Consciousness as a fundamental quality of the universe

[pantheory]

More questions, then about thought. How is a thought formed in your mind?

 

Thoughts are formed by the senses, their mulling, or reflection upon past thoughts, ideas, mental images, etc.

 

"What is your mind? How does it work? When I see a picture in my head, what is that picture, exactly? Is it an array of neurons turning on and off like a tv screen? If so, who is watching it? Who is the "I" of consciousness that observes internal full motion video, as it were, going on? Is the "I" a bundle of neurons? Is this bundle of neurons observing the signals of another bundle of neurons?"

 

"It is the ultimate conundrum.  Fun stuff. Have to run for a while. Take care."

 

The mind, according to definition, is the physical brain and its stored memories like the one's and zeros of a computer memory. Like a computer these memories are stored via electrical impulses.  The bundle of neurons must have these electrical memories to be you, as you know yourself. Another part of your brain interprets the electrical impulses coming from these memory neurons.

 

Of course there are a great many things still to be learned about the brains of man and beast, but I think we presently have a pretty good general understanding of it.

 

 

[florduh]

14 minutes ago, midniterider said:

Barmaids probably have more common sense than nerds like us.

Rude.

[midniterider]

1 hour ago, florduh said:

Rude.

 

Please elaborate. 

[midniterider]

2 hours ago, pantheory said:

More questions, then about thought. How is a thought formed in your mind?

 

Thoughts are formed by the senses, their mulling, or reflection upon past thoughts, ideas, mental images, etc.

 

"What is your mind? How does it work? When I see a picture in my head, what is that picture, exactly? Is it an array of neurons turning on and off like a tv screen? If so, who is watching it? Who is the "I" of consciousness that observes internal full motion video, as it were, going on? Is the "I" a bundle of neurons? Is this bundle of neurons observing the signals of another bundle of neurons?"

 

"It is the ultimate conundrum.  Fun stuff. Have to run for a while. Take care."

 

The mind, according to definition, is the physical brain and its stored memories like the one's and zeros of a computer memory. Like a computer these memories and stored via electrical impulses.  The bundle of neurons must have these electrical memories to be you, as you know yourself. Another part of your brain interprets the electrical impulses coming from these memory neurons.

 

Of course there are a great many things still to be learned about the brains of man and beast, but I think we presently have a pretty good general understanding of it.

 

 

 

Thanks for the physical explanation, Pantheory. 

[midniterider]

Hey, Josh, check out Bernardo Kastrup. He mirrors Hoffman a bit. 

 

 

[florduh]

2 hours ago, midniterider said:

 

Please elaborate. 

 " Even a lowly, ignorant barmaid..." See it?

[midniterider]

1 hour ago, florduh said:

 " Even a lowly, ignorant barmaid..." See it?

 

 Pan said he married a barmaid. And also mentions making things simple enough for a barmaid to understand it. I was a bus boy once...a lowly one.  Then I bagged groceries.... 

 

Anyway, I retract my rude comment. 

[Joshpantera]

11 hours ago, pantheory said:

midniterider and Josh,

Yes, Conscious Realism has been called a theory by some, but it relates to philosophy and social sciences and has very few adherents. The mainstream has a far simpler understanding of Consciousness which can be seen below by its definition.

Conscious Realism:

Conscious Realism is a non-physical monism which holds that consciousness is the primary reality and that the physical world emerges from that. The objective world consists of conscious agents and their experiences. "What exists in the objective world, independent of my perceptions, is a world of conscious agents, not a world of unconscious particles and fields. Those particles and fields are icons in the MUIs of conscious agents but are not themselves fundamental denizens of the objective world. Consciousness is fundamental."

http://www.cogsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/ConsciousRealism2.pdf

Mainstream dictionary definition of Consciousness:

“The Oxford Living Dictionary defines consciousness as "The state of being aware of and responsive to one's surroundings.", "A person's awareness or perception of something." and "The fact of awareness by the mind of itself and of the world." Of course this also applies to higher animals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness

IMHO everything in reality can be simple in its understanding. ‘Consciousness’ is a good example of this concerning the dictionary definition of it. Conscious Realism is the opposite of simplicity and certainly not my philosophical cup of tea.

