Ouroboros Posted January 31, 2012 Share Posted January 31, 2012 Sometimes I'll refer to myself as agnostic since, even though I have a narrative, I don't think we "can know". Sometimes I say I have a monist view of things with regards to only one thing fundamentally existing (consciousness), but usually I have tried to stay away from labels. I officially dropped the Buddhist label not too long ago because while I subscribe to Buddhist magazines and have Buddhist books and many Buddhist ideas, i also have non-Buddhist ideas and I felt like it was cramming me into a box I didn't want to be in. Not because it was a "Buddhist-box" but because it was a box, period. Yeah. Labels just tend to mess it up more. But it's good to have something for oneself to be able to refer to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
badpuppy Posted January 31, 2012 Share Posted January 31, 2012 Sometimes I'll refer to myself as agnostic since, even though I have a narrative, I don't think we "can know". Sometimes I say I have a monist view of things with regards to only one thing fundamentally existing (consciousness), but usually I have tried to stay away from labels. I officially dropped the Buddhist label not too long ago because while I subscribe to Buddhist magazines and have Buddhist books and many Buddhist ideas, i also have non-Buddhist ideas and I felt like it was cramming me into a box I didn't want to be in. Not because it was a "Buddhist-box" but because it was a box, period. Yeah. Labels just tend to mess it up more. But it's good to have something for oneself to be able to refer to. Yeah, depending on who I'm talking to, I sometimes still default to "Buddhist" as a label because, even though there is a huge variety in Buddhist thought and a lot of misconceptions about it, at least it is something that says A. I have a spirituality and B. It is not supernatural theism. It's at least a place to start a discussion from. But with someone else I might start from "agnostic". And with someone else I might start from "monist". It really just depends who I'm talking to and which I think will lead the way into a more productive discussion. A lot of people don't know what a "monist" is, though at least there are no pre-conceived notions in that case! And with agnostic some people think that means you are on the fence and haven't decided yet... like they think it means you "don't know what you believe" instead of that you think "we can't know certain things, period". Like I would NEVER tell a Christian I was agnostic. I'd just go with Buddhist and let it sit. LOL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DesertBob Posted January 31, 2012 Share Posted January 31, 2012 Oh you're not an atheist. You just say that because it's fashionable. I'm still looking for a better term to describe myself... without all the baggage that comes with labels. Humanist?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antlerman Posted January 31, 2012 Share Posted January 31, 2012 Oh you're not an atheist. You just say that because it's fashionable. I'm still looking for a better term to describe myself... without all the baggage that comes with labels. Humanist?? Humanist doesn't work. There are Christian humanists. I keep it simple. I am all religions. I am none. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted January 31, 2012 Share Posted January 31, 2012 Humanist?? Not quite. I don't have the optimistic view of humanity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DesertBob Posted January 31, 2012 Share Posted January 31, 2012 Humanist?? Not quite. I don't have the optimistic view of humanity. I tend to separate humanism from optimism. Humanism to me is just focusing on humanity rather than imaginary gods. But as AM points out there is such a thing as religious humanism, even if to me that's a bit of an oxymoron. Maybe AM's paradoxical statement of being all and no religions is as good as anything. Should confuse people and shut them up, at any rate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DesertBob Posted January 31, 2012 Share Posted January 31, 2012 I don't know, when I watched my son emerge from his mother, he sure seemed conscious to me. He was aware of the world, and cried like mad at that blaring fact. Just because he can't consciously remember that day in the delivery room doesn't mean he was unconscious for the first 4 years of his life. Don't confuse memory recall with the fact of being conscious. Just wait till you pass 50 years of age, and for the love of you you can't recall something that happened a year ago, every now and then. Were you just a hunk of unconscious flesh for that day when you were 49? I have always wondered about the slippery nature of memory and how relevant past experiences (in this life or someone's claimed prior life) are if you can't even remember them. I honestly don't remember all that much about my life, when it comes down to it ... not in any detail. I recall feelings, and the general shape of experiences, but the further back you go in time the more unreal they seem, like a story told about someone else. Beyond 10 years ago it really is like reading an old annual report of a business, that relates some events and figures but behind which there is no detailed documentation at all. At the moment, I'm visiting my home in Arizona which is up for sale, and am