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I am pleased that you are at least trying to deal with these issues, Arq. In a way we agree about the "same Stuff." That "Stuff" is field and it manifests in various vibratory "event" forms as energy/mass using our "measures." It is your reluctance to consider the "dark" manifestations that dominate our reality as the mental versions. I do not fool myself that your resistance is to my scientific knowledge or views. It is largely due to my spiritual views as reflected in my Christian posts. The anathema that is Christianity to you evokes a significant bias within you that seems to prevent you from parsing my scientific and philosophical views from my spiritual beliefs. It is the worst kind of guilt by association causing you to denigrate and demean my views and their intellectual legitimacy largely on the basis of my spiritual experiences and views. You are not alone in this . . . but it is very frustrating.
Yet again an excellent exposition . . . but on the distinction between substance and property dualism we seem to disagree, Gaylen. You have not fully accepted and internalized the "vibratory event" nature of reality. You acknowledge the qualitative as essential and fundamental to reality so we agree on that aspect. I also detect the recognition of some aspect of it in your use of "self and world" as intrinsic to modeling a machine that not only behaves as if it is conscious but actually is conscious. (I see that goal as quixotic, btw.)
Reality is comprised of "vibratory events" and any permanence is derived from the aggregate "standing wave" aspects of them. Ask yourself what distinguishes the "reality" of the wave that "wipes you out" when surfing from the other waves. Does it ever cease to be real? Does your experience of it as an essential aspect ever cease to be real? Is there any way to extricate you as real from the experience? Events like the creation of our conscious awareness take time. The measurement of anything using that awareness takes time and acknowledgement of them takes time. It is this unavoidable "passage" of time involved in the event nature of reality that creates all the confusion about impermanence and what is real.
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Originally Posted by Gaylenwoof
I've just noticed a mistake in what I said here. What I should have said was:
Christianity - and basically any form of religion that talks about disembodied souls (surviving the death of the body, transferring from one body to another, etc.) requires substance dualism or idealism (a form of monism in which something like "Mind" or "Consciousness" is the basic "stuff" of reality).
I think this would be closer to what MysticPhD would want to say.
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My own view (dual-aspect theory) could be seen as a form of idealism since it takes "proto-qualitative aspects" as fundamental to reality (qualia as the contents of conscious experience emerge as "what-it's-like-to-be" certain kinds of physical processes - specifically: I would model qualia as "dynamic attractors" emerging in self-organizing physical processes, such that these attractors represent "goals" that the system intends to achieve via acting in the world.
The issue I have with this form of idealism is it makes the objects of the many pronouns we use illusory. I refuse to be considered an illusion submerged in euphemisms like "self-organizing" and "emerging" attractors that pretend to be explanations.
I've just noticed a mistake in what I said here. What I should have said was:
Christianity - and basically any form of religion that talks about disembodied souls (surviving the death of the body, transferring from one body to another, etc.) requires substance dualism or idealism (a form of monism in which something like "Mind" or "Consciousness" is the basic "stuff" of reality).
I think this would be closer to what MysticPhD would want to say. My own view (dual-aspect theory) could be seen as a form of idealism since it takes "proto-qualitative aspects" as fundamental to reality (qualia as the contents of conscious experience emerge as "what-it's-like-to-be" certain kinds of physical processes - specifically: I would model qualia as "dynamic attractors" emerging in self-organizing physical processes, such that these attractors represent "goals" that the system intends to achieve via acting in the world.
I sorta see see this as drifting between existence of things of matter (and mental processes - whatever they are - are, I incline to think, of 'matter' but in it most massless form) and things that exist without matter, which are (to me) concepts or labels supposed to have an independent existence without matter.
I have enough trouble with the idea of a soul of light or electrons existing independent of its bodily mechanism, without imagining some sort of pure spirit without any matter at all.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 08-25-2014 at 05:11 PM..
The issue I have with this form of idealism is it makes the objects of the many pronouns we use illusory. I refuse to be considered an illusion submerged in euphemisms like "self-organizing" and "emerging" attractors that pretend to be explanations.
I am rather on Mystic's wavelength here. It occurred to me as i was puffing me pipe under a nationwide rain -cloud that we were seeing philosophy trying to do an engineering job - finding a mechanism for the workings of the mind through philosophy.
Well, I have said that philosophy can propose theories that science then has to test. So I suppose i can't beef too much.
I found myself with the 'smile of the cat' argument (we are supposing for the sake of argument that a Cheshire cat exists) back at the zombie at the waterfall or indeed the driving of a car. The why and how of the reaction is biological and evolutionary as the why of the driving is evolutionary, I suppose and the how is mechanical. The 'What' is merely a label for what we observe, and the mental process of observation and processing that data is also biological and matter is (I would suppose) involved. The fear or excitement (or lack of it) of the zombie at the waterfall or the 'driving' apart from how and why we do it is just a convenient label. It has no mass, matter or existence.
