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Is Consciousness Everywhere?

thereader.mitpress.mit.edu

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Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#71

Post by dr_dshiv »

namero999 wrote: post #18

For a superb and rigorous account of the ontological basis of consciousness, and why it might be superior to panpsychism while being more in line with scientific evidence, check "The idea of the world" by Bernardo Kastrup (or any of his work/youtube interview). Really compelling case. He used to work at CERN, and was the youngest executive at ASML, till recent when he decided to dedicate himself solely to philosophy.…

He's a really good Platonist! Hardly anyone is these days. Too bad—he is easily the greatest philosopher of all time.

I made a doc that introduces Plato and uses a keyword search to show his understanding of "Harmony" as the nature of goodness, pleasure and experience. Comments welcome https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lqXpXgWI5YMBCz1O0gCmrEwz...

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#72

Post by coolspot »

namero999 wrote: post #18

For a superb and rigorous account of the ontological basis of consciousness, and why it might be superior to panpsychism while being more in line with scientific evidence, check "The idea of the world" by Bernardo Kastrup (or any of his work/youtube interview). Really compelling case. He used to work at CERN, and was the youngest executive at ASML, till recent when he decided to dedicate himself solely to philosophy.…

It is well-known that people working in ASML don’t have soul, as it is etched out by Extreme Ultra-Violet.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#73

Post by acruns »

driggs wrote: post #48

I've long pondered the idea that consciousness is inherent to all "things" - animal, vegetable, mineral; atom, planet, solar system - in that things experience _being_, whatever that means for a given thing. A recent oral surgery gave this hypothesis pause. I was given Propofol as an anesthetic, and upon awakening had an extremely impactful existential experience. My very consciousness had been extinguished, instantl…

There can be no oblivion if you experienced it. I would suggest reversing the idea that conscience is part of a being and instead suggest that consciousness is inherit in everything because it is everything. Within or without a being.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#74

Post by mtalantikite »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #53

My consciousness (I won't speak for yours) is integrated yet contains many parts. It is hierarchical — and I am aware that there is much that I am not aware of. For instance, with some effort I can notice that a white wall is made of millions of blinking colored neuropixels. But normally that is below my awareness. When I meditate, sometimes I can notice that I'm thinking verbal thoughts—suggesting that verbal though…

> When I meditate, sometimes I can notice that I'm thinking verbal thoughts—suggesting that verbal thoughts transpire subconsciously, as well.

Something similar was coming up recently in my meditation practice, where I'd be aware of a vague impulse of a thought or idea arising before it became verbalized. Then I realized that I had had that experience before, when I was a kid and playing music a lot, where I'd notice the sensation of a thought beginning to arise but would put it away before it could get verbalized, since playing music needs a lot of attention and discursive thoughts will certainly make you mess up.

I'm not really trained in Zen, but in reading a book by Katsuki Sekida a while back he referred to thought impulses by varying degrees of 'nen', with the first 'nen' being a thought impulse of pure experience before it is recognized by a second or third degree 'nen'. This sort of felt related to that experience.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#75

Post by kkoncevicius »

skohan wrote: post #31
dukeofdoom wrote: post #20

This channel has lots of content on this topic. Including interviews with all the top people. https://www.youtube.com/c/CloserToTruthTV/videos To me it seems like consciousness can only be passed from one being to another. And since we are all just a collection of cells, and everything that we are is coded inside a cell. It seems to me that consciousness must exist at the cellular level.

Is there a reason you think consciousness can't simply be explained as brain activity?

I don't think consciousness can be explained as brain activity. To me that would lead to consciousness being a form of computation.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#76

Post by morpheos137 »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #70
morpheos137 wrote: post #61

Before we can ask intelligent, falsifiable questions about consciousness we need a rigorous definition of what consciousness is. Personally I think the word is a vague term and that a rigorous definition is impossible. Therefore, if my hypothesis is true, we can not not scientifically investigate "consciousness" any more than we can scientifically investigate "divinity" or "spookiness." If you disagree with my hypoth…

Well, remember, we can't even rigorously define something like "life". Doesn't mean we can't scientifically investigate it.

Sure we can. Biological life is something that replicates autonomously using DNA contained inside the apparatus of at least one cell. Viruses are not alive because they can not replicate on their own and do not produce their own cells. More abstractly life is something that follows the Darwinian program as demonstrated on Earth. If you had competing, replicating programs in a virtualised Earth-like environment I would say they were alive too if they could fully reproduce and establish resource economising ecosystems on their own.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#77

Post by retrac »

mtalantikite wrote: post #74
dr_dshiv wrote: post #53

My consciousness (I won't speak for yours) is integrated yet contains many parts. It is hierarchical — and I am aware that there is much that I am not aware of. For instance, with some effort I can notice that a white wall is made of millions of blinking colored neuropixels. But normally that is below my awareness. When I meditate, sometimes I can notice that I'm thinking verbal thoughts—suggesting that verbal though…

> When I meditate, sometimes I can notice that I'm thinking verbal thoughts—suggesting that verbal thoughts transpire subconsciously, as well. Something similar was coming up recently in my meditation practice, where I'd be aware of a vague impulse of a thought or idea arising before it became verbalized. Then I realized that I had had that experience before, when I was a kid and playing music a lot, where I'd notice…

I have always had the rather unsettling feeling that my internal monologue is a post-hoc justification or rationalization for what my subconscious just caused me to do, and was not the cause.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#78

Post by misterkrabs »

vaer-k wrote: post #8

Sam Harris' thoughts on free will in his books, app, and podcast transformed the way I think about consciousness. Alan Watts talked about the consciousness of a daffodil, and that too had a profound impact on my feelings about myself and the universe.

Why is this downvoted? Just honestly curious - I've never read these guys but I'm always hearing about Sam Harris.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#79

Post by nickmain »

tgv wrote: post #25

By what possible commonly agreed upon definition could consciousness be equal to experience? The only result of accepting that definition would be having to invent a new name for what I (and I believe many with me) call consciousness, as badly defined as it is. To put it in the words of Syndrome: if everything is conscious, nothing is.

Metacognition may be a better term to differentiate from the lazy use of consciousness.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#80

Post by boonware »

While Tononi's theory is interesting, it cannot be a complete explanation of conciousness at any level; it does not answer the Hard Problem of Conciousness.

Fundamentally, we need to understand why we have inner subjective experiences that feel the way they do. It sometimes keeps me awake at night troubling over how we could even begin to cast an explanation for this intimately subjective phenomenon in the objective language of mathematics and physics.

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