emptying it of "stuff" and closing out that old chapter of my life provides me with a metaphor -- my brain seems a lot like a house I used to live in once but the furniture has been cleared out. This is more striking the older I get. So my question is -- if this is what consciousness is, just some level of awareness and responsiveness but with this really incomplete and imperfect memory, even for we humans ... if 2 years from now I will likely not even remember this conversation -- why do we devote so much attention to the question of consciousness anyway? All the stuff that mattered greatly to me once upon a time doesn't anymore, by and large, and the stuff that matters to me today will not matter some distance down the road. I'm actually embarrassed that I've taken it all that seriously ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rev R Posted January 31, 2012 Share Posted January 31, 2012 a pieist because everyone loves pie i would have said a cakeist but the cake is a... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
badpuppy Posted January 31, 2012 Share Posted January 31, 2012 Humanist doesn't work. There are Christian humanists. I keep it simple. I am all religions. I am none. Yes. This. Student of everything, follower of nothing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sunny49 Posted January 31, 2012 Share Posted January 31, 2012 So, some of you here are saying that consciousness comes before matter, then how come you don't remember anything when you were a child? I don't know, when I watched my son emerge from his mother, he sure seemed conscious to me. He was aware of the world, and cried like mad at that blaring fact. Just because he can't consciously remember that day in the delivery room doesn't mean he was unconscious for the first 4 years of his life. Don't confuse memory recall with the fact of being conscious. Just wait till you pass 50 years of age, and for the love of you you can't recall something that happened a year ago, every now and then. Were you just a hunk of unconscious flesh for that day when you were 49? How come you become consciouss after you are five or six? How come people can lose memory if they injure their brain? And if we can be consciouss without bodies they why do we need bodies? It appears you confuse consciousness with memory recall. A dog is conscious. So is an ant. Some could even argue a plant is, in a primitive form. It is in fact aware of its environment on some level and responds accordingly. Don't confuse consciousness with cognitive reasoning either. Yes, but then I don't think that consciousness is the right term. Maybe you mean energy? To me consciousness means being conscious of yourself, that you exist. I don't think that baby's "know" that they actually exist, they just exist. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antlerman Posted January 31, 2012 Share Posted January 31, 2012 Yes, but then I don't think that consciousness is the right term. Maybe you mean energy? To me consciousness means being conscious of yourself, that you exist. I don't think that baby's "know" that they actually exist, they just exist. Consciousness is the right term. There are various states of consciousness, such as the subconscious. Self awareness is present in all animals on simpler levels. They are well aware of the fact they have a body that needs to be protected and needs food, even if they have no sophisticated mental frameworks about that self and its conscious awareness functions only on an impulse-response level. Cognitive thoughts about the nature of that self is not consciousness itself, but mental cognition. It is a much higher stage of consciousness, a much higher awareness. It is part of our waking consciousness. They way in which you understand your own self, as in self-aware, becomes more and more sophisticated through higher stages of development. But you cannot say that you didn't possess consciousness in an early stage. So therefore, a baby has a very undeveloped sense of self-awareness in his conscious mind. But he is fully conscious of the fact of his own existence, even if his self-image is undifferentiated from the physical world. The physical world is an extension of his own body/mind at that stage of self awareness. He is aware he is there, even if it is unsophisticated. He nonetheless has a certain view of himself, abeight not well defined. The world is a dreamlike reality to his mind, the way our ancient ancestors were like as their cognitive minds evolved. But this is consciousness. Again, what we call popularly refer to as self-awareness is in fact the conscious mind through cognitive tools looking back on itself as saying "I am an individual with a mind", (a differentiated egoic self-identity) but consciousness precedes that. In fact it precedes it all the way down the chain in the universe itself. It exists all the way down, and all the way up. The mind becomes the cognitively aware eyes of that consciousness, so to speak; a mental lens out from and into that formless abyss. