We are not consciousness

Philosophy Forums Psychology and Mind
402

A very simple experiment one could make. Ok, ‘simple’ may not be the adequate term here, but let’s suppose you decide to have ten different children and you are wealthy enough to have an island of your own and you will raise these ten children without any contact with the external world and you will also teach them that your little island is the whole civilized world. You won’t give them any clue about other external cultures, you will create your own culture there, that will be your whole world. Do you think these children will “inherit” something from the collective unconscious, from the general collection of thoughts of humankind, passed from generation to generation and also from civilization to civilization or do you think these children will grow absolutely clueless about anything except what their father has taught them from their early days on?

This is a bold assumption. Whence does it come this notion that consciousness is fundamental? Consciousness may be an accident for all we know, just like life itself.

What you seem to be saying here is that the consciousness of all people on Earth represents a single process, and the union of all these consciousnesses is the substrate of the universe. But this is an unscientific perspective. If all the people and animals in the world simply disappeared today, there would be nothing left in the universe but an immense amount of dead matter. Without animals and humans, there is no consciousness. The planets where there is no life, the entire infinity of space in the universe where there is no life, there is no “consciousness” there organizing and managing things. The biggest hunk of the universe is simply “there”. It has no need of a consciousness. This is a phenomenon restricted to our planet and its living parts.

I insist that the experience of consciousness is individual and unique. I understand that the subconscious and the unconscious also exist, but as stages of the same process, and also related to an individualized brain and body. “Collective” consciousness is a step forward, very interesting from a philosophical-religious perspective, but without any more scientific basis than heaven or hell.

403

Max,

a collective would avail in a world where such recollection would suffice to find and establish relevant point to point descriptions, like redrawing the intended collage .

However in a world where the geometric change the contour of analysis, where 95%of such points -signal the evolution of a correlate of quickly leapfrogging faithlessness, the former naive descriptions are ‘scientifically augmented, as is happening since less the 100 rears ago,

The strangeness of this current hot topic points to a very dangerous decay of primal suppositions.

404

ok, ok, Meno/William

now I kindly ask you to translate this to the language of the commoners.

405

Oh yes thinking such thus , well………

unfortunately they have to wait until that object appeareth, and some such like Area 51 , the fake moon landing and the incredible shrinking man should back up my story.

That objective? You know, ….. what? Is what’s different between the familial and the familiar

there is gold in them , eyes!

& believe it or ?

hate to think in that state

406

:face_with_raised_eyebrow:

You’ve studied in the same school as Jupiter123 and Ecmandu?

407

If told you what state then you’d think I just dropped in but no there are many states and they preferred to remain anynomous.

There IS a method to it though through discovery.

For now I presume it’s covered both under and over grad , again it’s probably a serious one, for otherwise it shouldn’t have taken as long

408

Lol, ok, man, whatever. :rofl:

409

https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/subconscious/46246/50

410

If anything, you’re persistent in your beliefs.

411

Consciousness an accident? Hahahahahaha

There are no accidents with an inevitability. It is inevitable because to the unconscious and subconscious mind and facets in and of reality, there is no construct of “Time”. And you’d be surprised at how fast time flies by when you are incapable of paying attention to it, we arrived here, conscious… in what seems like a blink of the eye, due to this fact, yet we remain embedded with all that lead to our moment, this includes the millions of years of what could be described as primordial chaos.

The reason there is more unconscious than the conscious is because of the length of time and the steps that have gone on, long before we were ever conscious or even “living” as we do in this form now. Similar to how when a child experiences a traumatic event that they are incapable of being conscious to, they shove it down and diagnose it later when they have the ability to. This, in the grand scheme of things, is us, on a scale grander than just being a child or even human.

Maybe what is needed is not only a ‘scientific perspective’, I used to be there and it got me a step in but the perspective had to change to continue any further. The scientific perspective is also a skewed one, thinking only in the literal sense, dismissing all that it can’t prove with that sense, that is very, unscientific, considering Science itself is the study of different languages basically and being able to replicate studies and findings in experiment and then proving validity through consistency.

