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Is the Sun Conscious? (2021) [pdf]

sheldrake.org

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Re: Is the Sun Conscious? (2021) [pdf]

#191
post #38

Apologies if this is a dumb question or a taboo question or both, but what the does “conscious” mean? We know about lots of complex systems, and systems that exhibit “emergent” behaviors seeming much more complex and goal-directed than the components of the system (the glider gun, that thing with the computer-modeled birds with like 3 simple rules but then the whole flock does complicated, creative stuff, long list).…

Sam Harris likes to say that consciousness is “what it’s like to be.” This has always seemed to me a pointless tautology.

Sounds like a super reductive panpsychism

I think we can all agree that rocks don’t have subjective aesthesia

Re: Is the Sun Conscious? (2021) [pdf]

#192
post #94

Tl;dr We shouldn't care. Is my partner conscious? My dog? Actually, I don't know. I can say that I experience myself as conscious. In our daily interactions we never ask such questions. Last week, I hired a new programmer. We checked the CV and the code challenge. We invited the candidate to see how they get around with the team etc. At no point, we asked if they're conscious. I think our brains are machines for pred…

> I think our brains are machines for predicting what happens next. Technologist thinks that humans are machines (breaking news) > Therefore, a large brain makes sense because it can simulate the world more precisely and make better predictions. Whence consciousness? > One mistake of this simulation is that the brain simulates us as a conscious agent who can make their own decisions and act in the world. A mistake? L…

>> I think our brains are machines for predicting what happens next.

> Technologist thinks that humans are machines (breaking news)

While I also dismiss or at least be careful of the inherent biases of technocratic viewpoints, humans and life in general are very much made of many types of machines.

Take a look at these videos:

https://youtu.be/wJyUtbn0O5Y

https://youtu.be/7Hk9jct2ozY

I.e., life is insane and bewildering.

Re: Is the Sun Conscious? (2021) [pdf]

#193
post #94

Tl;dr We shouldn't care. Is my partner conscious? My dog? Actually, I don't know. I can say that I experience myself as conscious. In our daily interactions we never ask such questions. Last week, I hired a new programmer. We checked the CV and the code challenge. We invited the candidate to see how they get around with the team etc. At no point, we asked if they're conscious. I think our brains are machines for pred…

just what a philosophical zombie would say

Re: Is the Sun Conscious? (2021) [pdf]

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if you're dunking on "spiritual/religious/personal/subjective" stuff, but the hard question of consciousness is, in some ways, the most important question of all. Far more important than "science" questions like "what is dark matter?" Literally our entire civilization is built on the idea that humans have qualia and therefore causing harm to humans is often unethical. If we were to somehow come to believ…

> Literally our entire civilization is built on the idea that humans have qualia and therefore causing harm to humans is often unethical. Here's an alternative angle that doesn't lead to dystopia: Humans generate knowledge. Causing harm to knowledge is unethical. Broad human rights protect humans as knowledge generators (now or in the future or in potential) without going through the fraught process of arguing about…

Knowledge is too broad a concept to protect all of it. Taking it to the extreme would probably mean that all output of /dev/random should be treasured in multiple backups, to avoid any bits to die.

Re: Is the Sun Conscious? (2021) [pdf]

#195
post #77

The tragedy (depending on how you look at it) with discussions about consciousness is that any possible consciousness we envision is inevitably human-like. We wouldn’t see it as “consciousness” even if it was only somewhat different from ours (animals); a consciousness that is really different may look to us like any natural process. A question of “is X conscious?” has no meaning if you remove that constraint of “hum…

I am not so sure about it. The question is, whether consciousness also leads to changing behavior. Say we try to communicate with method X and the sun answers with a flare, would probably be proof. But it could also be, it has consciousness, but simply would not care much about and ignore us.

Even that wouldn't indicate the sun is conscious. Your computer responds when you press a key, is that proof it's conscious?