 

CR is a pretty brand spanking new theory - with mathematical proofs associated. This is taking the issue away from philosophy and placing it into the empirical sciences. That's the point of this part of the discussion and the related videos. Including Hoffman's book, "The Case Against Reality." Which I will be reading soon. Few people understand it? Few people know about it? 

 

Yes, that goes without saying. Who would know about and understand it? It's new and controversial. Outside of Hoffman's team working on it, I doubt very many people understand it well at all. That's why I was surprised at how well Z Dog MD understands it from reading the book. And how well he can argue and articulate about the theory. 

 

"Mainstream" definition of Consciousness??? 

 

Again, you've sort of dodged around the point of the discussion. The point being that because mainstream science and its 'related definitions' have not been able to solve or satisfy the hard problem of consciousness, alternative routes have been taken to try and accomplish it.

 

You don't believe in mainstream cosmology and its standard model. But you're pointing to mainstream definitions of consciousness, which, we've already established from the outset are in need of deeper consideration and lacking in x number of ways. The current definition can only take us to the current lack of comprehension of the hard problem of consciousness from the mainstream sciences. Where else could it take us???

 

I agree with Midnite that physical realism is more complex than conscious realism, in fact. 

 

Everything breaks down to one thing, consciousness. 

 

With physical realism, everything breaks down to at least two (dualism) separate things, matter and also consciousness. 

 

Conscious realism is necessarily simpler by default in that sense. Granted, simpler doesn't have to mean right. But you've asserted a preference of the simpler explanation. While invoking the more complex. 

 

1) One thing - consciousness.

 

2) Two things - matter and consciousness. 

 

Hoffman covers this aspect of the theory quite a bit in all of these videos, lectures, interviews, and the pdf of the theory in my signature line. 

 

 

[midniterider]

Yeah, I'd rather forge ahead with Consciousness as the fundamental quality of the universe than rehash the debate over materialism. 

 

 

 

 

[◊ Weezer ◊]

Interesting subject.  Keep the discussion going.  

[pantheory]

5 hours ago, Weezer said:

Interesting subject.  Keep the discussion going.  

 

OK Weez, here's a little more.

Is Consciousness a Fundamental Quality of the Universe?

“Apart from the fact that decades of research and theorizing have not shed any significant light on the issue, there are some strange mismatches between consciousness and brain activity.”

Although the above is stated to be true, many mainstream philosophers and scientists would disagree with this statement. Although nearly all would agree that everything about consciousness has not been explained to everyone’s satisfaction, most scientists in the field believe the related answers do not fall far outside the definition of consciousness, and do not involve complicated theory to understand consciousness.

Mainstream dictionary definition of Consciousness:

“The Oxford Dictionary definition of consciousness is: "The state of being aware of and responsive to one's surroundings.", "A person's awareness or perception of something." and "The fact of awareness by the mind of itself and of the world." Of course this also applies to higher animals as well as man.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness

All else being equal, the simpler answer or theory is the better one (re: Occam's Razor).

Definition of Occam's razor:

...is a scientific and philosophical principle and rule stating that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily which is interpreted as requiring that the simpler of competing theories be preferred to the more complicated one.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Occam%27s%20razor

Math is not Science!

Although math was one of my majors in college, it is not science. Although math is part of the foundations of some science theory, one must always be critical of claims of validity made within science theory or philosophy that were assertively justified by math, but which cannot be otherwise tested or proven.

https://occupymath.wordpress.com/2018/07/12/math-is-not-science/

 

 

 

 

 

 

[midniterider]

Time for me to watch Part II

 

 

[Joshpantera]

 

Around 6:30 He introduces a very relevant point. It comes down to assumption. You have to assume that things are exactly as they appear. I'm curious who thinks they can argue and win that debate? It would mean proving something that's never yet been proven. We as a species do not know as a fact that anything is exactly as it literally appears. And this has been an ongoing problem for a long time. 

