Are You Spiritual?

[Navigator]

I don't understand how noting that other consciousness' will still exist after an individual consciousness ceases alters the point that human self-aware consciousness arises from, and is dependent upon, biological constituents.

I haven't personally said otherwise. What I have said is that the Mindful came from the mindless process.

And I also said that certain branches of science are working on ways of making sure Consciousness (the mindful) is nurtured and given the best possible chance of surviving, and that part of this research and development is also looking at ways of making machinery which might become Conscious, and that it might be possible in these processes that scientists find a way to transfer the Human Consciousness to that Machinery.

Another possibility is that Scientist who at present are working on these things will create machines which will be self Conscious and these will be sent out into the Galaxy, even with the biological 'seed' of humanity on board, that should some life bearing planet be discovered, such a machine can grow the human forms and place these on that planet to continue...all in all Consciousness need not be limited to only Human Beings.

These are some possible ways in which Consciousness can utilize form and material in order to continue to exist in this universe.

Certainly Scientists are working on things such as these, with a view to the future. These Scientists know they will not likely live to see the end results of the part they played to make this happen, but that does not stop them from participating.

 

[gsmonks]

I don't get this word "spiritual". Is there something that someone else can feel but not me? Perhaps cavemen might have an inclination for mysticism but now we know better I think. I think people who claim to be spiritual are frauds. They like to believe they are on some higher plane that the rest of us can't get to. What a bunch of pretentious liars. Spirituality is not reality but a pretext for making the rest of us feel incomplete so if we pay up we can get it too. Whenever I hear the word I feel the urge to gag. There is no such thing. Maybe I am too sensitive because I had a very nice girl once who dumped me because I wasn't spiritual enough.

The word "spiritual" describes the emotion one feels when staring at a sunset and is the same feeling Godders attribute to things religious. It's an emotion, nothing more.

 

[Navigator]

Sure, ignoring works. Just like I'd ignore anyone who was trying to make people feel inadequate for not experiencing as much "awe" as they claim to.

I wonder if all such folks really do feel more awe, or if they just like talking about it more, and therefore assume that those who don't talk about it don't feel it? Short of some kind of objective neurological test, it would be hard to tell.

But either way, I don't see the point of trying to make others feel inadequate for not experiencing more of an emotion that, honestly, has both positives and negatives. For example, too much awe over human consciousness can lead to the kind of self-congratulatory human-centered view of the universe that Tricky pointed out above, interfering with a more objective understanding. Overwhelming positive emotions can be delibitating in some phases of bipolar disorder also; feeling things more strongly is not always good.

Because everyone should be more like you. No thanks, I'd rather be like me, even though I'll have to cope with the fact that "spiritual" people, or people who are big into promoting "awe," think less of folks who aren't like them.

Not at all - Why so defensive? I am certainly not trying to promote that you or anyone else 'feel' anything. I am simply saying it is a good thing to focus on and since there are not any handy nearby other Species Consciousness falling over themselves to be noticed by Human Beings, then it is sufficient in itself to promote the one that is noticeable and which we are all part of.
As I have also pointed out in previous recent posts, my awe in relationship to Consciousness does extend to other species which likely do exist and that some will make it and other wont and they would all be in different stages of the evolution of their Consciousness.

I definitely am not about 'making you feel inadequate', nor should what I have said in this thread even be deemed an attempt to do so.

Awe/wonder are part of the emotion mix, but so to is concern which incorporates this and other emotions.

There is no assumption that those who 'don't talk about it' therefore 'don't feel it.' Perhaps feeling inadequate might prevent someone from talking about it, or perhaps fear of being labelled 'woo-woo' - there could be many reasons why they don't talk about it I would say, but that does not conclude therefore that it shouldn't be talked about.

Anyway I have been answering posts which make an effort to marginalize it, not talk about it. No point in ignoring that.

So why you or anyone else should play a victim who is being made to feel inadequate when I am merely defending the amazing reality and creative ability of Human Consciousness and supporting its nurturing in answering posts which obviously think nothing much of Human Consciousness, is strange and appears to be dishonest.

 

[JaysonR]

I haven't personally said otherwise. What I have said is that the Mindful came from the mindless process.

Ah, my misunderstanding then.

I understand now.

It's an interesting ontology.
I don't think I've seen the existence of consciousness itself rendered into an ontological focus for spirituality before.

Consciousness states are regularly used, but I can't recall a culture where consciousness itself was the ontology.
Interesting idea.

 

[Navigator]

Ah, my misunderstanding then.

I understand now.

It's an interesting ontology.
I don't think I've seen the existence of consciousness itself rendered into an ontological focus for spirituality before.

Consciousness states are regularly used, but I can't recall a culture where consciousness itself was the ontology.
Interesting idea.

Whew! I was beginning to despair!

Seriously though, although I have literally been involved with it as a Conscious focus, it is only more recently that I have got to this point in understanding it enough to even attempt to talk of it in such terminology and not be distracted from the task at hand.

To be fair, I was speaking about it in another thread:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=261144

but couldn't quiet get on the same page as the personality who created that thread. I could see similarities but he or she just wanted to focus on the woo-bits and so there I was with a half built bridge, looking for somewhere to aim it and this thread opened up.

Actually I have noticed a few threads hereabouts regarding the topic of consciousness, so it seems to be 'of current interest'.

Your thread for example - as I said, there is a bit of a language wall but I am keeping an eye on it and trying to understand the best I am intellectually able to.

Today I was contemplating starting a thread entitled "Human Consciousness And Its Memes." but I think such a topic fits under the umbrella of 'Spiritual' (what is? and are you?) and essentially the Memes are part of the reason why bridges are not so easy to connect together and thus there might as well be walls.