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DesertBob Posted January 31, 2012 Share Posted January 31, 2012 a pieist because everyone loves pie Which would make you a pious person, right? :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VacuumFlux Posted January 31, 2012 Share Posted January 31, 2012 1. Consciousness is either an illusion or some type of emergent property. It is tied intrinsically to matter and once the matter is "dead" the consciousness goes. (strict materialism... but also not necessarily "strict" materialism. Legion, I believe, holds a complexity viewpoint that has consciousness as an emergent property but still tied to the matter for existence, but he'd have to confirm that.) I believe it is an emergent property, but I would strongly argue that it is not an illusion (and that emergent properties in general are equally non-illusory as the things they emerge from). And I wouldn't exactly phrase it that "consciousness goes when the matter dies" but rather that the matter reorganizes into a form that can no longer maintain the consciousness. Or maybe that the consciousness goes dark when the batteries supporting it run out. One of my favorite short stories exploring questions about what it means to be human is "No Woman Born" by C. L. Moore. It explores how a human brain transplanted into a robotic body has trouble being human because the inputs and outputs are all different, so it shows just how strongly our sense of what we are is coupled to our bodies. Can you be a human consciousness without a human body? (Though I suppose you could just as easily read this story from a non-materialst perspective, but this was pretty formative for me while I was trying to figure out how dualistic the mind-body is.) No. *I* believe in free will, so in my view OF COURSE we can make our own purpose. However, someone who doesn't believe in free will, by their own logic CANNOT make their own purpose. They only have the illusion that they can. No better or worse, IMO than any other illusion that doesn't cause someone harm. But... I still believe you and every other determinist can make your own purpose... because *I* don't think free will is an illusion. I think even saying it's an illusion is incoherent. The reason why I believe "free will" is an illusion is because it can't be both free and willful simultaneous. It's either free, disconnected from causes, or it's willed and related to reasons and causes. What we are, our will, our being, is the convergence of past causes and events. We act randomly at times, and other times because of what and who we are (which is the result of the past and current circumstances). As a convergent "will" of past and present, we make it happen. We make purpose because of who we are. In what sense is your "free will" free? And what is "will" in your "free will"? You will things freely? Randomly? Or with reasons? With random reasons or reasons based on who you are and what you do? This has nothing to do with "determinism" directly because free is indeterministic and will is deterministic. Either or, both are not true simultaneous. Separate, they're true, together, they are disjointed. That's my view, described in a poor carrier of thought, i.e. language. To me it's pointless to talk about a will that isn't free. i.e. will is intention. But I don't think there are no influences on behavior. My view is more compatibalist, somewhere on the spectrum. I think strict determinism is incoherent, but also that every choice and decision being 'totally free' without any pre-existing cause is also incoherent. Perhaps the problem here is human language. It's possible that your view and my view on this converge a lot more closely than we think because what you're describing to me doesn't sound like strict determinism. My perspective is that the ultimate consciousness/universal consciousness/ground of being/etc. would have total "free will" because there would be no other will or anything else acting "upon"it. (Though Deva has described the Absolute as beyond both concepts of free will and determinism. And she is probably right, but as a human being wanting to discuss something, all I have are concepts! ) I think each piece of consciousness coming from that original consciousness... (us and other sentient beings), have at least the potential to make choices that are not just mindless robotic determinism. I think one has to be aware that there is option A vs. option B before that begins to awaken. And even among human beings some are more self-directed than others. I would say someone like Tony Robbins is WAY more aware of his ability to make choices than the average wage slave. So I think it's a continuum based largely upon awareness. I don't think every will is equally "free" but neither do I think we are all deterministic robots. Even my cat sometimes makes a choice. ("No, I'm not getting out of this comfortable chair to come over there, I don't care if you have food.") Bolding mine. There does seem to be a bit of confusion about what the words "free" and "will" mean, which makes it kinda hard to talk about "free will". Perhaps the confusion is over the difference between being free of internal vs free of external influence? If nothing about who you are or your past, and nothing about the external world, influence a choice you make, then it's a completely "free" choice in the sense of entirely unconstrained. But that would be an awful way to live, because I want my choices to be informed by the past and by the wisdom I have (hopefully) gathered so far in life. In that sense, my choices are not free of my past and of myself. And I like it that way, because that means my choices are intrinsically part of me; if the things