I do believe this, but I wouldn't say materialism was my path toward that belief. Relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egregore
If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious (2015)
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Re: If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious (2015)
#72I think groups of people are conscious in a sense. When I say conscious I'll use a definition where consciousness is the behavior of a physical system that is: * directional/goal oriented * exhibits higher order patterns / behaviors which are greater than the sum of its parts. A riot would probably be the easiest example to start with. You get a group of mildly angry people together and they can become enraged and do…
I don't think this captures most peoples' intuitive notion of consciousness at all. Most people think of it as their directly perceived experience.
I can't really discuss the directly perceived experience of anything other than myself since I have no way of accessing it. I have no way of knowing if you have directly perceived experiences, but I would assume you do since I can see certain characteristics in you.
For what it's worth, I actually do think that a collection of people (such as the United States) has directly perceived experiences. That's something that would be quite difficult to prove, and I believe those experiences would be very different from ours. Similarly, I think the directly perceived experiences of a housefly or an amoeba would be very different from my own as well.
Re: If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious (2015)
#73In early school I was taught in the very fundamentals of sociology that the smallest unit in sociology is a group - whether it's a transient group walking the same area, or waiting at the bus stop; or people working the various food stalls at the mall. They react to presence of each other and influence each other. They have distinct (if transient) common goal.
In other words, I don't know what materialism in any sense of the word has to do with it.
Re: If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious (2015)
#74Wait, do materialists accept both that consciousness (in the sense of sense informally and very much nonmaterially stated as “experiencing qualia”, as opposed to the medical sense which is clearly a defined material state) exists and has a single accepted coherent materialistic definition that can could be applied here?
Because it's always seemed to me that “if you are a materialist, you probably think conscious is an interesting fuzzy idea that would be interesting to explore if it could be adequately defined to make that possible, which it clearly hasn't and doesn't seem likely to ever be” is more accurate.
Re: If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious (2015)
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not at all. Hope and love don’t need to have any meaning in the wider universe in order for them to have meaning to me. Serious question—how does the notion of "hope" become any more concrete in the non-materialist view? Perhaps your immortal soul can "hope" that it hasn't been attached to a physical body with a physical brain tumour pressing upon its physical amygdala. Personally I cannot see how non-materialism use…
Either everything matters, or nothing matters. Choose one, and follow the resulting consequences.
I really don't understand how you could come to that conclusion. Whether something matters or not is entirely subjective or depends on context. Like, what does that even mean? My happiness matters very much to me, but doesn't matter at all to someone who will never meet me, or to the orbit of the earth around the sun... Yet the mass of the earth objectively matters very much to its orbit around the sun, and to many other things that would be affected by earth having a different mass. Maybe you mean, does it matter to me personally? Even then, I can't possibly see any reason why it would have to be all or nothing. Some distant galaxy on the other side of the known universe doesn't matter at all to me and likely never will. The current temperature outside matters to me a fair bit though, because it'll influence how likely I am to want to avoid the cold, or how long I stay outside.
Like I'm just trying to figure out if you're actually trying to say something meaningful or just saying something vague and abstract to try and sound "deep".
Re: If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious (2015)
#76As a materialist, I am not particularly taken by this particular argument (which is not to say that I would summarily reject other arguments to the same end.) It's weakness, I think, is in the claim that the United States has all the types of properties that materialists tend to regard as characteristic of conscious beings. If you favor some form of panpsychism (especially in the form that, for example, regards build…
If you’re a materialist, there is no reason to have hope, you’re just reacting to stimulus.
What is hope other than a symbol in our symbolic reasoning, bound to a set of specific emotions (that is, specific activations inside the brain)?
Re: If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious (2015)
#77Wait, do materialists accept both that consciousness (in the sense of sense informally and very much nonmaterially stated as “experiencing qualia”, as opposed to the medical sense which is clearly a defined material state) exists and has a single accepted coherent materialistic definition that can could be applied here? Because it's always seemed to me that “if you are a materialist, you probably think conscious is a…
There are many contexts where the same words mean many - often directly contradictory things.
Medical definition has a valid use. Does this one? I'm not sure which is whilst kind of true it falls into that class of observations and musings that are largely useless and meaningless until they can be exploited
Re: If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious (2015)
#78What I like is the way everyone has just accepted the inference that the us is made of dumb parts
Re: If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious (2015)
#79This is kind of out there, but this book provides a cross-cultural overview of the idea of collective beings created by human religious practices, nationalisms, etc.
https://www.amazon.com/Egregores-Occult-Entities-Watch-Desti....
Re: If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious (2015)
#80Consciousness is an illusion -,daniel c denett
Can someone explain what does that mean??