 

Then he goes on to call this "inherited assumption."

 

This deserves careful analysis because in my opinion, being that we're all people who either started out in life or at some point accepted "inherited assumption" dating back to the origins of christianity, which date back to the origins of judaism, which date back to polytheistic cultures and their mythology (metaphors and symbols to organize social groups). Our assumptions about theism and christianity go way, way back. 

 

Our religious assumptions have been closely checked and analyzed.

 

I see no good reason not scrutinize the "inherited assumption" of physicalism as well. Those are the two dominant world views. And I would not find it strange to discover that both set of inherited assumptions are less than correct. Because we're talking about a species evolving from primitive to more advanced ways of understanding the world and existence itself. 

 

At 26:00 He comes in looking at logical coherence, internal consistency, and conceptual parsimony. And what he lays out is not very different than what I'm familiar with in the game of counter apologetics. The bible lacks logical coherence, internal consistency, and conceptual parsimony. So, let's call that a near eastern, bronze age mentality. It's a type of western mentality. And it's demonstrably wrong in x number of ways. These were dualistic ways of thinking - spirit and matter. The idea was in something of a rejection of the matter in favor of spirit. And consciousness would be a quality of the spirit idea. This is western dualism in our religions. 

 

The inherited assumptions of physicalism date back that far, and further. And then piggyback into the age of enlightenment. The spirit stuff was dropped, but the physicalist assumptions about matter continued on. It's not surprising to me that the physicalist assumptions of inherited thinking, from the bronze age of western civilization, check out as logically incoherent, internally inconsistent, and not conceptually parsimonious. I would think that there's a strong possibility that there's lot more to reality than what we find in the perceptual and conceptual minds of near eastern thinkers from the bronze age.

 

They very well could have been completely wrong with dualistic thinking in general. Reality may be non-dual as the new theory puts forward. And I don't know why that should be taken as too surprising considering how we've come to our current set of physicalist assumptions. That date to primitive thinking, just as the religious concepts do. I find it more likely that they'd both end up wrong, than one right and the other wrong. And his discourse about "militant physicalists" is demonstrably the case when these debates break out...

 

Part 3 looks to be very interesting as well. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[pantheory]

11 hours ago, Joshpantera said:

 

Our religious assumptions have been closely checked and analyzed.

 

I see no good reason not to scrutinize the "inherited assumption" of physicalism as well. Those are the two dominant world views.

 

 

Non-physical entities other than matter include energy and energy flows within physical entities but are not necessarily physical in themselves, and are the energy movement within physical entities such as ocean waves, sound waves, EM radiation, electricity, etc. Most physicists believe that EM radiation consists of photons that travel at the speed light; others like me believe that EM radiation is an energy wave, and some of which like ocean wave travel relatively slow.  As to light as an energy wave, no elements of the wave travels at the speed of light, just the energy waves. All elements of the wave are physical, and one physical characteristic of the wave is its energy of motion which as a speed, involves time.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-contact_force

 

Few scientists believe in pure physicalism. Most consider physicalism and materialism to be the same thing. Most physicists believe in force fields and 3-4 pulling forces of nature which are not physical, which in particle physics are called pulling forces at a distance and include magnetism, the strong force, the weak force, and some include gravity.

Matter has energy within it, and energy involves time to calculate its quantity. Potential energy is similar but does not involve time. As Einstein said, energy can be equated with matter via  E = mc² .

https://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/particle-physics-basics/mass-energy-matter-etc/matter-and-energy-a-false-dichotomy/

 

So, is everything physical in nature and reality? some physicists would say yes, but most would say no. For philosophers, some would say yes, but most would also say no. Most, however, believe there is nothing beyond, matter, energy, and forces, and that consciousness is a type of energy in the brain.

 

I believe the true answer lies in philosophy since any answer depends upon which perspective and definitions you choose to consider the question.