I did were totally disconnected from "me", then it wouldn't be "me" acting and that would be creepy. Then there's the questions of how much of our choices are determined by things buried deep in our subconscious that we've never made conscious decisions about (bad habits and prejudices can fall into this category); these are situations were I don't feel completely free and I am rather disturbed to discover that I haven't been as fully aware of my choices as I thought I was. There's also just life situations that I don't have control over; I am not free to choose to not get hungry when my body runs out of fuel. I can will to ignore it, to eat now, to eat later... but I cannot escape the fact that not fueling my body will have repercussions (and can have a strong negative affect on my decisions making capacity; it's really hard to will to do something when you can't remember what it was you were trying to do). These are all things I have limited control over; I can change entrenched thought patterns with a lot of work, but I can't just will them away immediately. So I guess I would say, to connect this to the materialism thing, that my emergent mind has all my experiences and stuff stored on a material substrate, and I want those experiences to shape my future decisions. Changing habits is a process of reshaping the material substrate. There's enough of a feedback loop and crazy stuff going on here that I do considering myself to have, for all practical purposes in my life, a free will. I have felt an aversion to pain caused by bad habits that has triggered me to want to avoid such pain in the future, and have poured energy into those memories to allow me to use them change my habits next time such a situation comes up. Brains are plastic. I can choose to change my own brain/mind and become someone else, a person I would rather be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rev R Posted January 31, 2012 Share Posted January 31, 2012 a pieist because everyone loves pie Which would make you a pious person, right? :-) absolutely! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
badpuppy Posted January 31, 2012 Share Posted January 31, 2012 1. Consciousness is either an illusion or some type of emergent property. It is tied intrinsically to matter and once the matter is "dead" the consciousness goes. (strict materialism... but also not necessarily "strict" materialism. Legion, I believe, holds a complexity viewpoint that has consciousness as an emergent property but still tied to the matter for existence, but he'd have to confirm that.) I believe it is an emergent property, but I would strongly argue that it is not an illusion (and that emergent properties in general are equally non-illusory as the things they emerge from). And I wouldn't exactly phrase it that "consciousness goes when the matter dies" but rather that the matter reorganizes into a form that can no longer maintain the consciousness. Or maybe that the consciousness goes dark when the batteries supporting it run out. One of my favorite short stories exploring questions about what it means to be human is "No Woman Born" by C. L. Moore. It explores how a human brain transplanted into a robotic body has trouble being human because the inputs and outputs are all different, so it shows just how strongly our sense of what we are is coupled to our bodies. Can you be a human consciousness without a human body? (Though I suppose you could just as easily read this story from a non-materialst perspective, but this was pretty formative for me while I was trying to figure out how dualistic the mind-body is.) I might consider what you're saying a possibility (assuming someone could explain to me HOW this could happen) if I didn't feel the reincarnation and NDE evidence were strong. I think they are incredibly strong and have spent several years looking into it. (largely because a loved one had an NDE and I wanted to understand it. Then I got into the reincarnation research also.) Those things coupled with my experiences of deeper dreaming states, like lucid dreams make it impossible for me to see consciousness as an emergent property tied to a physical body, or in fact to think totally materialistic/mechanistic evolution/origins makes any sense at all. I can understand, to some degree, how/why you think it makes sense and can appreciate and respect your viewpoint. But to me, it makes about as much sense as the talking snake/magic apple bit in Christianity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DesertBob Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 I might consider what you're saying a possibility (assuming someone could explain to me HOW this could happen) if I didn't feel the reincarnation and NDE evidence were strong. I think they are incredibly strong and have spent several years looking into it. (largely because a loved one had an NDE and I wanted to understand it. Then I got into the reincarnation research also.) Since you've taken the time to look into it ... I've lost track of a seemingly scientific long term study on NDEs that was being done (in the UK I think) where they were putting signs on the top of ER light fixtures and other such vantage points that would be visible only to someone floating above their body during an NDE. And then interviewing people who were resuscitated to see if they had an NDE and then asking them to describe what they saw, in hopes that they would notice these placards and relate their contents. Stuff like that. Did anything useful ever come out of that? I went through a period where I was intrigued by NDEs, particularly that minority of cases where the NDE experience could be firmly located during significant cardiac arrest, where brainwave activity pretty much stops and coherent dreaming, etc., should be completely impossible. But ultimately if no one can prove these things to a scientific standard, I start to lose interest. How are things on that front these days? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