Thus property dualism of that kind is a chimera, as I said, and Searle's revised dualism incorporating 'biological naturalism' is all one thing, a correct revised monism and deals with existent things of matter, even if without actual mass, or as near as makes no difference.
I was thinking a bit further about how this all relates to Mystic's thory, the materialist default, the 'Hard question' and indeed to the topic - whether it is feasible to put consciousness in a machine.
And of course, what it is really about - the supernatural, the soul and afterlife and God.
I was thinking a bit further about how this all relates to Mystic's theory (synthesis), the materialist default, the 'Hard question' and indeed to the topic - whether it is feasible to put consciousness in a machine.
And of course, what it is really about - the supernatural, the soul and afterlife and God.
Where the hard question is not so hard is that it seems to resolve into an argumentum ignorantiam (I'll check the latin ) there is a lot we don't know about the workings of the consciousness and qualia - the mental pixels, the experience of blueness and the experience of sweetness - but that doesn't mean that what is unknown has to be 'Something Else'.
I felt that dualism failed to make a case for that reason - there was no reason to suppose that what we couldn't explain had to be something else. Logically it failed. I go further now: it fails evidentially, because we know that everything is made of 'stuff'. Matter, atomic and sub atomic particles - all the same 'stuff'. On the basis of what we DO know, dualism seems to me improbable, not to say impossible.
Materialistic naturalism in action, folks. What we know is physics, matter and biology and the obvious default is that what we don't know is that, too, even what we can't yet explain.
Searle's modified dualism seems to fail for the same reason, or maybe it succeeds for the same reason There is no 'something else'. It is all the same stuff. What is not existent natural-materialistic 'stuff' is not existent labels for what we observe and want to give a name to.
The Cheshire cat's smile is made of stuff and so is the cat. It is still there, even when it goes invisible, or at least that would be the default. The shape of the smile is just the shape and is either why (evolution) or how (biology. 'What' is a label.
Just as geometric figures. A thing can be hexaognal - like a honeycomb cell -how and why is biological and physical. 'What' the hexagon is, is a label. Hexagons do not exist in nature, only hexagonal things.
But Mystic says that the materialist default is wrong. But how can that be? His Universal field - the cosmic consciousness which is ALL the consciousness we share with the universe (Aka 'God') is all the same stuff.
Yep, God, the soul, consciousness (the how and why of it) and Life, the universe and Everything is all made of the same stuff. It has to be and so dualism not only fails, but it fails to support Mystic's theory, which has to posit a universe of matter which is God (including the universal field and the dark matter which is the vehicle of universal Consciousness, Aka "God").
Why then does Mystic say that materialistic naturalism is wrong? Because it rejects the supernatural? No, because mystic has said that there is no 'Supernatural'. It is ALL 'natural'. And I agree; that is what I am saying in 'It is all matter and dualism fails'. This is materialistic naturalism in saying that it is the preferred theory for what we don't know as well as being the mechanism of what we do.
I won't use the term 'biological naturalism' as Searle has used it to apply to his modified dualism applied to the brain. I will say that it is materialistic naturalism as related to matters of biology.
But clearly, Mystic doesn't accept materialistic naturalism and its validity as the default theory, because it doesn't accept ..'Something More'. Not the supernatural, as 'God' is also 'natural'. But it doesn't accept 'God'. That, friends, is the nub of his beef with it.
Where he and I disagree and have right from the start is in what 'Consciousness' actually IS. I won't digress into the postulated Dark matter which seems to me irrelevant anyway. In a universe of 'Stuff', 'consciousness' exists right from the start. Where we differ is that I see consciousness as evolving, from the basic atomic reactions through to biochemical reactions and the biological reaction that in higher animals become awareness (as we call it - and that, apart from the How and why is merely a label) and in the highest animals it becomes problem solving. And in us, reasoning. Materialistic naturalism (accepting evolution -theory) would not disagree with that, I think.
Nor is there any reason to think that such awareness couldn't be put into a machine. That some instinctive knowledge would have to be implanted and some sensory devices for collating input is no different from genetically -implanted instinct and a baby's information -gathering sense -receptors.
Mystic on the other hand seems to suggest that the universal consciousness is all on a higher level - fully aware and problem -solving and indeed superior by far to the best thinking we can do. This is his "God" and that rather than the process of an evolved consciousness, is what materialistic naturalism does not accept and that is what he doesn't like about it.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 08-26-2014 at 12:43 AM..
