On Consciousness

[Mr. Scott]

Nope. David and the rest of the pro-reality side on these threads are astonishingly patient and polite, given the load of foetid hyena offal posted by the anti-reality side.

PixyMisa, can we discuss this with information rather than bare insults?

I was hoping annnnoid would post some of his "facts" indicating consciousness was more than data processing.

I was trying to smooth over his emotions, and now you may have stirred them up again. It seems I'd hit a nerve, since he played the hurt feelings card with such vigor. I was hoping he'd finished his recent tantrum before another suggestion that consciousness was data processing sent him into renewed tailspin.

 

[PixyMisa]

PixyMisa, can we discuss this with information rather than bare insults?

I'm game.

I was hoping annnnoid would post some of his "facts" indicating consciousness was more than data processing.

Me too.

 

[Dancing David]

T
…and, as has been pointed out in this thread and many of the others that you refer to… there does not exist any one definition, let alone a definitive one. There are quite a range of interpretations…and virtually all acknowledge the simple fact that they exist as a consequence of necessity, not understanding.

There is pretty much a standard usage amongst medical practioners and neurologists. just like the definition of life it is a rubric of behaviors, there is no valid correlate to the noun 'consciousness', there a re plenty of strong correlates for the behaviors of 'consciousness' the activity.

Which as most, you failed to address. Welcome to science, so the biology definition of 'life' is also one you question because of some antiquated word usage?

There is no 'understanding' in science there are levels of approximate models that have validity in predicting the behavior of reality. All science is of necessity and I will continue to promote it here.

Things like 'understanding' also are rubrics with slippery and idiomatic meanings, they are just terms in the symbolic exchange, if you want to use ill defined antiquated notions comparable to the 'soul' and 'elan vital' be my guest.

Sorry sophistry belongs in the R&P forum.

 

[Dancing David]

Maybe a wee bit nasty?

No, this is the science forum, calling ill formed, vague concepts what they are is not nasty in the least. If people can't engage in discussion of their ideas without being able to define them, then the SMT forum is not the one to be in. I have a very different standard in R&P.

!Kaggens definition of consciousness has about as much usefullness as 'the innate superiority of the white race', 'the obvious progress of civilization' and the 'wonder and beauty of the soul'.

If you can't define and discuss a concept that you have then you really don't know what the heck you are talking about. And most likely you can say what it is you think. (Sorry that is the influence of my mother who taught writing for decades).

 

[Dancing David]

Nope. David and the rest of the pro-reality side on these threads are astonishingly patient and polite, given the load of foetid hyena offal posted by the anti-reality side.

I do not endorse this statement, while I understand it.

 

[dlorde]

For one thing, he would have noted that I called it an hypothesis.

I do beg your pardon, you're right of course; it is an hypothesis. Feynman would probably ask to see the math behind it.

 

[Roboramma]

I do beg your pardon, you're right of course; it is an hypothesis. Feynman would probably ask to see the math behind it.

I have a book of Feynman's letters, in which there is some of his correspondence with some "physics cranks". I'm no expert on either physics or Feynman, but I suspect what he would do is try to find out the experimental implications of the idea, and see if they match up with experiments already done, or if there are some experiments not yet done that could be done to test the idea.

He never really could get them to agree about how experiments would unfold if their ideas were true, however.

 

[quarky]

Check out Feynman's Nobel lecture:
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1965/feynman-lecture.html

Cool,man.

I'm not the guy on the phone.
I'm trying to figure out how the pre-bang singularity managed to evolve into all this other stuff. That's a radical disconnect.

We seem to be so far removed from that leap of science faith, that we simply need not address it. Everything came from nothing, and then, the baby Jebus...or whatever.

Hello?
WTF?

There is nothing more radical and bizarre than the theorems that postulate all the rules following that inexplicable moment in time; the beginning of time and laws; the big freaking bang.

So I came up with a way in which it never had to happen, because its too wooish for me to handle; that such a thing ever occurred.

I wish I'd been the guy on the phone. He was real close. He simply didn't go small enough or fast enough.

Meanwhile, back at the sacred big bang, what the hell happened, exactly?

its quite bizarre for me to endure heavy science that simply ignores its origin stories.

"And then God breathed life unto the universe, and said it was good"

swell.

And spewage was sent forth into all four quadrants, previously non-existant!
And gave forth unto mankind! Which was goodish! And stuff!

The big bang is as corny as any creation myth ever to come down the pike, but we are uncomfortable addressing it.

Me, less so then some.
I'm looking for an avenue within that has a touch of logic.

I came up with something.

 

[Dancing David]

Everything came from nothing, and then, the baby Jebus...or whatever.

Perhaps you should start another thread, the big bang did not come from nothing , it came from 'we don't know and we can only guess'.

 

[dlorde]

I have a book of Feynman's letters, in which there is some of his correspondence with some "physics cranks".

Can you post the title of that? I seem to have collected quite a few books about Feynman, but no letters. I'd be interested to read them.

 

[Zeuzzz]

If you can get over Mckennas monotone voice then this is a very interesting seminar on the cultural relationship between science, consciousness, nature, chaos and complexity and psychedelics.