However, what I have been suggesting regarding Human Consciousness in its Holistic "Form" is all of the Memes that exist and make up in congregate, that Consciousness I am specifically referring to.

So the Memes represent aspects of that Consciousness, and it is a task of focus to see how they all fit together or otherwise connect.

Some of the Memes I am speaking about can trace their history back even longer than Religious Memes and all Memes young and old and ancient survive through passing the information 'secret' to them, to their offspring and that is how these have continued to present day.

Present day of course, is a whole different kettle of fish...

http://www.aolsearch.com/search?s_i...nz&q=what+does+getting+on+the+same+page+mean?

 

[JaysonR]

Yes, essentially, you are speaking of a literal 'collective consciousness' which will inevitably cause many to assume you are speaking of some form of metaphysical architecture, as that is the common tangent in culture due to the growing implicit impulse for global cohesion (something I suspect, personally, to be consequent of the emergence of proximity reduction and information escalation, which radically changes the archetypes for survival).

I suppose, in a way, you and those who are speaking of a more metaphysical and poetic form of 'collective consciousness' are referring to the same thing, but in vastly different lexicons.
Yours is more objective with sympathy for subjectivity in context, while "theirs" is more subjective with a possibility for sympathy for objectivity in context (or no sympathy for objectivity; depends on the individual).

Or, as my dear wife calls it, the progression to the 'United Federation of Planets' (that golden idea of a unified collective and openly shared global information for the pursuit of the progress of human evolution and the betterment thereof).

Consciousness (our form of it) is an interesting quandary, but only because we are it, so examining it is an investment in chasing your own tail in a house of mirrors.

The metaphor I use for describing the complexity of evaluating the motive (as in, a given "point", the "where is it" and "what caused" questions) of consciousness is that it's like sticking 500 balls of 100 unique types in a box in space and stating a property function definition whereby each type of ball can connect to 25 other types, where each of these balls have motorized gyroscopes within them, each set a bit differently per type; then giving the box a smack on the side sending it tumbling around an obstacle course of 1,000 varying types of materials to run into along the way, and then trying to define the governing force of its movement specifically.

Now, to me, understanding the perpetuation of consciousness' memes (or, rather than meme, I tend to think of it as residue), would be taking this above model and (just on population and generation of humans alone) multiplying it by 1.6 million over 6,400 computed runs.
That's not even quantifying information connectivity evolution, nor any other factors at all really. That's just quantifying each consciousness within generational scopes up to the total of all humans born ever - just as a rough idea of the complexity involved.


That said, I think there will eventually be a field of social science opening up that will focus on the metaculture of humanity, rather than the social anthropology of humanity (which would be somewhat close to the idea of studying the collective consciousness, but not exactly).

 

[Navigator]

Yes, essentially, you are speaking of a literal 'collective consciousness'...

It is unknown that there is a literal collective Human Consciousness (I speculate it is a probability) but the figurative one can be seen in the actions of the Memes.
The only thing which would actually prevent a literal representation of this ‘Collective Consciousness’ from being, would be lack of physical ability to collect data from every other Memes Branches (or Sub-consciousnesses) and incorporate that data as part of the self of the Collective Consciousness.
With that kind of data, one would naturally be ‘at the top of the game’.

which will inevitably cause many to assume you are speaking of some form of metaphysical architecture, as that is the common tangent in culture due to the growing implicit impulse for global cohesion (something I suspect, personally, to be consequent of the emergence of proximity reduction and information escalation, which radically changes the archetypes for survival).

I once thought that at the rate we are going, we will eventually be able to fit all our collective information into absolutely no thing.
I then thought about that thought and wondered if indeed that is exactly why the big bang happened...
Anyway, your observations are not at all without merit, but I think it is simply Meme related terminology – many things explaining the one thing through the eyes (understanding capacities) of the Meme to which they support...or as you say differently...

I suppose, in a way, you and those who are speaking of a more metaphysical and poetic form of 'collective consciousness' are referring to the same thing, but in vastly different lexicons.

Although I don’t think I am speaking about something poetic, and don’t altogether agree that I am speaking poetically about it either.
Maybe – if it is important – next time I do, quote it and show me what you mean, that I might understand where you are coming from.

Yours is more objective with sympathy for subjectivity in context, while "theirs" is more subjective with a possibility for sympathy for objectivity in context (or no sympathy for objectivity; depends on the individual).

Might even depend upon the Individual Meme.
I think I said it better (more clearer) by saying I am neither ‘woo’ nor ‘whop-de-do’ – I walk the path between the two extremes...although I wonder that I am being sympathetic at all. I suppose I am, as I feel a kind of empathy towards the Memes which altogether make up the Collective Human Consciousness.

Or, as my dear wife calls it, the progression to the 'United Federation of Planets' (that golden idea of a unified collective and openly shared global information for the pursuit of the progress of human evolution and the betterment thereof).

I am more of the...opinion...that there is indeed already that collective and has been for a very, very long time.
Only the sharing is not (has not been) done openly due largely to the controlling features of the bigger (in population) Memes which (as part of the controlling aspect) keep certain data from the prying eyes of the bulk of their supporters, because the said data comes with it the very possible risk that the population of support would diminish quiet rapidly, (the flow would go elsewhere) and thus, lids are kept tight.
Please ask your dear wife to consider changing the phrase to “The United Federation of The Planet” and let me know what she thinks.

Consciousness (our form of it) is an interesting quandary, but only because we are it, so examining it is an investment in chasing your own tail in a house of mirrors.

There is that risk, but mainly from examining it from the lofty (in ones own eyes) position of the Meme that you swear allegiance towards (or otherwise choose to abide in) and thus the bias factor.
There are other ways of examining which do not require the wastefulness of bent and buckled mirrors, smoke, sleight of hand, an appreciative audience or even tails.

