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Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#41

Post by thevardanian »

sjeohp wrote: post #30
thevardanian wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. the universe isn't conscious. The universe is matter. Consciousness is a part of the universe. Therefore consciousness is simply material. Nothing more, nothing less. It's just that our egos are too big to accept that we are nothing more than dirt.

No. the universe isn't math. The universe is matter. Math is a part of the universe. Therefore math is simply material. Nothing more, nothing less.

Math isn't anything but matter. Math is just another thought construct. A powerful thought construct, but a thought construct nonetheless. As a thought construct it too is material. The electronic impulses on you computer are no different than the ones in your brain.

So yes. Math is also a material manifestation. Life is a material manifestation. Thought is a material manifestation. The problem is with you trying to separate yourself from matter, but the very thing you're using to create that separation is thought. It is the very thing you're trying to get away from, and so you cannot exist separate from thought by using thought. It is a futile and empty game.

Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#42

Post by dwaltrip »

monktastic1 wrote: post #34
dwaltrip wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my view, the two dynamics are incredibly intertwined. The sensation is largely made up of and intertwined with an understanding of what the sensation _means_. I'll try to give an example: Think of a complex modern art painting. It's much more difficult to perceive the colors used in the painting, as the boundaries between different parts and components of the painting are far less meaningful or distinguishable, co…

> When you look around your kitchen, the sensations of color are nearly instantaneously associated with rich semantic information about the various objects. Nearly . This is why the main thrust of meditation is about becoming aware of ever-subtler processes, both on- and off-cushion. When there's enough awareness to distinguish between the arising of bare perception and the associations it triggers (for example), it…

Hi monktastic!

> This is why the main thrust of meditation is about becoming aware of ever-subtler processes.

Indeed. It's an incredible method to find insight.

> When there's enough awareness to distinguish between the arising of bare perception and the associations it triggers...

I would argue that the concept of bare perception, absent of any sort of understanding (the understanding could be quite minimal, as with an infant, dog, or even an ant), is a non-sequitur.

It's like asking for mass without of gravity. The consciousness _is_ the understanding of each instantaneous moment.

This is why meditation can only take us so far, as it is impossible to become an ant or an infant, to completely abandon all accumulated understanding. But by reducing our assumptions and constructed frameworks of meaning as much as possible, interesting things may happen.

> it becomes clear why we identified consciousness with association, and why it doesn't quite capture what we were originally curious about. Something interesting remains.

This is the crux. Without being able to totally abandon your associations and understanding, how do you know for certain some aspect of consciousness lies beyond them?

That seems to me something no human could ever experience, and that if they could, they would no longer function nor possess any awareness at all.

Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#43

Post by catshirt »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #18

My best at guess is that the universe itself is conscious, and we'll eventually let go of the idea of individual consciousnesses. An ant hive sees a larger field more clearly than I do, maybe at a slower refresh rate but not by much. Are individual ants conscious? Somewhat. Are we conscious when we're receiving reality through memes beyond our comprehension? Somewhat. Are our rods and cones conscious? Our brain stem?…

Godel Escher Bach has a bit where he explores an ant colony as consciousness, opposed to an individual ant (which are more like "thoughts", to put it one way)

Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#44

Post by Sawamara »

thevardanian wrote: post #41
sjeohp wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. the universe isn't math. The universe is matter. Math is a part of the universe. Therefore math is simply material. Nothing more, nothing less.

Math isn't anything but matter. Math is just another thought construct. A powerful thought construct, but a thought construct nonetheless. As a thought construct it too is material. The electronic impulses on you computer are no different than the ones in your brain. So yes. Math is also a material manifestation. Life is a material manifestation. Thought is a material manifestation. The problem is with you trying to…

Ideas are not material. Even if they are stored in material brains.

Especially not when they can be independently rediscovered without having any trace of them stored anywhere.

Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#45

Post by goialoq »

hasenj wrote: post #16
dontreact wrote: post #14

I lost the thread in the first two paragraphs. Can anyone explain to me why it's so obvious infants are conscious? THis seems to be taken as a given for the rest of the article. Couldn't they be in a state similar to sleepwalking which seems not conscious to me? Perhaps consciousness flashes on as you have your first few "flashbulb memories".

Consciousness does not have to mean being "mentally" (intellectually) aware of what's going on. It's about experiencing stuff, and having a _sensation_

Does a thermostat have a _sensation_ of temperature? Why or why not?

Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#46

Post by eivarv »

colordrops wrote: post #38
thevardanian wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. the universe isn't conscious. The universe is matter. Consciousness is a part of the universe. Therefore consciousness is simply material. Nothing more, nothing less. It's just that our egos are too big to accept that we are nothing more than dirt.

Have you ever considered that objective reality is seated in consciousness rather than the other way around? Look into Plato's allegory of the cave. The world around you is actually a simulation created in your brain by synthesizing inputs from your sensory organs - you aren't experiencing it directly. That model includes the conception that you have a brain and sensory organs which simulate an objective reality. In…

Just to nitpick: Wouldn't this by definition make it non-objective?

I would think the objective reality in your explanation would be what your sensory organs are reacting to, not what you perceive.

Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#48

Post by nsxwolf »

marccantwell wrote: post #20

It is hard to take the author seriously, or as an authority, when he rejects materialism and states something like "Physical death is merely a de-clenching of awareness", and he believes in the afterlife.

Why does that make the author hard to take seriously? Because of your bias toward materialism?

Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#49

Post by sorokod »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #18

My best at guess is that the universe itself is conscious, and we'll eventually let go of the idea of individual consciousnesses. An ant hive sees a larger field more clearly than I do, maybe at a slower refresh rate but not by much. Are individual ants conscious? Somewhat. Are we conscious when we're receiving reality through memes beyond our comprehension? Somewhat. Are our rods and cones conscious? Our brain stem?…

Perhaps individual ants are conscious to a degree. This kind of non binary contiousnes was explored in "I am a strange loop"

Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#50

Post by canoebuilder »

breckinloggins wrote: post #5

This equivocation between consciousness and meta-consciousness is so widespread that a plethora of books, which are seemingly dedicated to the project of "explaining consciousness", instead spend their entire contents explaining some hypothesis involving meta-consciousness and then proceed to declare victory without ever touching consciousness itself. Jaynes' "The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bica…

>Yet it's most often the very thing we spend all our time focusing on.

We think. We think about thinking. We think about thinking about thinking.

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