It is very cool watching you sort this out in your head. Good show !!!!!
There are many way to address the need to "not be illusionary". It is actually a component of religions. It ties into the notion of needing a purpose. But leave that lie for now. lol "lie" get it.
Maybe try and think of "illusionary" as meaning "different than we think it is". Like a hologram. The hologram is there. The picture is there. It's just that it different than we think it is. Or, more importantly, different than we are used to thinking of what "it" is. In this case the image can be from etched glass not a ink drawling.
Also. If you are an illusion then everything else is an illusion. If that is true then everything is real. Thus you are real. And I didn't use one philosophical term.
I kinda disagree. God is/can be natural. I really don't care much about the words "material naturalism" at all. God can be the interactions between the particles of this universe just as we are "in his image" fits. "god" also as more particles and more states allowed then we have. Around 10^70 And that's less than 10% of the known universe. It may know everything those particle interactions can allow, If that is possible anyway.
"Higher level". I am not sure if it is "Higher" or "lower". It would have many more perspectives than us. It would think itself not much better than us. Although we understand that is humility. I could use some of that. We then can address how this "information" became a pattern. Well, guess using what we know that is.
What is a field? His universal field seems to be a set a set of fields. Not one.
Last edited by Arach Angle; 08-26-2014 at 06:51 AM..
Reason: usual mistakes.
God is generally posited as supernatural. Supernatural is an inherently useless concept, for reasons we've gone into elsewhere -- the sound-byte version of that argument is that if it's above nature, it's outside of nature, and therefore nothing useful or interesting can be asserted by us natural beings, much less falsified or proven, so it's a waste of time to discuss.
As soon as you bring god into the natural world you make him subject to natural laws and therefore not god. Now you are using the loaded term "god" for things we already have perfectly serviceable and non-misleading names for: existence, the universe, consciousness, nature, etc. If there is a being that seems all-powerful to us, despite being material and subject to natural law, we have a perfectly serviceable term for that, too: "space alien". If there is an uber-consciousness from which our consciousness springs or to which it is connected (an idea for which we have no evidence and to which existing evidence does not point) then we might call that god for lack of a better term, but I would suggest that it'd be better to term it something like "universal consciousness".
If there is a being responsible for our existence that is so far above and beyond us that we would be tempted on the basis of reflexive cultural habit to call it "god", I think it'd be dangerous to frame our understanding in that manner anyway. Our automatic response to the symbol "god" is to afford it awe and worship, and anything like that should definitely be withheld until we can definitely agree on that being's attributes. Perhaps god is cruel or sadistic and we would be foolish to attempt to interact with it. Perhaps god is flaky or undependable. To be worshipped he would have to be all powerful, all knowing, and all loving -- characteristics that are logically and/or scientifically impossible individually, much less together, much less in the context of the known characteristics of life as we actually live it.
I agree that nothing is as we see it. I have used the analogy of a radar operator. What she or he gets on their screen in not what is Out There, but is a sort of conventional representation of it as a presentation limited by the mechanics of the gadget.
Something of an illusion, but it is a reliable one. Science is a way of checking what is reliable. Everything else is hypothetical, though stuff with a lot of circumstantial support such as dark matter and abiogenesis, can be given a fair degree of probability.
God is a difficult thing to sort out as it can be all sorts of things. Each one of them - first cause, intelligent nature, the sun, consciousness, all have to make their case as 'something more' than just what science tells us. As an atheist, I am open to anything that looks probable. The best of these arguments, First cause, then abogenesis (or rather goddunnit, rather than nature) and then the goldilocks zone are no better than possibly 'god' possibly not. First cause is less than even simply because the material default has support and god doesn't.
Abiogenesis is 70% more likely than God because of the fossil tracer and the DNA markers.
Goldilocks is maybe only 20% god -likely because of all the accidents science says had to happen for us to appear.
That said, the rest of the arguments for ANY kind of 'god' are less than 5 -7 % possible amnd the specific god of the Bible is less than 5% likely.
Where did I get the figures? I made them up
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 08-26-2014 at 07:27 AM..
I felt that dualism failed to make a case for that reason - there was no reason to suppose that what we couldn't explain had to be something else. Logically it failed. I go further now: it fails evidentially, because we know that everything is made of 'stuff'. Matter, atomic and sub atomic particles - all the same 'stuff'. On the basis of what we DO know, dualism seems to me improbable, not to say impossible.
Insofar as you are talking about substance dualism, I agree. But I would once again suggest that you pay close attention to what we know directly and what we know indirectly. When you look at a blue coffee cup, what you know directly is: "This qualitative experience here & now."