The metaphor I use for describing the complexity of evaluating the motive (as in, a given "point", the "where is it" and "what caused" questions) of consciousness is that it's like sticking 500 balls of 100 unique types in a box in space and stating a property function definition whereby each type of ball can connect to 25 other types, where each of these balls have motorized gyroscopes within them, each set a bit differently per type; then giving the box a smack on the side sending it tumbling around an obstacle course of 1,000 varying types of materials to run into along the way, and then trying to define the governing force of its movement specifically.

That seems like a rather clumsy metaphor. Or is the word I am looking for ‘bulky’?

Anyway, what I do appreciate about it is that it describes nicely the nature of the history of Memes, those parts of the whole.
I think though that it is not about observing and examining from a position of being outside the process and then not having a clue as to what it is you just observed, and not being able to explain a clueless thing.

It has a certain chaotic process about it – but I think it is not accurate enough. It is more a comedian’s poetic and non sympathetic interpretation of the process of Human Consciousness.

I think you could develop it more, get to the heart of things.

Now, to me, understanding the perpetuation of consciousness' memes (or, rather than meme, I tend to think of it as residue),...

I urge you to re-evaluate your perceptions. Certainly there will be residue, but Memes are of themselves kept alive by their living supporters and as such are not altogether ‘residue’...

would be taking this above model and (just on population and generation of humans alone) multiplying it by 1.6 million over 6,400 computed runs.
That's not even quantifying information connectivity evolution, nor any other factors at all really. That's just quantifying each consciousness within generational scopes up to the total of all humans born ever - just as a rough idea of the complexity involved.

Thankfully you are one of these, so will have insiders information or data of your human experience to date, and thus it shouldn’t be as complex a thing to work out, especially provided that you understand your human experience of self – to be sure, those of your own ‘ilk’ who support the same Meme as you do, will be ‘less complex’ for you to work out and thus somewhere good to start.

That said, I think there will eventually be a field of social science opening up that will focus on the metaculture of humanity, rather than the social anthropology of humanity (which would be somewhat close to the idea of studying the collective consciousness, but not exactly).

This will of course most likely evolve from those of many different Cultural Memes who have found the way to build bridges and from this, share secrets and get a better handle on the bigger (than Memes) picture and together getting on the same page (or into the same picture,) since geographically speaking, in terms of shared reality, that is the sanest place in which altogether the different parts have the best chance of understanding, appreciating, supporting, aligning, loving, nurturing, and being in wonder of, The Collective Meme of Human Consciousness, and what it is up to now, and where it is going into the future, all in relation to the physical universe (The Mindless thing from which this Mindful thing came from).

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

Well... I like drinking spirits, if that's what you mean

 

[JaysonR]

It is unknown that there is a literal collective Human Consciousness (I speculate it is a possibility) but the figurative one can be seen in the actions of the Memes.
The only thing which would actually prevent a literal representation of this ‘Collective Consciousness’ from being, would be lack of physical ability to collect data from every other Memes Branches (or Sub-consciousnesses) and incorporate that data as part of the self of the Collective Consciousness.
With that kind of data, one would naturally be ‘at the top of the game’.

Sorry; when I stated "literal", I meant as opposed to "metaphysical" or "religious".
Your idea is more "literal" or pragmatic (e.g. memes), as opposed to the religious idea of collective consciousness in the sense of some magical or ethereal variation.

Although I don’t think I am speaking about something poetic, and don’t altogether agree that I am speaking poetically about it either.
Maybe – if it is important – next time I do, quote it and show me what you mean, that I might understand where you are coming from.

Again, sorry.
Here's a more clear rendering of that section.

Even though you are speaking of a more literal collective consciousness via memes, and religious or purely spiritual individuals are speaking of collective consciousness in a more metaphysical and poetic form, in very general concept the two parties are referring to the same thing.

The primary difference is that you are remaining grounded in quantifiable and pragmatic surroundings and not resting on poetic and sensationally subjective articulations.

The wording of my previous post made it seem like I was lumping you into the same group as those who are poetic and metaphysical, when instead it was a compare and contrast of two separate groups: you and them.

Might even depend upon the Individual Meme.
I think I said it better (more clearer) by saying I am neither ‘woo’ nor ‘whop-de-do’ – I walk the path between the two extremes...although I wonder that I am being sympathetic at all. I suppose I am, as I feel a kind of empathy towards the Memes which altogether make up the Collective Human Consciousness.

Sorry, when I stated, "sympathetic", I was using the word to mean that you are understanding of their subjective impulse to articulate their ideas in the manner with which they do (since their variation is itself one of the memes to account for).

Please ask your dear wife to consider changing the phrase to “The United Federation of The Planet” and let me know what she thinks.

It's more of a pseudo-joke; she's borrowing from Star Trek where there is this UN type council known as the United Federation of Planets.
She doesn't think of it as literally plural in her borrowing of the phrase.

In fact, we've talked multiple times about the improbability of shared living by advanced interplanetary species ad-hoc considering that, for example, humans go a little nuts if you take away the Schumann frequency.
Assuming such is the case for all species on any given planet (admittedly, this is conjecture), then it would be unlikely that more than temporary visits would be possible between planets if each species evolved from the planets and thereby their biology tailored to those planets.
(I'm not resting this on just the Schumann frequency stuff; that's just a simple and subtle example of how many variables are involved in hopping planets. There's plenty of things that we just don't commonly think about; much in the same way as early Earth explorers didn't really think about disease.)

There is that risk, but mainly from examining it from the lofty (in ones own eyes) position of the Meme that you swear allegiance towards (or otherwise choose to abide in) and thus the bias factor.
There are other ways of examining which do not require the wastefulness of bent and buckled mirrors, smoke, sleight of hand, an appreciative audience or even tails.