(I don't think it's impossible that computers are conscious, but I cannot even proof that humans other than me possess a consciousness)

Re: Is the Sun Conscious? (2021) [pdf]

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if you're dunking on "spiritual/religious/personal/subjective" stuff, but the hard question of consciousness is, in some ways, the most important question of all. Far more important than "science" questions like "what is dark matter?" Literally our entire civilization is built on the idea that humans have qualia and therefore causing harm to humans is often unethical. If we were to somehow come to believ…

> Literally our entire civilization is built on the idea that humans have qualia and therefore causing harm to humans is often unethical. Here's an alternative angle that doesn't lead to dystopia: Humans generate knowledge. Causing harm to knowledge is unethical. Broad human rights protect humans as knowledge generators (now or in the future or in potential) without going through the fraught process of arguing about…

Knowledge? That's entirely an anthropomorphic point-of-view issue. E.g. The impact of every drop of rain ever, is 'recorded' in the water table. All that data is lost, quintillions of bits of information, every day.

We don't harm humans because we are human, and value our kind. That's about it.

Re: Is the Sun Conscious? (2021) [pdf]

#197

Apologies if this is a dumb question or a taboo question or both, but what the does “conscious” mean? We know about lots of complex systems, and systems that exhibit “emergent” behaviors seeming much more complex and goal-directed than the components of the system (the glider gun, that thing with the computer-modeled birds with like 3 simple rules but then the whole flock does complicated, creative stuff, long list).…

Yeah. The biggest thing most people miss is that the question your asking is in No way at all profound. You are asking an extremely mundane question that only appears profound as an illusion. What you are dealing with here is in actuality a language problem. You are contemplating and asking about the intricacies of a specific vocabulary word. It is an arbitrary sounding word with a simply arbitrarily vague definition…

This assumes that language is fundamental to all understanding. May well be true, and it probably is according to Wittgenstein, but it is just one of many perspectives, and I'm not convinced.

Re: Is the Sun Conscious? (2021) [pdf]

#198
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't make sense. In the case of humans and animals, consciousness is a way to adapt to the environment to protect their lives, fulfill their needs and eventually reproduce. Consciousness is useful for life. But in the case of the sun, what is it adapting to, and what does it have to protect? Nothing. The fact that consciousness appears always in populations might be essential. Consciousness was the result of…

"Consciousness is useful for life. But in the case of the sun, what is it adapting to, and what does it have to protect? Nothing" You don't know that. Maybe it is us, or other life in general it wants to sustain and protect. We know very little about consciousness or how life in general came to being. Maybe it is connected to other suns and the black hole in the center of the milky way, to exchange ideas, philosophy,…

"Want" is not a concept of evolution. Evolution is not a teleological mechanism. You'd have to argue how mutation and selection pressure works for stars, and how their traits would be passed from one star generation to the next, so that they would develop a consciousness with "wants". Given that the sun is a third the age of the universe, it seems unlikely that the sun is the evolutionary result of an ancestry of stars of any relevant length.

Re: Is the Sun Conscious? (2021) [pdf]

#199
post #110

Someone ought to trick analytic philosophers into taking some of the more popular psychoactive substances, so they finally discover how tightly coupled consciousness is to the matter in the nervous system and stop their embarrassing search for Holy Spirit. Also, the sun is clearly an anus: "The simplest image of organic life united with rotation is the tide. From the movement of the sea, uniform coitus of the earth w…

I’d say most of them have and these substances prove nothing close to what you’re suggesting. Yes they hint that the whole universe, at least our ideas of it, being an illusion made up by your brain. This isn’t consciousness though, your awareness remains the same it is simply your perception that is changed by mind altering drugs and none of these philosophers would argue your perception isn’t a product of the body.…

Aware is germanic, perceive is latin, it's the same concept. Maybe meditation doesn't have the results you think it has?

As for what drug experiences can tell us, I didn't claim they say anything about "the whole universe". They can however tell us other things. For one, LSD causes parts of the brain that usually work in a synchronised manner, like a system of cooperating parts, to loosen from each other, which is probably why one can experience a loss of coherence in perception of self and the immediate surroundings. At the very least it tells us that this molecule interacts with the biological foundation for experiencing the world as coherent, understandable, and when we're under its influence this experience is distorted or dissolved.

This tears into the feelings foundational to big religions, the perception of the universe as created, ordered, having a telos, can easily be temporarily disrupted, and hence we know that this 'wisdom' is contingent on us ignoring the possibility that it is a product of evolution rather than a divine gift or insight gained through spiritual exercise. You could of course project magical thinking onto such molecules and consider them demonic or whatever, but good luck keeping that up under capitalism without being victimised by conspiracy theory grifters, marketing specialists and so on.

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