From the basis of this "here, now" qualia, you start to make interpretations, inferences, and assumptions. Based on the quality of your immediate experience, for example, you believe that you are awake - not dreaming. Notice I'm not asking you to question "Am I awake or dreaming" - I trust that you can tell the difference for most practical purposes. All I'm asking you to do is to take note of the fact that the assumption "I'm awake right now" takes you one small step away from the qualitative "here & now" nature of your experience - which is the only thing that you know with complete certainty.
In a fraction of a second prior to each conscious moment, a vast flood of neural activity occurs. What this pre-conscious activity does is "front load" your experience with assumptions based on past experiences - most of which you don't even become aware of in any explicit way: E.g. "I'm awake right now", "I'm seeing a blue coffee cup", "I see this cup every day", "I will probably see this cup tomorrow", "This cup is ceramic"...and so on. By the time you get to idea like "This cup is made of atoms" and "atoms are made of subatomic particles" you are a gazillion levels of inference removed from those aspects of the immediate qualitative "this experience here & now." All of the scientific data that leads you to believe that you and the cup are made of atoms, and electromagnetic radiation bounces off the cup enters your eyes and triggers chemical reactions in your retina, etc. - all of that data is excellent data, but none of that data should completely overpower the most immediate aspects of your experience - the relatively non-inferential "this is what it is like to be alive here and now."
The qualities of your "here/now" experience are the logical foundations of ALL of the inferences that follow. Without the qualitative nature of your immediate experience, there would be no theorizing about the composition of physical objects, there would be no talk of neurons, etc. All I'm trying to get you to do is take a moment of focus on the present moment and pay attention to this experience. I'm trying to get you to understand that this experience is not "something more" that has to be added to our ontology. Rather, this immediate qualitative experience IS the ontology. This is what is ultimately "real" about "reality." Everything else - and I mean EVERYTHING else - is inference, interpretation, assumption - it is all "model building."
Ironically, we directly experience "ultimate reality" in the deepest and truest sense every waking moment of every day - we actually have no choice about that. But in a pre-conscious flurry of activity we add piles of interpretations about what each moment of experience "means" so that by the time we are consciously aware of the moment (it take roughly 300 milliseconds to "construct" a conscious moment), an entire narrative has been woven - a storyline that provides a meaning-full historical context as well as a set of future-oriented expectations. "I see my blue coffee cup - that one that I got at the flea market a year ago. I think I'll go put some coffee in it." This construction process also adds tons of predispositions - "if/thens" - such as "If I drop the cup, it will break," and "If asked to talk about it, I could say the cup is made of atoms," etc.
The end result of this construction process is not an illusion - it is "reality itself" in a highly complex form, but the complexity is such that we overlook the bedrock reality - the quality of the moment just "in itself" as "what it is" - and get lost instead on the layers of inference, interpretation, and assumptions - as if they are "more real" than the bedrock qualitative "feel" of the moment. We build a model of reality in which we picture the world made of atoms, then start to believe that our model of reality is "more real" than the bedrock reality that we can't help but experience in each and every waking moment. In extreme cases, we come to believe that the bedrock itself is just an illusion - we see it is as some weird sort of "something more" that doesn't fit into our model, so we conclude it is "not real." In this way, our direct experience of ultimate reality gets interpreted as just another theoretical piece to be plugged into our model, but we can't seem to fit it into the model, so some of us want to throw the piece away saying, "No one can prove to me that I need this in my model, so I'm going to get rid of it."
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Hexagons do not exist in nature, only hexagonal things.
This is one way to state the basic difference between Plato and Aristotle's views on the nature of properties. You've chosen Aristotle's view, and so have I. What I have suggested is that some physical systems have an amazing property, namely, the property of subjective experience. This is not adding "something more" - it is simply acknowledging the bedrock reality that is implicit in every waking moment.
"I'm trying to get you to understand that this experience is not "something more" that has to be added to our ontology."
I hadn't intended to. After all I am not a philosophy student and, thoughI have had to try to grapple with the concepts being argued, i have to ask whether they pose any significant question about the validity of science, the materialist default and in the end atheism.
I don't think that questioning our here and now experience does. And, if it has anything to do with the argument for dualism or monism, I don't see how.
"- all of that data is excellent data, but none of that data should completely overpower the most immediate aspects of your experience - the relatively non-inferential "this is what it is like to be alive here and now."
Again, I hadn't supposed it would, and I am inclined to leave these interesting questions about the nature of experience to the philosophy, forum.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 08-26-2014 at 10:34 AM..
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) there is a lot we don't know about the workings of the consciousness and qualia - the mental pixels, the experience of blueness and the experience of sweetness - but that doesn't mean that what is unknown has to be 'Something Else'. 