Do you have an example?
Currently, the only method for examining consciousness directly, that I'm aware of, is neuroscience.

That seems like a rather clumsy metaphor. Or is the word I am looking for ‘bulky’?

Anyway, what I do appreciate about it is that it describes nicely the nature of the history of Memes, those parts of the whole.
I think though that it is not about observing and examining from a position of being outside the process and then not having a clue as to what it is you just observed, and not being able to explain a clueless thing.

It has a certain chaotic process about it – but I think it is not accurate enough. It is more a comedian’s poetic and non sympathetic interpretation of the process of Human Consciousness.

I think you could develop it more, get to the heart of things.

If you have ideas, I'm open.
Though, it should be noted that the metaphor isn't intended to be spot-on, but just conceptual to give a person a general and basic tangible grasp of the complexity involved in very basic terms; to give some kind of scope more than just, "really, really complicated".

I urge you to re-evaluate your perceptions. Certainly there will be residue, but Memes are of themselves kept alive by their living supporters and as such are not altogether ‘residue’...

I think of the residue as active, not benign.
I tend to think of it like residue because it's what sticks; intended or not.
Sort of similar to how life got going in the first place.

Thankfully you are one of these, so will have insiders information or data of your human experience to date, and thus it shouldn’t be as complex a thing to work out, especially provided that you understand your human experience of self – to be sure, those of your own ‘ilk’ who support the same Meme as you do, will be ‘less complex’ for you to work out and thus somewhere good to start.

Sure.
I just meant to quantify all consciousness in aggregate form would be incredibly daunting.
Something we need far more superior methods of quantification and computation to actually appropriately quantify.
We might be able to within the next century, but at current, I would say the amount of data to account for is incredibly higher than we can merit the ability to pull into a contained singular representation.

This will of course most likely evolve from those of many different Cultural Memes who have found the way to build bridges and from this, share secrets and get a better handle on the bigger (than Memes) picture and together getting on the same page (or into the same picture,) since geographically speaking, in terms of shared reality, that is the sanest place in which altogether the different parts have the best chance of understanding, appreciating, supporting, aligning, loving, nurturing, and being in wonder of, The Collective Meme of Human Consciousness, and what it is up to now, and where it is going into the future, all in relation to the physical universe (The Mindless thing from which this Mindful thing came from).

I agree.
Globalization will help considerably in producing the required motive for these kinds of divisional deteriorations that will increase the flow of cross-'school' assessments.

That's part of my interest; to push the skeptical community as a whole to take another look at human spiritual behavior, still skeptically, but with a different perspective to see it as a functional system that does return a quantifiable gain and process within the human body and consciousness.
Essentially, to break the old tradition of seeing human spirituality as strictly "woo-woo", and examining the "woo-woo" for what it actually produces systemically within our biology, and what that can teach us about the nature of our consciousness and how we can manipulate it and use it.

 

[tsig]

Sorry; when I stated "literal", I meant as opposed to "metaphysical" or "religious".
Your idea is more "literal" or pragmatic (e.g. memes), as opposed to the religious idea of collective consciousness in the sense of some magical or ethereal variation.


Again, sorry.
Here's a more clear rendering of that section.

Even though you are speaking of a more literal collective consciousness via memes, and religious or purely spiritual individuals are speaking of collective consciousness in a more metaphysical and poetic form, in very general concept the two parties are referring to the same thing.

The primary difference is that you are remaining grounded in quantifiable and pragmatic surroundings and not resting on poetic and sensationally subjective articulations.

The wording of my previous post made it seem like I was lumping you into the same group as those who are poetic and metaphysical, when instead it was a compare and contrast of two separate groups: you and them.


Sorry, when I stated, "sympathetic", I was using the word to mean that you are understanding of their subjective impulse to articulate their ideas in the manner with which they do (since their variation is itself one of the memes to account for).


It's more of a pseudo-joke; she's borrowing from Star Trek where there is this UN type council known as the United Federation of Planets.
She doesn't think of it as literally plural in her borrowing of the phrase.

In fact, we've talked multiple times about the improbability of shared living by advanced interplanetary species ad-hoc considering that, for example, humans go a little nuts if you take away the Schumann frequency.
Assuming such is the case for all species on any given planet (admittedly, this is conjecture), then it would be unlikely that more than temporary visits would be possible between planets if each species evolved from the planets and thereby their biology tailored to those planets.
(I'm not resting this on just the Schumann frequency stuff; that's just a simple and subtle example of how many variables are involved in hopping planets. There's plenty of things that we just don't commonly think about; much in the same way as early Earth explorers didn't really think about disease.)


Do you have an example?
Currently, the only method for examining consciousness directly, that I'm aware of, is neuroscience.



If you have ideas, I'm open.
Though, it should be noted that the metaphor isn't intended to be spot-on, but just conceptual to give a person a general and basic tangible grasp of the complexity involved in very basic terms; to give some kind of scope more than just, "really, really complicated".


I think of the residue as active, not benign.
I tend to think of it like residue because it's what sticks; intended or not.
Sort of similar to how life got going in the first place.



Sure.
I just meant to quantify all consciousness in aggregate form would be incredibly daunting.
Something we need far more superior methods of quantification and computation to actually appropriately quantify.
We might be able to within the next century, but at current, I would say the amount of data to account for is incredibly higher than we can merit the ability to pull into a contained singular representation.


I agree.
Globalization will help considerably in producing the required motive for these kinds of divisional deteriorations that will increase the flow of cross-'school' assessments.

That's part of my interest; to push the skeptical community as a whole to take another look at human spiritual behavior, still skeptically, but with a different perspective to see it as a functional system that does return a quantifiable gain and process within the human body and consciousness.
Essentially, to break the old tradition of seeing human spirituality as strictly "woo-woo", and examining the "woo-woo" for what it actually produces systemically within our biology, and what that can teach us about the nature of our consciousness and how we can manipulate it and use it.

