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Mystic persistently represents (since I believe he is clever enough to understand it) this idea as denial that the 'self' is a real phenomenon and thinks we say that it doesn't exist. Probably in terms of what he thinks it is, I suspect that it doesn't.
I think the key concern is (so to speak) a sort of "chicken/egg" question that might or might not have a temporal dimension.
Which comes first: (1) Full-blown Primordial Consciousness or (2) some primordial unconscious/proto-conscious/pre-conscious qualitative "stuff" that serves, down the line, as the "mechanisms" or "building blocks" of conscious experience.
In the broadest sense, I'd say theists favor option #1; atheists favor option #2, and agnostics choose "I don't know." I see nothing logically absurd with either option, and I have no mystical insight that compels me to pick #1 so, to me, the core question is whether or not option #2 is viable. I believe that it is, but plenty of people insist that it is not. It mostly hinges on whether or not the concept of "qualitative potential" makes sense prior to the actual existence of some sort of conscious mind. (The term "prior" in this context can be either temporal, or purely logical/non-temporal, which is where the word "primordial" is meant to apply.)
Personally, I lean toward the idea that potentials are always potentials of some actual entity or system of actual entities. But it is really almost a toss-up for me. How can there be an actual entity without a prior potentiality for the existence of that actuality? But, then again, does "potentiality" make any sense apart from existing actualities? I can see both sides of that debate.
My proposal is that there must be at least some actual entities that are either eternal (in the sense of "temporal, but without any beginning") or non-temporal (the concept time doesn't even apply). My best guess is a non-temporal chaos of qualitative actual entities. But this is not an easy sell. What the heck is a "qualitative actual entity" if it is not always already a more or less full-blown "consciousness" of some sort? Tough to explain, but I'm not convinced that it is a necessarily incoherent concept. I'm not aware of any logical proof for the impossibility of it, and my own intuitions are that some sort of explanation along these lines is possible (this is my own version of a "promissory note").
One thing I believe with high confidence is that these "non-temporal actual entities" (if they exist) must be fundamentally qualitative. Either that or, if the Ultimate Ground of Reality is "pure potentials", then these potentials must be fundamentally qualitative. No matter how you slice it, somehow the fundamentals have to be qualitative in at least some rudimentary sense. My current project is to see if I can figure out a way to recast our concepts of fundamental physics (since they have been so amazingly successful so far) in some qualitative terms so that the emergence of qualitative experience at certain levels or types of complexity is not a totally inexplicable leap from purely quantitative essences to qualitative subjectivity.
Another thing that I believe with high confidence (and this is what seems to stick in MPhD's craw) is that a primordially conscious "Self" is not logically required. Possible, yes, but not logically required. I don't see any reason why "Self" can't be an emergent property of qualitative systems - if, when, somehow, we can make sense of proto-conscious qualitative entities or potentialities. This doesn't mean that selves are totally non-existent or just an illusions; it simply means that they are probably higher-order emergent phenomena, and not primordial brute fact full-blown actual entities. The illusionary nature of "self" stems from the feeling that the self is a localized particular substance that endures over time. Again, it might be a substance, but I think it probably is not.
My "whirlpool" analogy fits in here. The whirlpool is real, and it is "made of stuff", and in a certain sense one can say that it endures over time, but I think that its essence is not "substance" (an intrinsic self-sustained entity enduring through time) but, rather, more like a process - a more or less ultimately transient "way of being" - a "feeling of being me, here, now" that "swirls" from moment-to-moment and is sustained by the dynamics of the river (the "One Stuff"). It is a "center of narrative gravity" that, in some sense "creates time" via "feelings of memory" etc., as opposed to being an intrinsic entity that "endures through" time. As a process, the self is thus required to be a universal (either Platonic or Aristotelian) because it essentially just a "way of being" of the "One Stuff" and, thus, any time/place where this "way of being" exists, "The River" is the One who is experiencing that "way of being" via the swirling dynamics (cuz there simply is no "particular local substantial entity" to do the experiencing). The "experience of being me" is just "there" whenever/wherever the relevant "River dynamics" emerge. It is always the one-and-same "me" no matter how different the narrative histories happen to be.