 

 

 

 

[Joshpantera]

4 hours ago, pantheory said:

So, is everything physical in nature and reality? some physicists would say yes, but most would say no. For philosophers, some would say yes, but most would also say no. Most, however, believe there is nothing beyond, matter, energy, and forces, and that consciousness is a type of energy in the brain.

 

I believe the true answer lies in philosophy since any answer depends upon which perspective and definitions you choose to consider the question.

 

I didn't understand any of this at all when I first heard about panpsychism. I was very wave of the hand dismissive of the whole thing. That's mainly because I was thinking in terms of our inherited assumptions about matter and consciousness. I assumed that consciousness for sure, without question, is electrical oriented brain activity. And it is. I was unaware of the hard problem of consciousness and related philosophical issues, though.

 

I was studying through Joseph Campbell heavily and kept reading over some of the issues of eastern metaphysical concepts and Consciousness. The old pantheism. And it made sense to me in terms of existence as a unified, interconnected whole. The Consciousness aspect, however, I just wasn't seeing. I could see how everything could be broken down to one thing. And that one thing can be viewed as the fabric and structure of existence itself. But how Consciousness could be that one thing was lost on me. I didn't see how it could be unified into non-dual. 

 

A few more years down the road I tackled the philosophical issue of "something = something." 

 

We never seem to have a scenario where a true or absolute nothing = something.

 

I know you've entered some of those discussions that myself and others have raised here before. Whenever someone uses the expression of something coming from nothing, that never turns out to be the case. The nothing will turn out to be something if examined closely. I recall using your Pantheory as an example. And I'm pretty sure that you agreed that something had to have always existed. 

 

That train of thought then led to the notion that existence exists because the absolute non-existence of anything at all is impossible - when working backwards from the perspective of things currently existing right now.

 

There's the need for an 'unbroken chain of previous existence in one form or another' for anything at all to exist right now. But, going another step further, consciousness exists right now. It's a part of existence in that way. And that alone opens up a can of worms.

 

What first got my attention in a meaningful way was philosopher Peter Russell's lecture on the Primacy of Consciousness: 

 

 

 

This is where consciousness going "all the way down" started hitting my radar and making a lot more sense as a potential. It made much more sense after going through this lecture in particular. 

 

Did it just appear out of nowhere during evolution at a fixed point or is it something that has always been there in one form or another?

 

I wasn't thinking about it correctly from the outset. I wasn't visualizing the concept as I should have been. 

 

It's not that subatomic particles are thinking and contemplating in a conscious way as we perceive our own human consciousnes, that would be silly. The idea is that awareness can go all the way down scale to the subatomic and become increasingly primitive and simple as you go down the scale. But the simple and primitive down scale awareness's can provide the building blocks of greater levels of awareness.  All being part of existence itself, in a non-dual type of way. Not existence as one thing and consciousness as something other. The two concepts being combined and identical. 

 

I began to see that just as something had to have always existed through the philosophical lens I've described, it's quite possible that awareness in one form or another has to have always existed in lock step. Or else it's popping into existence at some fixed point and without any firm explanation (see video). And how could existence have always been, minus any sense of awareness along the way until animals evolved on this planet? That smacks of a very geocentric and egocentric train of thought. And I became highly suspicious of that type of reasoning when I recognized it. That's why it would be reason for knee jerk reactions and defensiveness. It's been considered special to us and limited to the earth. Lots of emotional baggage involved in that particular set of assumptions. 

 

Let's suppose that there's any type of repeating processes at play. For example, infinite replication paradox. Just the general idea that there could be infinite versions of the earth in an infinite space. Look at what even something like that does to the issue of consciousness. It would have existed before us. It would have to exist beyond us. Fixing a beginning looks impossible. Consciousness wouldn't be a one-off event. Instead, it would something that naturally occurs as the very result of existence existing. Trying to have existence without consciousness taking place within the scheme of existence doesn't look very probable.  