How many looks do we have to take before we make up our minds?

What does the "woo-woo" actually produce?

 

[Navigator]

JaysonR
Okay – now I am starting to think I have bumped into an old friend. I have felt this feeling before...in relation to my communion with The One Meme Human Consciousness...and also with ‘other’ off –planet Varieties.

Anyhow, that is perhaps not here nor there.

There is a ‘magical’ and even ‘ethereal’ quality about it, but to be sure this is more my initial and subsequent reaction to an unseen thing. Such as Consciousness is.
If I were to draw a picture of what I think it looks like it would be in the simplest terms, a spoked wheel where the hub represents the Collective Consciousness and the spokes represents the Memes and the ring of the wheel represents the Actuality of the combined ripple effect of the hub and spokes as Specie Consciousness on the Earth, in the Galaxy, in the Physical Universe.

To come to terms with the actual reality of it, as a congregate of interacting systems it would ‘look’ more like a Jellyfish.

http://www.thisiscolossal.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/semenov-6.jpg

Each tendril represents a Meme, although to be fair on individuals, every tendril would itself have tendrils which would represent those individuals.

The ‘head’ of the Jellyfish is where the convergence of Specie data happens.
The ‘abode’ of the Collective Consciousness.

I and ‘spiritual’ personalities are ‘referring to the same thing’ differently.

Indeed, I and Religious persons are ‘referring to the same thing’ differently.

Me and them.

It is good that we see the word ‘sympathetic’ in the same way. It is a start.

We are empathetic in that.

The improbability of specie interaction, in regard to inter-planetary is significant. Your good wife and self appreciate the likelihood of vast differences in perception which would make the task of communion exceptionally difficult and align this concept with the ability of Human Memes which are as separate as chalk and cheese – and underscore the likelihood of actual same page stuff as being somewhat slim to no chance at all of accomplishing.

Fair enough.

I was pondering the other day a very similar line of thought. It involved comparing a known thing (the evolution of the Human Consciousness) with that of a – shall we say – unknown specie whose evolutionary path had not included individualism to the extreme ours has, and while the specie itself evolved individual forms as ours does, those form were naturally able to access the thoughts of all the others, like the ‘hive-mind’ variety. They could function as independents and have their particular specialties and even intellectual abilities, but all data was available to all connected to that Consciousness.

It would be impossible to keep secrets and it would be impossible to consider ones self as separate from any of ones others.

Then I took this though to align with the likelihood of that specie being able to organise itself to go out into the Galaxy with next to no problem as being pretty much 100% CERTAIN.

(oops – please believe me the use of caps was accidental...)

We as a specie so individualised would have a harder time achieving this, but not impossibly so.

In regards to what I said here:

Quote:
There is that risk, but mainly from examining it [The Collective Human Consciousness] from the lofty (in ones own eyes) position of the Meme that you swear allegiance towards (or otherwise choose to abide in) and thus the bias factor.
There are other ways of examining which do not require the wastefulness of bent and buckled mirrors, smoke, sleight of hand, an appreciative audience or even tails.

Do you have an example?
Currently, the only method for examining consciousness directly, that I'm aware of, is neuroscience.

That is examining the brain. This gives an indication of how consciousness is using the brain, and is tedious for that because it can only examine one brain at a time and is not able – especially as it is currently being used – to create a clear picture of what is actually perhaps going on.

It cannot even tell what is perhaps going on.

However, I do have an example I could name but unfortunately it has been vilified by various Memes and thus has a reputation so bad that to mention it in the same breath as Science, is blasphemy, plain and simple.

This is not to say that I personally give a hoot but we are speaking about a process of communing with Consciousness as a means of also examining it by how it replies and how we understand those replies.

It is a process which in itself requires serious and genuine attempt at building a bridge which facilitates that connection, enabling – by degree – better understanding.

Remember, we are essentially speaking about something which requires one individual to commune with the sum total of every other, in respect of the Human Consciousness Collective. The Memes are helpful of course (not all of them are in opposition to the concept of The One) but nonetheless I hesitate at this point to share more about this with you as a method because it might not even be required as evidence in relation to you and I getting on the same page, connecting our sides of the bridge.

Getting to the heart of things is part of that essential. Yes I could offer ‘ideas’ to you but by the same token, I could simply continue this way and allow for those ideas to come from you.
In this way, we could essentially share the result of those ideas in practice, as of course – the trust is created that the environment to do so is optimal.

On ‘the residue’ okay I see what you are saying. Eventually that residue either becomes part of the Meme or is cleaned away.

As far as how much more data we need in order to seriously have proof this is a serious thing to undertake and support, I can only say from my perspective that we have more than enough already to make some leaps down that rabbit hole.

(We are, after all, already ‘here’.)

On the ‘breaking of sceptical tradition’ by means of ‘pushing’ I can only comment that this particular forum:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/
...has proven for me to deliver.
The ‘spiritual’ forums are simply annoying, controlling, and frightened of new insights.

 

[JaysonR]

Navigator;
I'll respond to your post tomorrow when I have some more time to respond appropriately.

tsig;

How many looks do we have to take before we make up our minds?

What does the "woo-woo" actually produce?

In my opinion, there hasn't been an actual look at what you call "woo-woo" systemically until very recently, and those inquiries have been extremely localized and not very in-depth and collective (meaning, taking in the whole system).

On this forum, I've outlined (very briefly by comparison to the full discussion of material) a way that it can be investigated and perceived in the thread Examination of Spirituality as a Systemic Function.