badpuppy Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 I might consider what you're saying a possibility (assuming someone could explain to me HOW this could happen) if I didn't feel the reincarnation and NDE evidence were strong. I think they are incredibly strong and have spent several years looking into it. (largely because a loved one had an NDE and I wanted to understand it. Then I got into the reincarnation research also.) Since you've taken the time to look into it ... I've lost track of a seemingly scientific long term study on NDEs that was being done (in the UK I think) where they were putting signs on the top of ER light fixtures and other such vantage points that would be visible only to someone floating above their body during an NDE. And then interviewing people who were resuscitated to see if they had an NDE and then asking them to describe what they saw, in hopes that they would notice these placards and relate their contents. Stuff like that. Did anything useful ever come out of that? I went through a period where I was intrigued by NDEs, particularly that minority of cases where the NDE experience could be firmly located during significant cardiac arrest, where brainwave activity pretty much stops and coherent dreaming, etc., should be completely impossible. But ultimately if no one can prove these things to a scientific standard, I start to lose interest. How are things on that front these days? Bob, I'm not sure if it ever did or not (the sign), but I do know that there have been multiple situations where things were witnessed/observed during flatline then recounted that were correct and often very specific to the individual situation... i.e. not generic or vague things that could be true anyway of anyone, that they couldn't have known otherwise. One such case was a man whose dentures were removed by a nurse when he was flatlined. Upon awakening he recognized the nurse on sight and said something like "you know where my dentures are, you put them on a cart" (or in a drawer. I don't remember the exact quote. what I remember is the case study was reported as accurate.) There was also a case where a NDE experiencer said something about floating outside their body and outside the hospital itself... and said that there was a tennis shoe on the ledge of one of the floors above their room. And there was. It wasn't something they could have seen or known about. Nobody knew about it. Regarding this sign issue... It may take quite awhile before they get a "hit" (And they may have and not published the study yet, or they may have and I just don't know about it.) Most people who have NDE's are FAR more interested in other aspects than OBE aspects... I mean we've got beautiful colors, ethereal music, dead relatives, beings of light... how many details of the hospital room would you care about? And when they are interested in OBE aspects they tend to be paying attention to what is going on with their body. I mean, I could put a sign on my wall with a number on it and it be right in your field of vision and then take it down and wait for you to mention it. You might never mention it. If I asked you about it you may or may not recall seeing it or may or may not be able to identify it properly. We don't recall every single thing we ever see. We tend to filter out the inconsequential. This would be especially true in an extremely lucid and life-altering event like an NDE, IMO. You might look into the research by Pim Von Lommel. There have been quite a few longitudinal prospective studies with control groups by his team as well as others that I consider quite convincing. (The longitudinal part is that they follow the control group and the NDE group over several years to see how the NDE affects someone's life. These are reported to be life-changing experiences and so this part of the study was necessary to see if the life-altering part was the NDE itself or almost dying. The research seems to indicate it's the NDE itself. There have also been some interesting ESP effects noted in some who have had NDEs. NDE experiencers also tend to recount their NDE in almost the same words years later... so it isn't an overly malleable memory where things keep changing in the retelling. This was my experience with the loved one who had an NDE as well. Anytime he tells the story, it's exactly the same. No exaggeration of details over time.) There have also been intriguing studies that involved patients blind from birth who saw things during their NDE. (The first part of the experience generally freaks them out because at first they don't understand the experience they are having is sight.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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