151–160 of 244 posts
I believe consciousness is on a spectrum of self-awareness. It just exists, perhaps even without evolutionary need. Even if you act mainly on instinct or even purely you could still very well be conscious. You will continue to exist as long as conscious life is able to propagate. For me, it makes sense that a state of nonexistence can't exist. Your consciousness is not unique, it's only a physical phenomena, thus it…
The article is quite ridiculous for stating that the alternative theory of a Multiverse is sloppy. It didn’t really give a reason why it’s sloppy. The Multiverse theory is an elegant and simple explanation for why everything seems to be so fine tuned. What’s more sloppy of an explanation - that the cosmos is somehow conscious and directed life to appear, or that there is an infinite number of universes? Looking back…
That depends. Multiple universes don't explain causation. For example if you assert that all things present in the material world you live in (right now) at some point transcended existence in thought only to a material form (the planet didn't build concrete, we did) - how does this fit through entropy in a multiverse? To assert that in a multiverse the causation is defined by tuning, the existence of a universe in contrast to that which we are currently experiencing brings no causation from one to another. To me, this implies that a 'multiverse' is likely not the case; rather - dimensionality within the universe we experience is much more likely the case for a unified cosmos, given the fine tuning.
As Tesla would say, to understand the world you have to understand frequency and vibration. Such as, matter is able to exist in multiple form with the same building blocks, thus extra dimensions would posit why this is possible across relativistic time by the observer. We're bound by our dimension and other dimensions are not.
You and I experience in 3D - but what about other organisms, perhaps they have attained an experience of our cosmos in other dimensions.
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You chose to type a reply to me right? I guess you could assume that you are compelled and your free will is an illusion, but honestly that view is shit.
You might like one more than the other, and one even might cause you to experience a better (more optimistic, agency-ful etc.) life than the other, but there's absolutely zero empirical proof either way.
I believe consciousness is on a spectrum of self-awareness. It just exists, perhaps even without evolutionary need. Even if you act mainly on instinct or even purely you could still very well be conscious. You will continue to exist as long as conscious life is able to propagate. For me, it makes sense that a state of nonexistence can't exist. Your consciousness is not unique, it's only a physical phenomena, thus it…
But what if the original lives on? What if you ship-of-theseus-like swap half of the clone's and the original's brain?
> Your consciousness is not unique, it's only a physical phenomena,
We have zero evidence for that – but then again, there's also zero evidence for people other than yourself being conscious in the first place, although there are compelling arguments.
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You chose to type a reply to me right? I guess you could assume that you are compelled and your free will is an illusion, but honestly that view is shit.
> that view is shit. Do tell. I also have strong views about free will, but opposing views are worth more than an offhand dismissal.
Is the Sun Conscious? (2021) [pdf]
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You might like one more than the other, and one even might cause you to experience a better (more optimistic, agency-ful etc.) life than the other, but there's absolutely zero empirical proof either way.
If there is equal evidence for two hypotheses, but one resonates with your personal experience and causes you to live a better life, what could possibly possess you to take the disempowering view?
There's of course also a variant of Pascal's wager in here, except that this one is logically sound, in my view: If there is free will, why not make use of it? And if there isn't, my beliefs aren't my choice anyway.
And just like from Pascal's wager, we can't derive any actual information about the nature of the universe and our conscious existence in it from that line of reasoning.
The most fundamental argument for panpsychism is that it obeys Occam's razor FAR better than the "emergent animate matter" hypothesis. Panpsychism requires that the universe updates its state by conscious choice, which we already know happens, so from the perspective of Occam's razor we would actually need to explain why it DIDN'T happen for non-animal matter. Additionally, if we go with the emergence hypothesis, we…
> The most fundamental argument for panpsychism is that it obeys Occam's razor FAR better than the "emergent animate matter" hypothesis. Meh. Seems to me like this is just dressing up the anthropic principle in clerical robes. The scare quotes around the "emergent animate matter" strawman sort of give the game away. There is no such "hypothesis". "Animate matter" is an observation, how it emerged is a question, and a…
Panpsychism says that it doesn't matter how life evolved, because the universe is aware as a matter of fact, so the particulars are unimportant, just the ability to encode, store and transmit information so complexity can develop over time.
The most fundamental argument for panpsychism is that it obeys Occam's razor FAR better than the "emergent animate matter" hypothesis. Panpsychism requires that the universe updates its state by conscious choice, which we already know happens, so from the perspective of Occam's razor we would actually need to explain why it DIDN'T happen for non-animal matter. Additionally, if we go with the emergence hypothesis, we…
It's important to distinguish choice/will and consciousness. Conscious experience can happen in an entirely deterministic context..they are orthogonal concepts.
For me, the real driving idea is that what we call physics is the aggregate behavior of conscious entities making choices, rather than being this framework that consciousness can "override" or worse, something that consciousness is forced to sit and observe. That idea simplifies a lot of the mysteries for me.
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In my mind, this is part of the mysticism of the movement. If you define a word widely enough, then anything can fit. I hate to invoke this, but this often feels like a Motte & Bailey argument. If you want to call "God" the energy which started the big bang, you're sort of smuggling personification into something which really bears zero resemblance to traditional religious ideas. And so it is with consciousness. If w…
Isn't that precisely the argument to extend the definition of consciousness, our own human bias on what is conscious colors what we define as such. If the 'universe' is conscious, every cell in your body is as well... and well... they are alive - and they do make 'decisions' that end up keeping (royal)us alive that look intelligent from an outside perspective... which is about the same perspective a large (zero-g evo…
In any case to answer where consciousness comes from, consciousness arises from the brain. You can test this with anesthesia, which is markedly different from sleep in that it does remove conscious experience. Although I agree it would be hard to pin down exactly what spectrum of animal is, or is not conscious, I think the extremes are pretty obvious. Obvious, unless, you're trying to extend consciousness to anything which could sense and react to its environment. If you want to call that consciousness, that's fine -- the human experience of having a distinct identity which can feel self-conscious, proud, content, anxious, etc -- is then something different entirely.