Yes, yes, okay, alright, but the question remains: what is your philosophy?
It’s hard to fathom what is this solid science you talk so much about without references.
I get your main point. Some people here believe in nothing, but still want to come here and comment and quarrel on the situation of the world. They contradict themselves every time they post. Their reasoning goes as follow:
a) The world is an illusion
b) Isn’t Trump the worst piece of shit ever??
But I for one do not believe in nothing. I believe in something. The universe is something. This world is something. Our bodies are something. Our minds are something.
But I can articulate that in a reasonably comprehensible manner. That’s where we differ.
Something has already come from nothing with a single big bang philosophy science so there was clearly something and not nothing prior to a single big bang thus definitively proving that a cancelling out philosophy does not work for prior to a single big bang.
There never was a single big bang though because we know that all matter comes from and will disappear into all of the glassy holes at the centre of all the multiple galaxies that are out there so a single big bang theory doesn’t work anyway because if all matter disappears into all the multiple glassy holes then there ain’t gonna be any matter left to disappear into a single glassy hole anyway.
This is precisely why science has given up on a single Big Crunch and the JWT is putting to bed any lingering notions that the universe is expanding from a single point because it doesn’t matter how far out into space you look the galaxies are/will be as mature as our own.They are finding this out right now which is why they are slowly losing interest in the single big bang theory but let’s be honest they are too embarrassed to admit it.
The problem with this is that all of mainstream sciences theories/models go out of the window and you have to start again.
My philosophy and the science that is derived from it doesn’t have any of those problems.
It makes total sense and explains the psychological perfectly.
Many individuals believe that science is rock solid and confirms their religious beliefs.What they don’t realise is that the actual reality is that it is at the point of total collapse/total failure.
I articulate my philosophy and the science derived from it very simply and I show how it is related to psychology wonderfully well.
Nope, I wrote about it above, as you probably haven’t read it, let me repeat myself:
I wouldn’t ever exchange science, even fallible, for religion, with its inevitable occult and dark mysteries, especially when it comes to understand something like consciousness.
To me, Jung’s writings reveal that he, too, wrestled with the limits of language. Despite his fluency in several languages and his remarkable gift for concept-creation, he often struggled to name experiences that belonged less to the rational mind and more to the ineffable depths of the psyche. His work shows how difficult it is to translate the symbolic, the unconscious, and the numinous into terms that do not flatten their power.
Yet, in this struggle, he touches something universal. Any sensitive person, at some point, comes face to face with their own shadows—their solitude, their craving for light, the sense of being pursued by confusion or madness. These inner experiences often envelop us and manifest as distortions of character and spirit. Jung might call them expressions of the shadow; spiritual traditions might call them “defilements.” In essence, they are disturbances of the soul that obscure clarity, compassion, and consciousness.
They take countless forms: abandonment, abuse, aggression, ambition, anger, arrogance, callousness, cruelty, deceit, envy, greed, hatred, jealousy, lust, pride, rage, tyranny, vanity, violence, wickedness, and many others—each a variation of inner dissonance, each a refusal of wholeness. Some are subtle, veiled as righteousness, cleverness, or even charm; others are raw, explosive, and destructive to oneself and others alike.
What unites them is their power to darken the inner life, to obscure the guiding flame of awareness. Each represents a fracture in our perception, a turbulence of mind or emotion that distracts, confuses, and misleads. And yet, Jung would remind us that these “defilements” are not merely to be condemned or repressed. They are also signals from the unconscious, symbols of neglected truths, and fragments of the greater Self, seeking recognition.
Thus, the darkness is not alien to us but part of the human condition. To confront it sincerely is not to indulge it, but to begin transforming it. In this sense, Jung’s wrestling with language mirrors our own wrestling with the soul: an imperfect but necessary attempt to name what resists being named, to bring into consciousness that which dwells in the depths, so that clarity, mindfulness, and reconciliation with one’s whole being may slowly emerge.
You appreciate the difference between wissen and kennen which I read into these words spoken in English. I would say that he is best translated as saying, “Ich muss nicht glauben, ich kenne Gott.” Kennen is used when referring to being familiar with or acquainted with people, places, or things based on experience or personal recognition, not facts, data, or pieces of information. I suggest he would use “kennen” to express his intimate familiarity or personal experience with many things—people, places, emotions, ideas—without necessarily having encyclopaedic or factual knowledge (“wissen”) about them.