Eros And The Eschaton "What Science Forgot" Terence McKenna

14:49: Since the rise of western monotheism the human experience has been marginalized. We have been told that we were unimportant in the cosmic drama. But we now know from the feedback that we're getting from the impact of human culture on the earth that we are a major factor shaping the temperatures of the oceans, the composition of the atmosphere, the general speed and complexity of speciation on the planet... A single species, ourselves, has broken from the ordinary constants of animal nature and created a new world, an epigenetic world,...a world based on ideas...downloaded out of the human imagination and concretized in three dimensional space... 29:29: Consciousness is the generalized word that we use for this coordination of complex perception to create a world that draws from the past and builds a model of the future and then suspends the perceiving organism in this magical moment called the now where the past is coordinated for the purpose of navigating the future. McLuhan called it "driving with the rear-view mirror" and the only thing good about it is it's better than driving with no mirror at all. 36:10: Reality is accelerating towards an unimaginable Omega Point. We are the inheritors of immense momentum in our social systems, our philosophical and scientific and technological approaches to the world. Because we're driving the historical vehicle with a rear-view mirror it appears to us that we're headed straight into a brick wall at a thousand miles an hour. It appears that we are destroying the earth, polluting the atmosphere, wrecking the oceans, dehumanizing ourselves, robbing our children of a future, so forth and so on. [....]

I believe what is in fact going on is that we are burning our bridges. One by one we're burning our bridges to the past. We cannot go back to the mushroom-dotted plains of Africa or the canopied rainforests of 5 million years ago. We can't even go back to the era of...200 years ago. We have burned our bridges. We are preparing for a kind of cultural forward escape. 39:35: Nobody's in charge. 41:16: We are central to the human drama and to the drama of nature and process on this planet. 41:34: Every model of the universe has a hard swallow...a place where the argument cannot hide the fact that there's something slightly fishy about it. The hard swallow built into science is this business about the big bang. Now let's give this a little attention here. This is the notion that the universe, for no reason, sprang from nothing in a single instant. Before we dissect this, notice that this is the limit test for credulity. Whether you believe this or not, notice that it is not possible to conceive of something more unlikely, or less likely to be believed. I defy anyone. It's just the limit case for unlikelihood: that the universe would spring from nothing in a single instant for no reason....It makes no sense. It is in fact no different than saying, "and then God said, 'Let there be light!'". [...]

What the philosophers of science are saying is "give us one free miracle and we will roll from that point forward, from the birth of time to the crack of doom. Just one free miracle and then it will all unravel according to natural law and these bizarre equations which nobody can understand but which are so holy in this enterprise." Well I say then if science gets one free miracle then everybody gets one free miracle.

/ End zeitgeist.

 

[dlorde]

McKenna does tend to waffle on, doesn't he?

This idea that the big bang is creation ex-nihilo is reminiscent of the creationist confusion between evolution and abiogenesis. Big bang theory has nothing particular to say about the origins of the very hot, very dense state from which the universe expanded, and an increasingly common consensus among cosmologists is that it is worthwhile modelling the conditions that could give rise to such a state.

 

[Zeuzzz]

This idea that the big bang is creation ex-nihilo is reminiscent of the creationist confusion between evolution and abiogenesis.

An abiogenesis solution to the origin of life does not effect the fact of evolution.

What is the confusion?

 

[dlorde]

An abiogenesis solution to the origin of life does not effect the fact of evolution.

What is the confusion?

I really don't know; I suspect it's a deliberate attempt to muddy the waters, cloud the issue, and derail the discussion. Sound familiar?

 

[Zeuzzz]

Nope, but it sounds annoying and vague.

 

[dlorde]

Nope, but it sounds annoying and vague.

It is.

 

[Zeuzzz]

Nope. David and the rest of the pro-reality side on these threads are astonishingly patient and polite, given the load of foetid hyena offal posted by the anti-reality side.

Why do we dream pixy?

 

[Roboramma]

An abiogenesis solution to the origin of life does not effect the fact of evolution.

What is the confusion?

And a model which includes states prior to the big bang would not affect the fact of the big bang, so what's your confusion?

 

[Mr. Scott]

Evolution has the potential to explain everything we could know about consciousness. Every feature of consciousness arose incrementally for the sole reason that it helped pass on the gene responsible for that feature. And, each feature always arose in a small increment and built on what was there before. Because of this, might not want to think of consciousness as an essential feature of the universe, since it's made up of arbitrary pieces that just happened to pop up and be found useful to the genome. What came together this way in intelligent creatures on other planets may not resemble our consciousness in any recognizable form, excepting for the unassessible possibility of convergent evolution.

 

[annnnoid]

Evolution has the potential to explain everything we could know about consciousness.

Wrong! Consciousness has the potential to explain everything we could know about consciousness. Evolution explains nothing without it.

Every feature of consciousness arose incrementally for the sole reason that it helped pass on the gene responsible for that feature. And, each feature always arose in a small increment and built on what was there before. Because of this, might not want to think of consciousness as an essential feature of the universe, since it's made up of arbitrary pieces that just happened to pop up and be found useful to the genome. What came together this way in intelligent creatures on other planets may not resemble our consciousness in any recognizable form, excepting for the unassessible possibility of convergent evolution.

...let's see...here we have a feast of fallacies. Anyone care to name a few?

Every feature of consciousness arose incrementally for the sole reason that it helped pass on the gene responsible for that feature.

Ok then. I guess this is no longer the SMT forum...we're free to make whatever wild assertions we want. A clear example of how science becomes a religion.

Tell me Scott…what possible purpose does ‘subjective experience’ serve in this vast evolutionary explanatory theory of yours? In what possible way is ‘…ooooh, it feels like ???? to me…’ useful to the genome? And where, exactly, has it been definitively established that this whole process is merely arbitrary? From just about any angle you look at this place, it seems like it functions according to some monumentally complex conditions. Though this also cannot be definitively established…arbitrary is just about the last word I would use to describe it. At best…it’s yet another blinding case of ‘we simply don’t know’.