We don't currently measure human spiritual behavior at all, in any functional capacity.
All that we do is hook folks up to fMRI machines occasionally and study what happens in the brain under very specific practices.
While this is extremely helpful, these kinds of isolated studies do not carry a field's worth of mission statement to achieve a specific goal.
Meaning, there is no end-game defined in these studies; they are simply studying a specific inquiry like many of the early particle test inquiries in the late 1800's.

So to me, the question of how many times would be answered with the response of, "once, since we haven't ever looked at it."

Instead, we just assume human spiritual behavior is itself frivolous waste because the metanarrative claims within a given ontological narrative of a given religion or spiritual outline are fictional.

Just because the narratives are not real, does not thereby imply that the entire function of interaction itself is waste.

We have multitudes of social paradigms which are both false and functional at the same time.
Music is incredibly easy to point to, so is pretty much anything in art.
Psychology is also a great example of something that is at once held by the patient to be true while known to be false by the psychologist, yet we recognize that psychology is itself sound as a systemic function in human behavior.

All of these examples are capable of being used to leverage the experience by the individual for an individual net gain, as well as a social net gain.

It is somewhat odd, actually, that a human behavior that is so vast and pronounced is so easily outright dismissed entirely by our skeptical society, rather than examined in much the same way as psychology: understanding that the assertions themselves are expressions, yet representative assets to examining an actual layer of systemic function within the human biology and psychology.

 

[Navigator]

Shots Of Awe - Life Emergence
Jason Silva

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrYYqCfHJmA&feature=em-subs_digest

"A single thread of self generation ties the cosmos, the bios, and the technos together into one creation. Humans are not the culmination of this trajectory but an intermediary, smack in the middle between the born and the made... the arc of complexity and open-ended creation in the last four billion years is nothing compared to what lies ahead."
-Kevin Kelly

 

[tsig]

Sorry; when I stated "literal", I meant as opposed to "metaphysical" or "religious".
Your idea is more "literal" or pragmatic (e.g. memes), as opposed to the religious idea of collective consciousness in the sense of some magical or ethereal variation.


Again, sorry.
Here's a more clear rendering of that section.

Even though you are speaking of a more literal collective consciousness via memes, and religious or purely spiritual individuals are speaking of collective consciousness in a more metaphysical and poetic form, in very general concept the two parties are referring to the same thing.

The primary difference is that you are remaining grounded in quantifiable and pragmatic surroundings and not resting on poetic and sensationally subjective articulations.

The wording of my previous post made it seem like I was lumping you into the same group as those who are poetic and metaphysical, when instead it was a compare and contrast of two separate groups: you and them.


Sorry, when I stated, "sympathetic", I was using the word to mean that you are understanding of their subjective impulse to articulate their ideas in the manner with which they do (since their variation is itself one of the memes to account for).


It's more of a pseudo-joke; she's borrowing from Star Trek where there is this UN type council known as the United Federation of Planets.
She doesn't think of it as literally plural in her borrowing of the phrase.

In fact, we've talked multiple times about the improbability of shared living by advanced interplanetary species ad-hoc considering that, for example, humans go a little nuts if you take away the Schumann frequency.
Assuming such is the case for all species on any given planet (admittedly, this is conjecture), then it would be unlikely that more than temporary visits would be possible between planets if each species evolved from the planets and thereby their biology tailored to those planets.
(I'm not resting this on just the Schumann frequency stuff; that's just a simple and subtle example of how many variables are involved in hopping planets. There's plenty of things that we just don't commonly think about; much in the same way as early Earth explorers didn't really think about disease.)


Do you have an example?
Currently, the only method for examining consciousness directly, that I'm aware of, is neuroscience.



If you have ideas, I'm open.
Though, it should be noted that the metaphor isn't intended to be spot-on, but just conceptual to give a person a general and basic tangible grasp of the complexity involved in very basic terms; to give some kind of scope more than just, "really, really complicated".


I think of the residue as active, not benign.
I tend to think of it like residue because it's what sticks; intended or not.
Sort of similar to how life got going in the first place.



Sure.
I just meant to quantify all consciousness in aggregate form would be incredibly daunting.
Something we need far more superior methods of quantification and computation to actually appropriately quantify.
We might be able to within the next century, but at current, I would say the amount of data to account for is incredibly higher than we can merit the ability to pull into a contained singular representation.


I agree.
Globalization will help considerably in producing the required motive for these kinds of divisional deteriorations that will increase the flow of cross-'school' assessments.

That's part of my interest; to push the skeptical community as a whole to take another look at human spiritual behavior, still skeptically, but with a different perspective to see it as a functional system that does return a quantifiable gain and process within the human body and consciousness.
Essentially, to break the old tradition of seeing human spirituality as strictly "woo-woo", and examining the "woo-woo" for what it actually produces systemically within our biology, and what that can teach us about the nature of our consciousness and how we can manipulate it and use it.

Navigator;
I'll respond to your post tomorrow when I have some more time to respond appropriately.

tsig;

In my opinion, there hasn't been an actual look at what you call "woo-woo" systemically until very recently, and those inquiries have been extremely localized and not very in-depth and collective (meaning, taking in the whole system).

On this forum, I've outlined (very briefly by comparison to the full discussion of material) a way that it can be investigated and perceived in the thread Examination of Spirituality as a Systemic Function.

We don't currently measure human spiritual behavior at all, in any functional capacity.
All that we do is hook folks up to fMRI machines occasionally and study what happens in the brain under very specific practices.
While this is extremely helpful, these kinds of isolated studies do not carry a field's worth of mission statement to achieve a specific goal.
Meaning, there is no end-game defined in these studies; they are simply studying a specific inquiry like many of the early particle test inquiries in the late 1800's.

So to me, the question of how many times would be answered with the response of, "once, since we haven't ever looked at it."

Instead, we just assume human spiritual behavior is itself frivolous waste because the metanarrative claims within a given ontological narrative of a given religion or spiritual outline are fictional.

