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Is Consciousness Everywhere?

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Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#191

Post by hntrader »

kkoncevicius wrote: post #183
hntrader wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're making a good point, but anthropic reasoning is hard so I'm still mulling it over. What you're saying is that panpsychism implies a lower probability of you ending up as you, because you may have ended up as a conscious bacteria instead. I'm going to tentatively disagree with that because the counterfactual of you ending up as a bacteria instead of a human is impossible, and therefore it doesn't factor…

The argument I am pondering over here is very similar to the one about human population, you might have heard about it, it goes something like this: "human population is now likely highest it will ever be and will be drastically reduced in the future, because if we were to be born as any human randomly we would likely be born during a period where there are highest number of people alive". Sadly I don't remember the…

It's the Doomsday Argument and I can see how you're applying the same logic.

Doesn't this logic also imply that solipsism is true? 1 observer is less than 7 billion observers and therefore more likely under the logic of the Doomsday argument.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#193

Post by kkoncevicius »

hntrader wrote: post #191
kkoncevicius wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument I am pondering over here is very similar to the one about human population, you might have heard about it, it goes something like this: "human population is now likely highest it will ever be and will be drastically reduced in the future, because if we were to be born as any human randomly we would likely be born during a period where there are highest number of people alive". Sadly I don't remember the…

It's the Doomsday Argument and I can see how you're applying the same logic. Doesn't this logic also imply that solipsism is true? 1 observer is less than 7 billion observers and therefore more likely under the logic of the Doomsday argument.

Thank you for naming it, now I can see if there are criticism of the doomsday argument that also apply.

And I do see how this can lead to solipsism. In particular when combined with "Self-Indication Assumption: The possibility of not existing at all" [1] . Solipsism would be a theory that explains both - the doomsday original argument and this criticism.

But I haven't thought much about that.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument#Self-Indicat...

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#194

Post by morpheos137 »

gowld wrote: post #190
morpheos137 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I find that a very strange statement for a supposedly conscious being to make. I don't claim to be conscious. I am alive and awake and thinking and sensing, etc. >Consciousness does absolutely objectively exist, or at least I can say it does for me. This sentence appears to confuse subjective experience with objective reality. >That its existence is not objectively measurable doesn't mean it doesn't exist If we can…

OK, Consciousness is a subjective opinion. Are you claiming that subjective opinions do not exist, despite your own observations of your own subjective opinons? Also, imagine you live in a box with a yellow ball. And you can speak to other people outside your box. They tell you they also live in a box with a yellow ball. You will never have proof that they actually have yellow balls in their boxes. And they will neve…

First you have to define what you mean by "exist." Of course every idea that can be conceived exists in some sense.

That does not mean its existence is realised or useful. Is it useful (consequential) and consistent that yellow balls exist? If yes, then they do. If no, then they don't.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#195

Post by readbeard »

morpheos137 wrote: post #180
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that a very strange statement for a supposedly conscious being to make. Consciousness does absolutely objectively exist, or at least I can say it does for me. That its existence is not objectively measurable doesn't mean it doesn't exist, it just means that the philosophy of empiricism is not complete.

>I find that a very strange statement for a supposedly conscious being to make. I don't claim to be conscious. I am alive and awake and thinking and sensing, etc. >Consciousness does absolutely objectively exist, or at least I can say it does for me. This sentence appears to confuse subjective experience with objective reality. >That its existence is not objectively measurable doesn't mean it doesn't exist If we can…

Is there any measurement or objective fact in the world that you can become aware of except by means of subjective experience?

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#196

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

misterkrabs wrote: post #78
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.

I don’t know but my guess is that both Sam Harris and Alan Watts are not science-based, peer-reviewed scientists. And the HR audience seems, to me, skewed in that direction.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#197

Post by ivansavz »

anthk wrote: post #187
mssundaram wrote: post #126

To answer the title's question simply from a Hindu perspective - yes, definitely, consciousness (God) is everywhere and in everything.

prove it.