Last edited by Gaylenwoof; 05-11-2018 at 08:49 AM..
Yes, Of course I have to recognise that my preferences are going to be steered by atheism as the believers' are steered by belief.
The starting points are going to be 'somehow matter had to come out of non -matter. That's aof course an intuitive preference based on current understanding and has nothing to back it up.
In that scenario consciousness and the proto -particles..just position maintaining between one patch of nothing an another forming position -patterns which after some position jockeying give the impression of substance. Which is all that happens hen the atoms of your hand are resited by the atoms of a table.
At that level physics, matter power, life and consciousnes is the same just as with the first cell, plant, animal, insect and mammal are all the same.
Just as Life began with 'reproduction' (self replication of early DNA structures) the building blocks of consciousness were there from the start. Indeed pre -cambrian plant and animal forms hadn't decided which was which, and 'consciousness' was merely reaction to getting sustenance rather than letting it come to them.
I already did the evolutionary arms -race and the emergence of awareness from Instinct, but turn to the Theist view which is that you have to have Something to start matter. You can't have nothing even with Potential unless Something put it there. Intuitively, I can understand that view very well. I can also understand the view that you have to stop the endless 'well, what made that, then?
It is a valid argument that to created something that exists even at the most basic level requires something even more developed, but that cannot itself be made. This ought to be illogical, a step backwards and counter intuitive, but it doesn't seem to be and it isn't just pump -priming by Religion - explanations in terms of what humans understand - who made mountains? Well a huge invisible human with a planet sized box of plastacine, obviously and 'well, he was always there' is the obvious answer. But instinctively intuitive isn't the same as logically sound. It is rather more akin to 'common sense', which opts for a flat earth with a snow -dome over it.
No, it is Too Simple, and while more sophisticated forms of theism can be devised, that does not make it more valid. It just makes it sound less mythological.
Bottom line - nobody known which does NOT leave the God -claim in default position, it leaves the natural cause position as the default. Logically. Which doesn't mean it is actually the right answer.
"Don't Know" really is the right answer.
And yet while an invisible cosmic spirit was ineffable enough to actually sound credible and spontaneous creation out of nothing for no reason... well, really, come on, that makes no sense.
But as time has gone on and the idea of a nothing that could have the potential to behave like something (originally a 'numerical value' but now 'potential' seems to be the preferred wording) became a bit more viable, something from nothing - and we can't rule out that this might be going on all the time - has looked a more viable option than an uncreated cosmic being that decided that being alone by itself in an expanse of Nothing so it created an infinite array of gas clouds, some burning with atomic heat. And after it had made an unimaginable number of them it suddenly got bored with that and decided to run an experiment on a microscopically small speck of dust which it fiddled so Life could manage to exist on it, and would make sure it didn't do anything that wasn't right like making clothes out of the wrong mix of fibres....
I think the key concern is (so to speak) a sort of "chicken/egg" question that might or might not have a temporal dimension.
Which comes first: (1) Full-blown Primordial Consciousness or (2) some primordial unconscious/proto-conscious/pre-conscious qualitative "stuff" that serves, down the line, as the "mechanisms" or "building blocks" of conscious experience.
In the broadest sense, I'd say theists favor option #1; atheists favor option #2, and agnostics choose "I don't know." I see nothing logically absurd with either option, and I have no mystical insight that compels me to pick #1 so, to me, the core question is whether or not option #2 is viable. I believe that it is, but plenty of people insist that it is not. It mostly hinges on whether or not the concept of "qualitative potential" makes sense prior to the actual existence of some sort of conscious mind. (The term "prior" in this context can be either temporal, or purely logical/non-temporal, which is where the word "primordial" is meant to apply.)