There are dreams people have that are similar, there are archetypes that people portray that are all similar, idea’s all appear to an individual the same way, being that they come to the individual not the individual going to it, symbols, etc.

I think the point is to find a balanced approach to thinking, the scientific one, the religious one.. both can be two extremes of a balance.

I used to be an atheist, I used to despise all religious thought and doctrine, all my thinking was logic based, no creativity. Then one day, I was questioning the big bang, we cannot replicate experiments of it to test it’s consistency and measure the truth regarding the theory.. I pointed this out to an atheist community, they ad hommed me and turned on me.. so it was in that moment that I stopped being an atheist and realized that these “Science lovers” are just as bad as some of the extremist religious.. Just because it’s a more “plausible theory” does not make it anymore than a theory, it’s logical but so are other theories, in regards to the manifestation of the universe.

The thing with these topics in regards to pyschology, human mind… unconsciousness, they can be and have been tested, the test is through the consistency of critical thought (And without fallacies) through and in the diversity of people and their minds. I have never met anyone on this forum, I know next to nothing of their backgrounds, but if I can come on here and we can measure our minds and discuss and then find a shred of consistency, that, is truth.. and no one ever said it would be /easy/ to find, but it can be and often is.

If you believe there to be a better, logically and philosophically balanced approach to all that came before and indirectly/directly lead to the human conscious being, then please, by all means, describe it and explain why, who, when, what, where, how, it works.

412

Very good phrasing. Sounds even deep. Now let us see if there is anything to it besides verbiage.

413

The typical characteristic of a religious mind is that the person never puts one modest “I believe that…” before their bold assertions. Nope, they spout FACTS. They only have FACTS to offer. This is most obvious in this forum in the person of Jupiter123. Here’s a bearer of truth of the highest caliber. An adage such as “There are no truths, only interpretations” would escape him completely. Like a true dogmatist, he doesn’t know the meaning of modesty. Yet, the true philosopher is humble in the admission of both the limitations of his knowledge and how his truths can be unacceptable or incomprehensible to others, to most.

The reason why Freud rejected Jung had no connection with the rise of a “rival”. It had to do precisely with this: Jung let his religious side get the best of him. He couldn’t separate the religious and the scientific sides of his mind, not entirely. It’s thus that an otherwise interesting metaphor like the “collective unconscious” becomes a FACT and is bought by the likes of Artimas with heart and soul.

Now, is Artimas wrong in being religious? Not anymore than Jung was. Religion might give something to him science and philosophy can’t offer. I understand that. Religious beliefs, by definition, are unprovable and undemonstrable. Heaven, hell, angels, soul, God, reincarnation. One can write tons of pages on any of those topics. The evidence is simply not there. So the religious person has to rely on a thing called DOGMA. Dogma is a religious belief turned into undisputable fact. One can easily see Artimas’ thinking patterns are dogmatic. He’s here to make bold assertions. His mentioning the scientific method is almost funny. For science is our protective barrier against the abyss of speculation.

More on this later.

414

There’s a difference between being religious and being spiritual. I have no faith in any organized doctrine that is worshipping a conscious being outside of my own inner workings. And once you have done the journey into the inner workings of /you/, it will be found that there is a connection between all that was, is, ever will be as well as nothingness.

My acknowledgment of thyself and the context of its stemming from, is not faith, nor is it worship. There is a reason that the hardest journey one can make is in the depths of oneself. The Heroes Journey is not an easy path, all true art and media is a reiteration of this journey with individual diverse twists and or portrayals, the very fact that at the root it is this journey, shows the consistency despite diversity, which is how truth is measured.

Heaven, hell, all of those places and things that are considered ‘literal’ by the extremist religious, are mere metaphors and places of which one can journey into in oneself and then project and or portray them into and onto reality. Reality is ultimately, what you make it into, it is a malleable container.