Iain McGilchrist says, “Ultimately, in fact, all knowledge derives from experience, for which there are no propositions – thus sapere bows to cognoscere, savoir to connaître, wissen to kennen, propositional knowledge to knowledge by encounter. When we say we know something, what we mean is that we see that it is like something else that we reckon we already know better, from a previous encounter. And those ‘somethings else’, followed far enough, return us in every case to embodied experience.”
(The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World (p. 975))
In another passage, McGilchrist writes, “The intellect is ‘incurably abstract’, as CS Lewis says, while experience is intrinsically concrete. How can we have both kinds of knowledge at once – knowledge about, and knowledge of?
‘You cannot study Pleasure in the moment of the nuptial embrace, nor repentance while repenting, nor analyse the nature of humour while roaring with laughter. But when else can you really know these things? ‘If only my toothache would stop, I could write another chapter about Pain.’ But once it stops, what do I know about pain?’” (pp. 981-982).
Regarding consciousness, Bryan Magee, a British philosopher, broadcaster, politician and author, best known for bringing philosophy to a popular audience, captures the difficulties: “…this direct experience which is never adequately communicable in words is the only knowledge we ever fully have. That is our one and only true, unadulterated, direct and immediate form of knowledge of the world, wholly possessed, uniquely ours. People who are rich in that are rich in lived life. But the very putting of it into words translates it into something of the second order, something derived, watered down, abstracted, generalised, publicly shareable. People who live most of their outer or inner lives in terms that are expressible in language – for example, people who live at the level of concepts, or in a world of ideas – are living a life in which everything is simplified and reduced, emptied of what makes it lived, purged of what makes it unique and theirs.”
Collective unconscious lies beneath and deeper than the personal unconscious contents that psychoanalysis typically unveils; it is a metaphysical domain that exists independently of material reality or personal history, akin to a Platonic realm of forms that shapes thought, behaviour, and symbolism across the entirety of humanity.
Bernardo Kastrup, a book titled “Decoding Jung’s Metaphysics: The Archetypal Semantics of an Experiential Universe,” interprets the collective unconscious as an expression of a single, universal consciousness that unites all individual minds. He sees Jung’s archetypes not merely as psychological constructs but as manifestations of the underlying mental fabric of reality—a shared mental realm binding humanity together. According to Kastrup, the collective unconscious is ontologically real in the sense that it reflects this universal consciousness, rather than being merely metaphorical or symbolic.
He highlights that the individual mind or self is not truly separate but an expression or viewpoint of this singular universal mind. The “agent”—the conscious subject behind our experience—is essentially the same universal consciousness experiencing itself in different forms. This means what we call the collective unconscious is this underlying unity of all minds and experiences. Jung’s archetypes represent fundamental, recurring patterns intrinsic to this universal consciousness, which gives rise to the common symbols, myths, and motifs across cultures and history.
Kastrup situates this within his broader idealist ontology, where the physical world is a manifestation or projection of consciousness, akin to a shared dream. In this view, the collective unconscious is part of the “dreamed-up” reality, a stable pattern maintained by multiple minds sharing the same underlying consciousness. This provides a metaphysical grounding to Jung’s psychological insights, bridging the gap between individual experience and universal reality.
According to Kastrup, all individual minds—including those of the ten isolated children—are manifestations or dissociated viewpoints of one underlying universal consciousness. So even if these children had no cultural or external input, their individual consciousnesses would still be expressions of the same universal mind that underlies all human experience. This foundational unity implies that the potential for archetypal patterns and collective psychic structures exists inherently in their shared universal consciousness, even if the children don’t consciously manifest or recognize them because of their isolation.
Your concern about the importance of bodily reality and individual experience is valid, since universal consciousness is expressed through individual, embodied perspectives. Kastrup would emphasise that individual consciousnesses are ‘centres of consciousness’ that are separate from the greater mind. This means that the particularities of one’s life and body have a strong influence on one’s psychic content and how it unfolds. The collective unconscious provides the foundation, while individual experience determines its form and diversity.