Personally, I lean toward the idea that potentials are always potentials of some actual entity or system of actual entities. But it is really almost a toss-up for me. How can there be an actual entity without a prior potentiality for the existence of that actuality? But, then again, does "potentiality" make any sense apart from existing actualities? I can see both sides of that debate.
My proposal is that there must be at least some actual entities that are either eternal (in the sense of "temporal, but without any beginning") or non-temporal (the concept time doesn't even apply). My best guess is a non-temporal chaos of qualitative actual entities. But this is not an easy sell. What the heck is a "qualitative actual entity" if it is not always already a more or less full-blown "consciousness" of some sort? Tough to explain, but I'm not convinced that it is a necessarily incoherent concept. I'm not aware of any logical proof for the impossibility of it, and my own intuitions are that some sort of explanation along these lines is possible (this is my own version of a "promissory note").
One thing I believe with high confidence is that these "non-temporal actual entities" (if they exist) must be fundamentally qualitative. Either that or, if the Ultimate Ground of Reality is "pure potentials", then these potentials must be fundamentally qualitative. No matter how you slice it, somehow the fundamentals have to be qualitative in at least some rudimentary sense. My current project is to see if I can figure out a way to recast our concepts of fundamental physics (since they have been so amazingly successful so far) in some qualitative terms so that the emergence of qualitative experience at certain levels or types of complexity is not a totally inexplicable leap from purely quantitative essences to qualitative subjectivity.
Another thing that I believe with high confidence (and this is what seems to stick in MPhD's craw) is that a primordially conscious "Self" is not logically required. Possible, yes, but not logically required. I don't see any reason why "Self" can't be an emergent property of qualitative systems - if, when, somehow, we can make sense of proto-conscious qualitative entities or potentialities. This doesn't mean that selves are totally non-existent or just an illusions; it simply means that they are probably higher-order emergent phenomena, and not primordial brute fact full-blown actual entities. The illusionary nature of "self" stems from the feeling that the self is a localized particular substance that endures over time. Again, it might be a substance, but I think it probably is not.
My "whirlpool" analogy fits in here. The whirlpool is real, and it is "made of stuff", and in a certain sense one can say that it endures over time, but I think that its essence is not "substance" (an intrinsic self-sustained entity enduring through time) but, rather, more like a process - a more or less ultimately transient "way of being" - a "feeling of being me, here, now" that "swirls" from moment-to-moment and is sustained by the dynamics of the river (the "One Stuff"). It is a "center of narrative gravity" that, in some sense "creates time" via "feelings of memory" etc., as opposed to being an intrinsic entity that "endures through" time. As a process, the self is thus required to be a universal (either Platonic or Aristotelian) because it essentially just a "way of being" of the "One Stuff" and, thus, any time/place where this "way of being" exists, "The River" is the One who is experiencing that "way of being" via the swirling dynamics (cuz there simply is no "particular local substantial entity" to do the experiencing). The "experience of being me" is just "there" whenever/wherever the relevant "River dynamics" emerge. It is always the one-and-same "me" no matter how different the narrative histories happen to be.
A lot of the confusion would be eliminated if you used the analog of our imagination as the model for the existence of anything. It truly creates ex nihilo but not really because it is our consciousness that provides the "proto-qualitative potentiality" you strive to explain. For our Reality itself, it is God's consciousness that provides the same "proto-qualitative potentiality."
I think the key concern is (so to speak) a sort of "chicken/egg" question that might or might not have a temporal dimension.
Which comes first: (1) Full-blown Primordial Consciousness or (2) some primordial unconscious/proto-conscious/pre-conscious qualitative "stuff" that serves, down the line, as the "mechanisms" or "building blocks" of conscious experience.
In the broadest sense, I'd say theists favor option #1; atheists favor option #2, and agnostics choose "I don't know." I see nothing logically absurd with either option, and I have no mystical insight that compels me to pick #1 so, to me, the core question is whether or not option #2 is viable. I believe that it is, but plenty of people insist that it is not. It mostly hinges on whether or not the concept of "qualitative potential" makes sense prior to the actual existence of some sort of conscious mind. (The term "prior" in this context can be either temporal, or purely logical/non-temporal, which is where the word "primordial" is meant to apply.)