Man creates his own hells inside himself, as he does find his own heavens and alignment as well. When one does an evil deed and they are a non-pyschopathic individual, they will feel guilt, this “judgement” that what they did was not right, correct? That is the metaphor of “gods judgement”. Everything religious, is internally integrated into man, that is what makes religious doctrine, the first of it, pyschological..

It was mans exploring his own pysche and using the only terminology they had at the time, to externalize so that they may understand pysche and this journey into it.

My writings and thoughts aren’t dogmatic, I don’t have to ‘prove’ them to you because I recognize that you won’t find it in me, you will only find it in you, if you dare make that journey for yourself. That’s up to you, not to me.

I write and speak as if from the point of view that you have already made the journey within and come out the other side, or at the very least, have began to.

How about less focus on me, and more focus on a better theory, since you are claiming one that is heavily supported by the consistency of thought and idea through diversity of the individual, to not be valid or calling it ‘religious’.

Science is only a protective barrier if it is had with an open mind and not a purely literal/logical one. If not, it becomes the very abyss it originally came or was constructed to protect against, which is (Ignorance, extremism and the shunning of open thought.)

The literal only approach of “finding evidence” doesn’t always work for every topic and every thing that exists, if you expect it to, then you should also expect to wait a long time if not forever and to criticize Jung’s work is laughable, coming from a man promoting Science, how about you go prove the Big Bang before focusing on criticizing and calling another topic or people religious and categorizing them into the extremist group, for their own work and what makes sense to them and has very in-depth writing that can actually be tested by the journey into thyself and understanding of it, then not only that but also comparing that individual journey with others individual journey to prove the validity through the consistent experience despite the differences of the individuals.

But regardless of that, some evidence, is only evidence in oneself and simply needs be viewed, but no one can force another to view it.

415

Fair (and wordy) enough.

I understand you’re calling it spiritual instead of religious.

I also think you misread me if you think I’m disrespecting your right to have a perspective of your own, let alone criticizing Jung, as he was a very insightful guy.

416

He went over his head with his theories. But deep down he was trying to make sense of the chaos inside and outside of him, like everyone else.

417

You connect your thoughts well, I give you that. Also, you seem to still be a relatively young man, so don’t think it’s like you’ll be thinking exactly like that in 10 or 20 years. My thoughts of 20 or 10 years ago are almost unrecognizable to me sometimes.

It’s good that you’re not afraid to dive deeper and stray from the convenient realm of mere assertion. One thing you got wrong though: I never called you an extremist. I haven’t interacted with you here long enough to build such a bold assessment. I used the term religious following your own assertion that one should balance philosophy, religion and science. But let’s stick to “spiritual” or “spiritualized” instead.

That’s convenient because I, too, am a spiritualized man. Not in the same sense as you are, of course, and that brings us to my perception, call it belief if you want, that we all experience reality individually and uniquely. We’re isolated at the core.

It’s by recognizing this uniqueness of our spirit and of all other spirits around us that a need arises: how do we establish a pattern to make this chaotic world reasonably comprehensible? How do we escape from sheer solipsism? That’s where science and philosophy enter the scene. They not only help us understand how this unique event of our existences is possible, but also, and mainly, how not to fall in the desperate situation of not finding a sense to anything since everyone can say life and existence is whatever he wants them to be. We can be either all doomed to hell or we can be all an experiment of an alien species. Whatever goes through a guy’s mind must be true or at least valid.

True to him it can be, but valid is another thing. What’s a valid perception? People perceive and interpret things individually. That’s not speculation. That’s a conclusion observation of people leads one to. Two people can’t agree complete or perfectly about anything. Because each single one perceives things differently. So, individuality is not a mere belief. It has decent enough grounds. Another such thing is consciousness itself. All living creatures we see around us display at least a rudimentary form of consciousness. Then consciousness is not a mere belief. What is a belief? The individual must serve the collective. Or consciousness survives death. These are not accountable as facts. They are beliefs, shared by countless millions, but beliefs.