Just because the narratives are not real, does not thereby imply that the entire function of interaction itself is waste.

We have multitudes of social paradigms which are both false and functional at the same time.
Music is incredibly easy to point to, so is pretty much anything in art.
Psychology is also a great example of something that is at once held by the patient to be true while known to be false by the psychologist, yet we recognize that psychology is itself sound as a systemic function in human behavior.

All of these examples are capable of being used to leverage the experience by the individual for an individual net gain, as well as a social net gain.

It is somewhat odd, actually, that a human behavior that is so vast and pronounced is so easily outright dismissed entirely by our skeptical society, rather than examined in much the same way as psychology: understanding that the assertions themselves are expressions, yet representative assets to examining an actual layer of systemic function within the human biology and psychology.

You used the term "woo-woo" first so it's completely dishonest of you to imply that I brought it up.

I see you're spouting the same line that UFO believers and bigfoot fanciers do, that we just really haven't examined the phenomenon and dismiss it out of hand because we're skeptics.

You're welcome to ride your spiritual hobby horse but those who have already done so will let you ride solo.

 

[Myriad]

You used the term "woo-woo" first so it's completely dishonest of you to imply that I brought it up.

I see you're spouting the same line that UFO believers and bigfoot fanciers do, that we just really haven't examined the phenomenon and dismiss it out of hand because we're skeptics.

You're welcome to ride your spiritual hobby horse but those who have already done so will let you ride solo.

JaysonR, as you can see (and have no doubt experienced before), one of the pitfalls of interacting with skeptics is that there are some who are so focused on the question of whether the entities of spiritual metanarrative are physically real that they will not only refuse to address any other question about the nature of spirituality, they will perceive any other question as that question in disguise (and already answered in the affirmative).

That phenomenon in itself might be an interesting object of study, which might even shed a sort of contrasting light on the phenomena you're examining. However, I suspect it's primarily cultural. We're living in an era in which some of the predominant religions (as well as the usual assortment of fringe believers) have been asserting the literal physical truth of their respective narratives to a historically aberrant degree. It's reasonable to expect a bit of overreaction to that, like the disorders generated by an overstimulated immune system.

I hope you won't be deterred from carrying on, especially if tsig keeps her promise to "let you ride solo" (meaning, I infer, withdrawing from the discussion).

 

[tsig]

JaysonR, as you can see (and have no doubt experienced before), one of the pitfalls of interacting with skeptics is that there are some who are so focused on the question of whether the entities of spiritual metanarrative are physically real that they will not only refuse to address any other question about the nature of spirituality, they will perceive any other question as that question in disguise (and already answered in the affirmative).

That phenomenon in itself might be an interesting object of study, which might even shed a sort of contrasting light on the phenomena you're examining. However, I suspect it's primarily cultural. We're living in an era in which some of the predominant religions (as well as the usual assortment of fringe believers) have been asserting the literal physical truth of their respective narratives to a historically aberrant degree. It's reasonable to expect a bit of overreaction to that, like the disorders generated by an overstimulated immune system.

I hope you won't be deterred from carrying on, especially if tsig keeps her promise to "let you ride solo" (meaning, I infer, withdrawing from the discussion).

Whether or not a thing is real should be the starting point of a discussion about it's attributes.

If you have some reality beyond the physical world now would be a good time to show it.

It sure didn't take long for that spiritual arrogance to show itself.

 

[Navigator]

If I pick a different world view can I fly are is there some constraints here?

Could you clarify this please tsig

Since you seem to think that viewing the physical world is whop-de-doish I'm trying to probe the limits of that thought.

To clarify, I definitely do not think the physical world is ''whop-de-doish' as my posts will verify.
The expression was brought into the unfolding thread conversation (first mentioned) in this post: (Author: HansMustermann)

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9335787&postcount=71

*SNIP*

You can experience awe, you can experience joy, you can be moved by certain patterns of sound or image, or humbled by stuff which is much larger than your mind comfortably wraps itself around, etc. Whop-de-do. So is everyone else.

I picked up on this expression as a valuable piece of data which denoted a type of approach adopted by supporters of a certain sub-branch of the main Skeptic Meme and have subsequently shown its opposing relationship to 'wooism' which is also a sub-branch (more accurately - differing sub -branches) of the main Religious Meme.
I point out that neither approaches are adequate as tools for bridge-building communication processes as they are more 'wall' like and/or are attempting to add converts to that particular branch of the Main Meme to which the individuals support.

HansMustermann appears to think the physical world is woop-de-doish so perhaps reading his whole post might assist you in probing the limits of that thought and attitude, because there certainly are limits to it.

 

[Navigator]

Originally Posted by Navigator
Consciousness cares enough about itself to recognize the necessity of nurturing and protecting itself - and I am speaking in relation to its holistic reality. There are hundreds of thousands of individual brains being utilized by Consciousness to make the attempt at this, possible.

I don't think it's useful or valid to personify (deify?) consciousness as you are doing.

In some way you are correct that there is a kind of deifying being done, but it is not really in the sense of taking some imagined thing and assigning all sorts of god-like (according to human imagination) capabilities to it.

Rather it is acknowledging a very real thing which has been around for a very long time and has achieved this logetivity through human beings – using human beings to keep its self alive and ongoing toward certain goals, and this is the way Consciousness is evolving.
To be clear, the parts (Memes) of this process are not that which I am focusing so much on or wishing to deify (as Gods) but the whole process, all of these together.
Unfortunately, they are not all together. Some are and some are not. Some are in the process of congregating, and others are still distracted by actually trying to destroy all sign of the others.
Seriously, these are the actions of human-made deities and some of these have been around causing their havoc for a long time – sometimes under the compulsion of the “if I can’t be the Main Meme then no- Meme will” attitude, and would rather see everything dead, than play second fiddle to something far more suited to the position of Main Meme.