 

That would be to assert that existence can exist without any awareness of any type. And then out of thin air awareness pops into existence ex nihilo!!! That starts looking pretty silly too. 

 

Later on, after having been through these philosophical issues, I saw a video where Donald Hoffman was a guest on one of these hard problem of consciousness debates. His theory of consciousness sort of builds upon the philosophical direction I was getting into. I intend to follow along and see where it leads. That's why I stuck it in my signature line for now. I'm going to fully embrace it for a while and see what happens. If it works out, great. If it doesn't, I'll press on truth seeking all the same...

[midniterider]

Watching part IV now: 

 

 

Thru the first 30 minutes so far.  Good stuff at the moment. 

[midniterider]

So around 36 minutes Kastrup provides his slide on analytic idealism. 

 

He basically says that there is a universal mind that encompasses everything. Everything is inside it. It is really nothing but mentation. At times some of this mentation decides to dissociate itself from the rest of the universal mind. It pretends that it is a separate entity from the rest of itself. It is similar to a human being who has dissociated into several personalities...that all use the same brain.

 

This is what you and I and everyone are: dissociated parts of the whole. In order to remain as a pretend separate entity you have to draw boundaries (imaginary boundaries) around yourself to say "this is me and that over there is not me" otherwise you would stop being a separate you and just flow back into the cosmic soup like a droplet of water becomes part of a puddle if it touches it. Though in reality they are the same substance.

 

None of this so far deals with matter, though. I guess we are still mentation at this point (well, we always are mentation). To maintain our (simulated) separateness we have come up with a user interface like a pilot's instrument panel or a computer desktop in order to function and continue to mentate as a separate entity. The material world is this user interface that allows us to do this. I believe the material world user interface also prevents entropy (returning back into the cosmic soup). Maybe the material world is a point of concentration for that purpose as well. Dont know yet.

 

I'm at minute 49 now. There is more discussion on the hour and a half video in part IV. Part V is empirical  evidence to back up his idea. He's not really claiming anything 'new' here either...this idea has been around for a while.

 

(edited for clarity)

[pantheory]

As to consciousness, both men and animals, I usually oppose any ideas that involve complications rather than simplicity concerning understandings of reality. In my world view, everything in reality can be rendered simple and short according to its understanding and related explanations.  Although many of these ideas of the complications of reality lie outside of science, unfortunately many also lie within science -- which I especially oppose since the idea is claimed to be scientific. 

 

The path to the simplest understanding of anything in reality and path to the peace of mind for many, is the understanding and realization of the validity of Occam's razor IMHO. 

[midniterider]

If analytic idealism is a valid description of reality, then science would appear to be the study of a shared user interface created and utilized by dissociated portions of a universal mind. 

[TheRedneckProfessor]

Dafuq I just read? 

[midniterider]

It's more fun if you say it in Alan Watts' voice. 

[pantheory]

Universal Consciousness, Analytic Idealism (also called Objective Idealism), and Panpsychism all appear to be more like eastern religions or abstruse metaphysics, far from science based ideas IMO.

 

https://medium.com/illumination/universal-consciousness-b7d38f02eefe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objective_idealism

https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/panpsychism-the-trippy-theory-that-everything-from-bananas-to-bicycles-are

 

Such ideas seem to have kinship with books such as The Tao of Physics, and eastern mysticism.

[midniterider]

1 hour ago, pantheory said:

Universal Consciousness, Analytic Idealism (also called Objective Idealism), and Panpsychism all appear to be more like eastern religions or abstruse metaphysics, far from science based ideas IMO.

 

https://medium.com/illumination/universal-consciousness-b7d38f02eefe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objective_idealism

https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/panpsychism-the-trippy-theory-that-everything-from-bananas-to-bicycles-are

 

I agree, this stuff is very similar to Eastern religion. That's why I like it.

[pantheory]

1 hour ago, midniterider said:

 

I agree, this stuff is very similar to Eastern religion. That's why I like it.

