology, just as it accounts for the fragmentation in the natural sciences.
In order to warn us about this tendency in ourselves, the traditional teachings--as expressed in the Bhagavad-Gita, for example--make a fundamental distinction between consciousness on the one hand and the contents of consciousness such as our perceptions of things, our sense of personal identity, our emotions and our thoughts in all their color and gradations on the other hand.
This ancient distinction has two crucial messages for us. On the one hand, it tell us that what we feel to be the best of ourselves as human beings is only part of a total structure containing layers of mind, feeling and sensation far more active, subtle and encompassing (like the cosmic spheres) than what we have settled for as our best. These lawyers are very numerous and need to be peeled back, as it were, or broken through one by one along the path of inner growth, until an individual touches in himself the fundamental intelligent forces in the cosmos.
At the same time, this distinction also communicates that the search for consciousness is a constant necessity for man. It is telling us that anything in ourselves, no matter how fine, subtle or intelligent, no matter how virtuous or close to reality, no matter how still or violent--any action, any thought, any intuition or experience--immediately absorbs all our attention and automatically becomes transformed into contents around which gather all the opinions, feelings and distorted sensations that are the supports of our secondhand sense of identity. In short, we are told that the evolution of consciousness is always "vertical" to the constant stream of mental, emotional and sensory associations within the human organism, and comprehensive of them (somewhat like a "fourth dimension"). And, seen in this light, it is not really a question of concentric layers of awareness embedded like the skins of an onion within the self, but only one skin, one veil, that constantly forms regardless of the quality or intensity of the psychic field at any given moment.
Thus, in order to understand the nature of consciousness, I must here and now in this present moment be searching for a better state of consciousness. All definitions, no matter how profound, are secondary. Even the formulations of ancient masters on this subject can be a diversion if I take them in a way that does not support the immediate personal effort to be aware of what is taking place in myself in the present moment.
In all that follows in this book, we shall continue to speak about levels of consciousness and intelligence within man and within the universe, for this idea is crucial in any attempt to reach a new understanding of science. But I wish, for the reader and for myself, that this more inner, personal meaning of the idea be constantly kept in mind.
The denier always denying doesn't allow themselves the opportunity to search for a "better state of consciousness" restricting consciousness to arguments about the production of contents of consciousness. If that is all that is wanted, it can never answer the question "what is coinsciousness without an object."