Personally, I lean toward the idea that potentials are always potentials of some actual entity or system of actual entities. But it is really almost a toss-up for me. How can there be an actual entity without a prior potentiality for the existence of that actuality? But, then again, does "potentiality" make any sense apart from existing actualities? I can see both sides of that debate.
My proposal is that there must be at least some actual entities that are either eternal (in the sense of "temporal, but without any beginning") or non-temporal (the concept time doesn't even apply). My best guess is a non-temporal chaos of qualitative actual entities. But this is not an easy sell. What the heck is a "qualitative actual entity" if it is not always already a more or less full-blown "consciousness" of some sort? Tough to explain, but I'm not convinced that it is a necessarily incoherent concept. I'm not aware of any logical proof for the impossibility of it, and my own intuitions are that some sort of explanation along these lines is possible (this is my own version of a "promissory note").
One thing I believe with high confidence is that these "non-temporal actual entities" (if they exist) must be fundamentally qualitative. Either that or, if the Ultimate Ground of Reality is "pure potentials", then these potentials must be fundamentally qualitative. No matter how you slice it, somehow the fundamentals have to be qualitative in at least some rudimentary sense. My current project is to see if I can figure out a way to recast our concepts of fundamental physics (since they have been so amazingly successful so far) in some qualitative terms so that the emergence of qualitative experience at certain levels or types of complexity is not a totally inexplicable leap from purely quantitative essences to qualitative subjectivity.
Another thing that I believe with high confidence (and this is what seems to stick in MPhD's craw) is that a primordially conscious "Self" is not logically required. Possible, yes, but not logically required. I don't see any reason why "Self" can't be an emergent property of qualitative systems - if, when, somehow, we can make sense of proto-conscious qualitative entities or potentialities. This doesn't mean that selves are totally non-existent or just an illusions; it simply means that they are probably higher-order emergent phenomena, and not primordial brute fact full-blown actual entities. The illusionary nature of "self" stems from the feeling that the self is a localized particular substance that endures over time. Again, it might be a substance, but I think it probably is not.
My "whirlpool" analogy fits in here. The whirlpool is real, and it is "made of stuff", and in a certain sense one can say that it endures over time, but I think that its essence is not "substance" (an intrinsic self-sustained entity enduring through time) but, rather, more like a process - a more or less ultimately transient "way of being" - a "feeling of being me, here, now" that "swirls" from moment-to-moment and is sustained by the dynamics of the river (the "One Stuff"). It is a "center of narrative gravity" that, in some sense "creates time" via "feelings of memory" etc., as opposed to being an intrinsic entity that "endures through" time. As a process, the self is thus required to be a universal (either Platonic or Aristotelian) because it essentially just a "way of being" of the "One Stuff" and, thus, any time/place where this "way of being" exists, "The River" is the One who is experiencing that "way of being" via the swirling dynamics (cuz there simply is no "particular local substantial entity" to do the experiencing). The "experience of being me" is just "there" whenever/wherever the relevant "River dynamics" emerge. It is always the one-and-same "me" no matter how different the narrative histories happen to be.
The seemingly infinite complexity (well, unknown at least) in a smaller volume tends to point at "awareness", basic biology is a large amount of information exchange in such small volume will always "look alive".
applying that to the early universe makes it seem like its more probable that the universe is life. Couple that with the notion that we are just the universe "doing us" and the simple fact that we have nothing the universe doesn't have and the conclusion is pretty clear.
Now we have the militant denomination of atheism that will fight that because they aren't relly looking at it as questioning "how the universe works" but rather "how do we stop anything that we deem "looking religious" no matter what.
so I, and many other "middle men" are caught between trans and his groupies of deny anything, minimize everything because we are afraid and your and mystic's theories that have little in the way of tangle evidence.