More on this later.

418

It will not be possible for me to dive deeper in the subject of consciousness right now, since I can only afford to participate in this community twice a week. But next week I’ll try to engage your arguments here point by point.

419

When it comes to philosophy what are you?

A spectator or a A player.

A spectator is always on the right or left and has no control over the outcome of the game.

A player is always at the centre and has control over the outcome of the game.

We are all embroiled within science and either take psychological control or we don’t.

If you don’t try to take psychological control of the in and out of the moment consciousness states then you will never become aware of the vibratory nature of the consciousness experience and you will just continue to operate automatically.You will never become aware of how mind movement or mind engagement changes the consciousness experience from the in to the out of the moment consciousness state and vice versa.You will never become aware that for the self to remain still then it has to be separated from the in/out of the moment consciousness experiences.You will never become aware that the in/out of the moment consciousness experiences reside both on the right and the left with the spectators.

The still state of consciousness is at the centre.The in and out of the moment consciousness experiences having been psychologically balanced out by the formula in/out (self) in/out, (+/-=+/-).

What other option do you have other than to claim that you exist (because you need to exist to claim that you don’t exist) and are a misrepresentation of reality (an illusion).

420

The “measurement problem of consciousness” presents science with a fundamental challenge in confirming consciousness as a primary phenomenon. Consciousness is inherently subjective and cannot be observed or measured directly from a third-person perspective. This is analogous to the ‘fish in the jar’ scenario: just as the fish might not recognise the water it swims in, we struggle to detect or measure subjective experience from the outside.

As consciousness cannot be directly measured, its presence must be inferred through indirect indicators such as behaviour or physiological responses, which may or may not capture its full essence. Although human self-report is one of the primary sources of data, it is inherently limited and unreliable, particularly when attempting to assess consciousness in non-human animals, artificial systems or unknown entities.

Objective measures (e.g. neural correlates of consciousness) are also limited because sensitivity to stimuli does not necessarily equate to conscious experience (e.g. blindsight). There is no universally agreed method or ‘consciousness meter’ to quantify consciousness or determine its presence with certainty. These measurement challenges mean that science may fail to detect forms or degrees of consciousness that differ from human experience or that exist in unfamiliar contexts. This is analogous to how a fish does not perceive water.

Therefore, the scientific difficulty in confirming consciousness as primary may simply be due to the inherent limitations of the available observation and measurement tools, rather than denying its existence or primacy. Scientists recognise these gaps and continue to refine their methods, while also advocating a precautionary approach to attributing consciousness, particularly with regard to ethical considerations.

I believe that the ‘fish in the jar’ analogy aptly illustrates a fundamental epistemological barrier in consciousness science: consciousness may be so intrinsic and fundamental that its detection necessitates novel frameworks that transcend current empirical tools. This may explain why science has not yet confirmed consciousness as a primary phenomenon, despite ongoing efforts.

421

You can’t measure consciousness with external equipments Bob because consciousness is experiential.

The self is either aware or unaware of the two waking consciousness states and experiences them.The self is either aware or unaware of how these in and out of the moment consciousness states change when the self engages/disengages with automated thoughts.The self can step in and take manual control of the engagements/disengagements (mind movements) at leisure any time it likes in any given moment.

You are into a whole different ball game when it comes to player science.

You will never understand consciousness with spectator (observer) science.You have to play the game to understand it because you are totally embroiled within science.

What other option do you have other than to claim that you exist (because you need to exist to claim that you don’t exist) and are a misrepresentation of reality (an illusion)?

It’s only when you disassociate yourself with the in and out of the moment consciousness experiences and remain still that you will realise that you are not the 2 consciousness experiences created by mind movement.

You can think in reality in the still consciousness state.The self is not a biological processing machine.The physical body is.