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Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#91

Post by crazygringo »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #55
randallsquared wrote: post #38

This has the feel of Michelson's assertion in the 1890s that all the principles had been discovered. LLMs and AGI seem poised to give us a huge and expanding space in which to discover how consciousness works, and predeclaring that nothing will be found seems like a voluntary mistake.

> LLMs and AGI seem poised to give us a huge and expanding space in which to discover how consciousness works How? My own intuition is that LLMs will contribute precisely nothing to the philosophy of consciousness. Philosophers have been considering the consequences of intelligent machines for some time.

Exactly. Consciousness is about qualia -- the color of red, the texture of sand, and so forth. It's awareness.

There's nothing we know now that suggests consciousness has anything whatsoever to do with intelligence.

We are aware (or conscious) of our intelligent trains of thought (at least up to a certain point), in the same way we're aware of a pain in our knee. We are conscious of watching ourselves weigh the pros and cons of a decision we have to make. But there's nothing whatsoever to suggest that consciousness plays a role in intelligent thought itself, at least not yet.

We know that we ourselves are both conscious and intelligent, but it's entirely possible that's a total coincidence.

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#92

Post by opportune »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #90
BasedAnon wrote: post #88

What's the deal with these things being lumped in with physics? This isn't physics this is just regular philosophy with some scientific sounding language. I feel like this is people reaching for religion but not wanting to admit it to themselves.

I hate that most education systems don’t teach that physics has its roots in philosophy and some of the most rigorous recent math stems from philosophy (Gödel) leading to vacuous gatekeeping comments like this.

Gödel was a logician, which is practically mathematics. “Philosophy” includes everything from that to stoned Berkeley undergrads convincing each other that getting stoned must have been what led humans to develop consciousness from other apes

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#93

Post by Engineering-MD »

swader999 wrote: post #76
dbsmith83 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever conducted a simple experiment to prove you were not just lucid dreaming? It is a pretty easily falsifiable claim

That's something I wonder myself. I need to do a few more, maybe up to fifty before I have enough subjective data to be certain. What is this experiment to prove I'm not lucid dreaming? You can put your fingers on your nostrils and blow through fingers in lucid dream, irl the air stops, but in OBE, you might not have a full body. One time I did, other time I was just like a shadow, half formed. Really weird. There's…

I mean you could ask someone to leave a note (maybe a couple of random sentences or a password) somewhere that you have never seen. Go read it when OBE then when back in your body write it down and then get your friend to compare the note you wrote to the original.

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#94

Post by lend000 »

swader999 wrote: post #76
dbsmith83 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever conducted a simple experiment to prove you were not just lucid dreaming? It is a pretty easily falsifiable claim

That's something I wonder myself. I need to do a few more, maybe up to fifty before I have enough subjective data to be certain. What is this experiment to prove I'm not lucid dreaming? You can put your fingers on your nostrils and blow through fingers in lucid dream, irl the air stops, but in OBE, you might not have a full body. One time I did, other time I was just like a shadow, half formed. Really weird. There's…

You can see what's going on on your roof perhaps? I'm very interested in the subject and spend a lot of time meditating but have yet to experience anything one might consider mystical, outside of the use of psychedelics.

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#95

Post by euroderf »

tetrisgm wrote: post #79

I went to a talk by John Cleese, of Monty Python. He made a point about a recent thought that he landed through meditation. He said he believes less and less that consciousness is in the brain. Maybe it's something external, shared, and our brains work more like a camera, and make whatever is out there our own. It made an impression on me.

I would posit that human consciousness is not limited to the interior of the skull, nor even to an individual's nervous system.

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#97

Post by jayd16 »

nico wrote: post #6

> Since Galileo’s time the physical sciences have leaped forward, explaining the workings of the tiniest quarks to the largest galaxy clusters. But explaining things that reside “only in consciousness” Everything we know about anything is mediated through our subjective understanding and perception. Be it mathematical formulas that describe the universe or feelings about something. If you remove people, we don’t know…

> it is just impossible to know anything about a universe that doesn’t include our perception of it

Is this true? What about logical deductions? Can't you use math and logic to know things without perceiving them?

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#98

Post by blacksqr »

swader999 wrote: post #76
dbsmith83 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever conducted a simple experiment to prove you were not just lucid dreaming? It is a pretty easily falsifiable claim

That's something I wonder myself. I need to do a few more, maybe up to fifty before I have enough subjective data to be certain. What is this experiment to prove I'm not lucid dreaming? You can put your fingers on your nostrils and blow through fingers in lucid dream, irl the air stops, but in OBE, you might not have a full body. One time I did, other time I was just like a shadow, half formed. Really weird. There's…

>What is this experiment to prove I'm not lucid dreaming?

For decades magician and debunker of supernatural claims James Randi placed a new object on his dining table every month, and offered a million dollar prize to anyone who could tell him what the current object was. Of course the prize was never claimed.

Ask a friend down your block to put something on their dining table. Do your OBE thing and write down what you saw. If you're right you'll have proven you're not lucid dreaming and be world famous for demonstrating the reality of psychic phenomena.

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#99

Post by smokel »

swader999 wrote: post #42
gchamonlive wrote: post #30

I have been imersing myself in this subject and the gist of what I got is that consciousness collapses under the reductionist process currently employed in the scientific method. Moreover, the very framework in which the current scientific work is done might well be just an emergent data structure used by what we understand as consciousness to navigate whatever the objective reality is in a way that is simpler and mo…

You have a good grasp on this. Have you looked at Tom Campbell? He has a separate angle than Hoffman but very similar conclusions. The batshit crazy thing about Tom is that he shows you ways that you can individually experiment and prove through your own experiences the things he's positing. His My Big Toe trilogy goes into all this, but I shudder to recommend it. Tedious slog. If you really want to prove it to yours…

A thing with Out-of-Body-Experiences is that if you were able to shift outside of your body, then why would you still be constrained to the body of the earth?

If you were able to roam around free of physics, then certainly you would leave not only your human body, but you would have to take account of the earth moving around the sun as well (at breakneck speed, mind you). You'd probably be either a few kilometers inside our planet or up in the air, and then in space, in practically no time.

So, call me unconvinced about OBE's. It's most likely just your mind playing tricks on you.

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#100

Post by cassianoleal »

tetrisgm wrote: post #79

I went to a talk by John Cleese, of Monty Python. He made a point about a recent thought that he landed through meditation. He said he believes less and less that consciousness is in the brain. Maybe it's something external, shared, and our brains work more like a camera, and make whatever is out there our own. It made an impression on me.

Many people arrive at the same idea/perception, be it through meditation and/or with the help of psychedelics.

I think it was Terrence McKenna who described the brain as an antenna that tunes in to a certain band of the universal consciousness, and that's what we consider to be the thoughts of an individual.

More or less same idea, slightly different way of phrasing it.

I believe some buddhist practitioners also have a similar way of thinking.

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