 

OK then

[Joshpantera]

I don't know if anyone is watching the series, but it's good to take in.

 

I see that Pantheory is a little fresh off the boat concerning eastern philosophy. But apparently the discussion must be interesting enough to have made him curious about it. We have a scientist in the spirituality section! And it's making the discussion colorful. Thanks for hanging with it this long, Pan. 

 

I'm assuming that you're open minded enough to watch the content of the video series and try and cite what sections you'd like to comment on? It would help to verify whether or not you do understand the philosopher's arguments. They're not something that you can just nail a comment on in passing based on what other people are saying about it. You'd have to take in the content yourself and weigh out the arguments, which, look pretty dam interesting. And I don't see why you wouldn't get the points that the philosopher is raising. 

 

It's important to note what's wrong with the panpsychism view which was discussed in part 3. 

 

Panpsychism is not conscious realism or this analytic idealism. And it's good to understand the difference laid out both by Hoffman and in this series as well. I noticed that you had conflated them in your last post. And I'm guessing you didn't see the content we were going through earlier outlining how and why they are different.

 

Basically, panpsychism is a dualist philosophy, and these others are non-dual. It's all within the range of pantheistic philosophy, but there's a split among pantheists concerning dualistic versus non-dual. This has played itself out in the Vedic traditions of India through Advaita Vedanta, which is the non-dual direction. It marks a series of realization about Brahman (energy-consciousness) and how a person relates to the Brahman concept. Advaita Vedanta is the apex, or high point of following the logic out to a natural conclusion. And introduces the non-dual idea. Advaita Vendanta, losely, mean 'not dual.' 

 

So, you're correct that analytic idealism reflects views that are similar in eastern philosophy. But more specifically, they only have the similarity with a narrow portion of eastern philosophy that centers around non-dualism. It's not a blanket fit. It will disagree with panpsychism and the other dualistic forms of eastern philosophy. 

 

5 hours ago, midniterider said:

I agree, this stuff is very similar to Eastern religion. That's why I like it.

 

Agreed. 

 

7 hours ago, pantheory said:

Universal Consciousness, Analytic Idealism (also called Objective Idealism), and Panpsychism all appear to be more like eastern religions or abstruse metaphysics, far from science based ideas IMO.

 

That's what's so different about Conscious Realism. It's a cross over from analytic idealism philosophy into mathematical based science. There's a bridging the gap effort underway with it. He wants mathematically precise language to describe reality through CR. These strictly philosophical stances like AI (spoiler alert!), aren't concerned with mathematically precise language. And it's going to bring about differences between what ancient pantheists were thinking and how it plays out through scientific theory. None of these ancient religions will turn to be literally true, but this is a dam close match. A reality of conscious agents isn't exactly Brahman and Maya, but it's really fucking close. 

 

Religion, worship, groveling, or such nonsense isn't justified through the theory of CR, or AI as I'm seeing it. They're non-dual. You'd be praising yourself. And the question would be why? Is there any need for priests, gurus, or any of that? Not really. What it does is outline a scenario that midnite gets into about the 36:00 mark of the 4th video lecture. 

 

14 hours ago, midniterider said:

He basically says that there is a universal mind that encompasses everything. Everything is inside it. It is really nothing but mentation. At times some of this mentation decides to dissociate itself from the rest of the universal mind. It pretends that it is a separate entity from the rest of itself. It is similar to a human being who has dissociated into several personalities...that all use the same brain.

 

This is what you and I and everyone are: dissociated parts of the whole. In order to remain as a pretend separate entity you have to draw boundaries (imaginary boundaries) around yourself to say "this is me and that over there is not me" otherwise you would stop being a separate you and just flow back into the cosmic soup like a droplet of water becomes part of a puddle if it touches it. Though in reality they are the same substance.

 

I'm going through these sections now. Right away, he's done the best job that I've seen yet in terms of arguing universal consciousness. That's always been a tough one for me and I've been resistant towards universal scale consciousness. But I'm starting to see how better arguments for it can be formulated.