Truly the only way to ‘kill’ a Meme is to either destroy all sign of Consciousness or transform it, which is a process whereby the Meme loses the support of individual human beings until all memory of it fades from the Human Specie Consciousness.

Yes, there are billions of human beings who are using their consciousness to make their way in the world. Human civilization is an emergent property of all of this activity. Since humanity will outlive each individual human for the foreseeable future, the consciousness which exists in the brains of the survivors will persist even though each individual dies.

And as we know, the persistence part is a process which has everything to do with information and passing that data down through succeeding generations, through linear time, the elders within the Memes pass the knowledge down to the young – essentially converting them at a very early stage in the process of the unfolding individual experience in order to gain the best chance of procuring a vessel of Consciousness in order to carry that particular Memes essence into the future.

I may still be missing the point you're trying to make, but you seem to be anthropomorphizing a concept. It makes no more sense than saying "Information wants to be free." Ideas which exist inside human minds do not have independent lives with goals and desires of their own, and it sounds silly to me when people write as if they do.

Information does not want to be free. That which uses the information is Consciousness and it wants to be freer, or more to the point, to explore and utilize that which it has only ever observed from a distance...and this process has been a training ground of sorts in order to perhaps learn how such a thing can be achieved.
As I pointed out recently, Consciousness itself is not a concept, and cannot be accused of being ‘anthropomorphized’ because the very meaning of the word is about ‘assigning human consciousness to things that are not human’ and Human Consciousness is both Conscious and Human.

 

[JaysonR]

Navigator;

OK, so I see how you are looking at using memes now.
That's a very interesting idea; I like that.

Using the aggregate to imply the construct of the specific.
As such, that answers the "example" I was looking for outside of neurology.

Essentially, we can use sociology to aid in the culminating information regarding consciousness.
If that's mixed with neurology, then the mapping would be rather potent (which of course fits into the idea of cross-"school" working).

This is definitely something interesting to think about.
I'll have to look more into memes; you've sparked a curious interest in me, thanks!

 

[JaysonR]

You used the term "woo-woo" first so it's completely dishonest of you to imply that I brought it up.

I see you're spouting the same line that UFO believers and bigfoot fanciers do, that we just really haven't examined the phenomenon and dismiss it out of hand because we're skeptics.

You're welcome to ride your spiritual hobby horse but those who have already done so will let you ride solo.

When I said, "what you call 'woo-woo'", I wasn't intended to belittle you for using the term.

I'll re-write it so you can see what I was attempting to convey better:
there hasn't been an actual look at what you consider invalid fantasy in religious and spiritual metanarrative assertions systemically until very recently, and those inquiries have been extremely localized and not very in-depth and collective (meaning, taking in the whole system).


I'm also not stating the same thing as what you are thinking, I do not think.

I'm not stating, like a UFO fanatic, that we need to look more to prove that UFO's exist.
Meaning, I'm not stating that we need to look more to prove that some god or religious narrative exists in reality.

Not at all.
I'm openly stating that religion and spirituality are more like personal psychology, but are extremely potent in their form and function in manners which we do not have accounted well at this time.

We could do better in quantifying what happens in the brain and body and how it can be leveraged in secular use; not just religious and spiritual use.

I am not addressing metanarratives as if they are real and saying we need to look harder to see that they are true.
No, my comparison was that of the arts and psychology; things that have two layers to them inherently of one subjective interpretation of reality and the observation by an outside party of the subjective experience in another.

Meaning, just like a psychologist understands that certain psychological perceptions are not real, they never-the-less understand that psychology itself is functionally valid and that the perceived reality of the individual is capable of net gains for the individual, or net harm.

In a similar fashion, I'm stating that we lack the field of studying human spirituality objectively systemically; not philosophically (as is the case in the field of theology).

As a physicalist, I accept that for everything there is a physical basis.
If I accept that for everything there is a physical basis, then human spiritual behavior has a physical basis.

What is that physical basis?
We don't actually know that answer in full at this point.
We understand a few things, but we don't have a neurological map that accounts for the capacity and biological motive for human spirituality.

Why would there be one?
Because there have been spiritual humans since the dawn of humans remarking about their existence.
We actually can't just state that we were too uneducated to know better and leave it at that.
We can't, because that doesn't answer the question of why and how humans ever were capable of that concept to begin with.

It doesn't actually tell how the body and brain routed information in such a manner that caused the consciousness to have the capacity to perceive their reality as being capable of such ontological and metanarrative archetypes as whatever is being claimed.

I've spent a good amount of time mapping out a theory that I think should be looked into more; based on what neurology we do know from systems such as how we make a decision, consciousness and subconsciousness realations neurologically, the role of the amygdala in identity and decision making, the nature of self-awareness so far as we are able to quantify it, the nature of physiological and neurological entrainment, etc... (the list goes on for quite a while).

Just ignoring all of this doesn't answer anything about why humans are capable of this type of behavior, or what exactly is happening during this type of behavior.

Instead, it just says that we don't value whatever is happening, though we don't know what's happening, and don't care to take the time to investigate something that we are aware of not knowing.

It's not like we can't know this; we absolutely can.
This isn't a call to prove god, or any other such concept (I'm transtheist/apatheist; I don't care if gods exist and if someone really wants to know my opinion, then I'm atheist).

This is a statement that we could learn more about our physiological and neurological function capacity if we inquired about human spirituality systemically; not theologically (the current popular method is theological).


As such, focusing on whether or not a religious or spiritual claim is real is aside from the point.
It's like someone concerning over whether or not Indiana Jones is real, while someone else is actually talking about how the movie was made, and indeed, how all movies are made; not just Indiana Jones.