I, for the life of me, don't know why you don't start talking about things in science that are empirical. The universe as life is far more usable than some unified field with no data and your qualia.
that approach effectively shuts tran's denomination up, well in person that is. On forums they just "hit submit" to more volume more real. Its also puts the notion of an overseer out of the question. It leaves a ton of room for reasonable people to meet the needs of, well, reasonable people.
A lot of the confusion would be eliminated if you used the analog of our imagination as the model for the existence of anything. It truly creates ex nihilo but not really because it is our consciousness that provides the "proto-qualitative potentiality" you strive to explain. For our Reality itself, it is God's consciousness that provides the same "proto-qualitative potentiality."
Oddly enough I just spent an entire semester studying the imagination from the perspective of phenomenology - folks like Husserl and Sartre. I think that the imagination does have a core role to play at the heart of reality. The problem I have is this: anytime that an act of imagination occurs (or any other type of conscious experience) I think it always consist of a highly complex dynamic process - something more or less like a brain like system. Basically, there is always some kind of information processing going on, and I am interested in the Dynamics of that processing. Even if it is the mind of God that is doing the processing, I'm still interested in understanding what is doing the processing and how it works. Just saying that it is the infinite non-physical mind of God magically thinking Etc just doesn't feel very useful to me. Even if it is the Imagination of God that is at work in our world, I suspect that our own physical brains serve as a clue to how the mind of God works, despite the very limited constitutions of our physical brains.
I think the key concern is (so to speak) a sort of "chicken/egg" question that might or might not have a temporal dimension.
Which comes first: (1) Full-blown Primordial Consciousness or (2) some primordial unconscious/proto-conscious/pre-conscious qualitative "stuff" that serves, down the line, as the "mechanisms" or "building blocks" of conscious experience.
In the broadest sense, I'd say theists favor option #1; atheists favor option #2, and agnostics choose "I don't know." ...
Quote:
Originally Posted by TRANSPONDER
Yes, Of course I have to recognise that my preferences are going to be steered by atheism as the believers' are steered by belief.
....
or it could simply be someone trying to understand the process.
and not steered by anything other than a desire to understand the mechanics and process involved.
why go to the place of using those "labels" at all? the labels of atheist, agnostic, theist are totally unnecessary and totally irrelevant to discussing the process and how it works.
Last edited by Tzaphkiel; 05-11-2018 at 06:54 PM..
or it could simply be someone trying to understand the process.
and not steered by anything other than a desire to understand the mechanics and process involved.
why go to the place of using those "labels" at all? the labels of atheist, agnostic, theist seem totally unnecessary and totally irrelevant to discussing the process and how it works.
yes!!!! "How the universe works" is how the universe works.
Its because the observations don't support deny everything. Ignoring "how the universe works" isn't science ... its religious looking. that's why you two get along so well. two religions fighting each other never really put the other the other in "moral peril".
lmao, that's why 'how the universe works" is only used when convenient. Its quite funny from a distance, 'cept that when the groups are done with each other they come for the rest of us. its like choosing between jim jones and stalin. we are in a pickle.
Oddly enough I just spent an entire semester studying the imagination from the perspective of phenomenology - folks like Husserl and Sartre. I think that the imagination does have a core role to play at the heart of reality. The problem I have is this: anytime that an act of imagination occurs (or any other type of conscious experience) I think it always consist of a highly complex dynamic process - something more or less like a brain like system. Basically, there is always some kind of information processing going on, and I am interested in the Dynamics of that processing. Even if it is the mind of God that is doing the processing, I'm still interested in understanding what is doing the processing and how it works. Just saying that it is the infinite non-physical mind of God magically thinking Etc just doesn't feel very useful to me. Even if it is the Imagination of God that is at work in our world, I suspect that our own physical brains serve as a clue to how the mind of God works, despite the very limited constitutions of our physical brains.
well, imagination is a side effect of making a better tool. its also help with empathy.
yes, Interest in how the universe is works is the coolest thing ever. No, there is no "magical thinking". But the fact remains we are dealing with people that rely on emotion to solve problems. Not that its a bad thing all the time, but when they think their "feel good" is the "only correct path" it does become problematic.