I'm not sure if it is a "proof" of any sort, but I find the ideas in the माण्डूक्य उपनिषद् (Mandukya Upanishad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandukya_Upanishad ) to be a very interesting point of view. This short text discusses the theory of four states of consciousness:

    Waking                 \
    Dreaming                > Turiya ≝ pure consciousness illuminating these
    Deep dreamless sleep   /
These two lectures were very good: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGKFTUuJppU - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0dugc4TrlE

And you can read the original text here: https://universaltheosophy.com/sacred-texts/mandukya-upanish...

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#198

Post by carapace »

morpheos137 wrote: post #184
carapace wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There can be no rigorous definition of what consciousness is, just names (experience, subjectivity, awareness, self, you) because it has no qualities. Consciousness is impossible to describe. It is neither hot nor cold, it has no size, and it experiences no passage of time as it is always now, eternal. There are no sides to it and no parts. It has no extent. It cannot be pointed to. It is beyond all possible signific…

Ok I actually understand what you mean. You are defining "consciousness" to be the "essence of being" in that case I agree it exists but as you mention >[Essence of being] is impossible to describe. It is neither hot nor cold, it has no size, and it experiences no passage of time as it is always now, eternal. There are no sides to it and no parts. It has no extent. It cannot be pointed to. Therefore it is not amenabl…

Yes, exactly. Broadly speaking we can't study awareness with the same Scientific Method that works for physical systems.

To be sure, there are some neuroscientists who are doing some very interesting and useful work studying things like "What's the least stimulus that causes a noticeable percept?"

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#199

Post by carapace »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #189
carapace wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There can be no rigorous definition of what consciousness is, just names (experience, subjectivity, awareness, self, you) because it has no qualities. Consciousness is impossible to describe. It is neither hot nor cold, it has no size, and it experiences no passage of time as it is always now, eternal. There are no sides to it and no parts. It has no extent. It cannot be pointed to. It is beyond all possible signific…

Agreed. And because consciousness is not physical, I can't fathom where it comes from. Like...I can grasp the idea of abiogenesis [0], the concept that organic molecules started self-replicating through chemical reactions that over millions of years started forming single-celled life that after a couple billion years turned into complex multi-cellular life and evolution has put us into the form we (and all other life…

Well, FWIW, the old mystics all say that consciousness comes first, and the physical universe is something that happens "within" consciousness.

We are meat robots. Brains scans have shown that we do not "make decisions". Your brain makes the decision and then a few tens of milliseconds later you have the subjective experience of "I decide". Free will is an illusion. The neuroscientists discovered this but the philosophers and public haven't gotten the memo yet.

The fascinating thing is that the automatic meat robots become sophisticated enough to notice that they are conscious. This should technically be impossible but it does happen.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#200

Post by driggs »

acruns wrote: post #179
driggs wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pardon my inability to express accurately with words, but I most certainly did not experience oblivion. I am using the word "oblivion" to describe the state of absolutely no experience whatsoever. It was practically religious/mystical/psychedelic in that it truly felt that I had not existed at all during that time. (And, no offense, I get the George Harrison reference, but saying that consciousness "is everything" be…

No offense taken. But isn't nothingness or no experience an experience? It seems you did experience something, that something might equate to nothingness or the void or oblivion but there was an experience? It sounds similar to "experiencing" a thought. It happens and we can all agree they do, but what is it to experience a thought? Can you smell, touch, feel a thought?

I didn't "experience nothingness"; I did not experience, full stop.

My consciousness did not exist. I had no awareness of the passage of time. There was no observer. No dreams. From my perspective, I teleported from a chair to another room, with an existential discontinuity in between. The only "experiencing" was after my consciousness was brought back online.

I cannot describe it to you sufficiently with words, and you likely cannot understand it sufficiently without ceasing to exist for yourself. Are the dead aware that they are dead? It seems, from my perspective, that for those 45 minutes, my consciousness was extinguished, not unlike that of someone fully dead.

(Not that I have first-hand experience being fully dead, of course! And, in a conversation about panpsychism, I suppose the experience of being a dead body isn't something to discredit as "nothing"!)

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