That dynamic, as you are calling it now, that exchange, going on around us, is why its looking like the system around us, out to 50AU's anyway, is better described as "alive" than not alive.
The shunners of that basic claim are in for something else than just learning how the universe works.
Yes, Of course I have to recognise that my preferences are going to be steered by atheism as the believers' are steered by belief.
The starting points are going to be 'somehow matter had to come out of non -matter. That's aof course an intuitive preference based on current understanding and has nothing to back it up.
In that scenario consciousness and the proto -particles..just position maintaining between one patch of nothing an another forming position -patterns which after some position jockeying give the impression of substance. Which is all that happens hen the atoms of your hand are resited by the atoms of a table.
At that level physics, matter power, life and consciousnes is the same just as with the first cell, plant, animal, insect and mammal are all the same.
Just as Life began with 'reproduction' (self replication of early DNA structures) the building blocks of consciousness were there from the start. Indeed pre -cambrian plant and animal forms hadn't decided which was which, and 'consciousness' was merely reaction to getting sustenance rather than letting it come to them.
I already did the evolutionary arms -race and the emergence of awareness from Instinct, but turn to the Theist view which is that you have to have Something to start matter. You can't have nothing even with Potential unless Something put it there. Intuitively, I can understand that view very well. I can also understand the view that you have to stop the endless 'well, what made that, then?
It is a valid argument that to created something that exists even at the most basic level requires something even more developed, but that cannot itself be made. This ought to be illogical, a step backwards and counter intuitive, but it doesn't seem to be and it isn't just pump -priming by Religion - explanations in terms of what humans understand - who made mountains? Well a huge invisible human with a planet sized box of plastacine, obviously and 'well, he was always there' is the obvious answer. But instinctively intuitive isn't the same as logically sound. It is rather more akin to 'common sense', which opts for a flat earth with a snow -dome over it.
No, it is Too Simple, and while more sophisticated forms of theism can be devised, that does not make it more valid. It just makes it sound less mythological.
Bottom line - nobody known which does NOT leave the God -claim in default position, it leaves the natural cause position as the default. Logically. Which doesn't mean it is actually the right answer.
"Don't Know" really is the right answer.
And yet while an invisible cosmic spirit was ineffable enough to actually sound credible and spontaneous creation out of nothing for no reason... well, really, come on, that makes no sense.
But as time has gone on and the idea of a nothing that could have the potential to behave like something (originally a 'numerical value' but now 'potential' seems to be the preferred wording) became a bit more viable, something from nothing - and we can't rule out that this might be going on all the time - has looked a more viable option than an uncreated cosmic being that decided that being alone by itself in an expanse of Nothing so it created an infinite array of gas clouds, some burning with atomic heat. And after it had made an unimaginable number of them it suddenly got bored with that and decided to run an experiment on a microscopically small speck of dust which it fiddled so Life could manage to exist on it, and would make sure it didn't do anything that wasn't right like making clothes out of the wrong mix of fibres....
been telling you that since day one. No matter what anybody else does, you have to clean that up first.
your fighting what religion says, you are not using what science is telling us. You prove me right again multiple times in this here one post.
An invisible spirit may be bogus. Its actually just an animating force we don't perceive yet. Its the exact same thing as a protein in you not knowing its guided by the "you" we know. But us in a living system lines up with observations from all the sciences.
Your stance is like saying "well I only beat and robbed her I didn't rape and kill her." well now, you got it going on there buddy.
But, I pointed out your flawed logic before and you don't care. You have a religious nut to bust, and how the universe works be damned until that end is met for you, by you. you will get your pound of revenge at all cost.
I just noticed I put the texted in red ... I am sorry about that.
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well, really, come on, that makes no sense.