As I mentioned previously, Jung’s metaphysics are an informed attempt to articulate the nature of reality beyond physicalism. They are grounded in experience and rigorous reflection, not just wishful thinking. If Kastrup is right that the individual conscious perspective is only temporarily bound to and shaped by the body and ultimately dissociates from the universal consciousness rather than remaining an independent entity, then when the body ceases to function — such as at physical death — that particular viewpoint may dissolve or reintegrate into the universal consciousness.
Kastrup explains that, contrary to former beliefs, psychedelic substances do not excite or ‘light up’ the brain; rather, they reduce brain activity in several regions, especially those responsible for the sense of self and the boundaries between the self and the world. He interprets this reduction in brain activity as a diminished dissociative process — the brain’s normal filter or boundary that keeps the universal consciousness fragmented into isolated, individual perspectives (which he calls ‘alters’). Psychedelics temporarily weaken this dissociation, making the boundary more permeable. This can lead to overwhelming mystical experiences and profound insights into the nature of reality, including a sense of unity with everything.
He also draws parallels between these psychedelic states and near-death experiences, or ‘ego death’, where the usual sense of self dissolves, allowing the universal consciousness to be experienced more directly. This supports his idea that consciousness is a universal field and that our usual waking self is merely one limited perspective within it. Interestingly, the core philosophical teachings of Advaita Vedanta support and resonate with Bernardo Kastrup’s ideas about universal consciousness.
However, their teaching on reincarnation serves a practical purpose: to explain karma and ethical consequences in the empirical domain, and to encourage spiritual progress towards realising non-duality, where birth, death and reincarnation are seen as mere appearances, not ultimate realities.
Buddhism’s idea of rebirth may seem more tenable or coherent to some because it dispenses with the notion of a permanent, unchanging self that reincarnates, and instead, posits a continuous, causally connected process conditioned by moral causes, ceasing only when liberation is achieved.
Buddha reportedly could remember past lives, but unlike beliefs in a permanent soul, these memories pertain to a process of rebirth without an eternal self, consistent with the doctrine of anatta (no-self). While these recollections are central in many early Buddhist sources, modern scholars debate the nature and interpretation of these memories—whether literal, symbolic, or experiential insights. Nonetheless, within Buddhist tradition, the Buddha’s past-life memories are accepted as genuine spiritual knowledge attained through advanced meditation.
Belief in reincarnation is often based on metaphysical assumptions that lie beyond the remit of mainstream science, which tends to focus on the physical and neurological basis of consciousness. Traditions such as Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta offer philosophical models of rebirth that differ from the Western soul-based model. These models emphasise processes without a permanent self. Understanding these frameworks can broaden perspectives beyond deeming reincarnation as simply ‘absurd’.
Consciousness and identity remain deeply mysterious phenomena. Neuroscience has not yet fully explained memory, self-awareness or subjective experience. Reports of past-life memories may suggest that there are aspects of the human experience that have yet to be understood rather than being impossible. The experiences of some people, such as the memories of children or accounts of near-death experiences, may point to dimensions of existence beyond current scientific paradigms. Such phenomena invite humility and exploration, rather than dismissal.
Recent research into organisms such as fungi, slime moulds and plants has revealed surprising abilities that suggest intelligent behaviour or problem-solving without a brain. For example, fungal networks can optimise the distribution of nutrients, adapt to environmental stresses and navigate complex terrain. Some people interpret these behaviours as a form of intention or proto cognition. Slime moulds have demonstrated their ability to find the shortest paths and make collective decisions.
These phenomena challenge the traditional neuro-centric view that consciousness or intentionality arise only from brains. Instead, they suggest that consciousness, or some form of awareness, may be more fundamental and widespread in nature, and present in different or simpler forms in organisms without brains.
While computers have clearly defined storage units in which data is physically stored and retrieved, memory in the brain does not reside in a single, localised area or an isolated storage device. Rather, memory in the brain is a complex, distributed process involving networks of neurons across multiple regions. These networks dynamically encode and retrieve information through changes in synaptic strength, patterns of neural activity and biochemical processes.
Examples from neuroscience, such as brain damage impairing memory formation or brain activity correlating with memory tasks, primarily demonstrate that the brain is crucial for encoding, processing and retrieving information, rather than conclusively proving that it physically stores memory as a fixed entity.
The idea that memories are stored in the brain as fixed, discrete entities located within specific structures is a widely accepted hypothesis in neuroscience. Although supported by extensive correlational evidence, it has not been definitively proven in the sense of locating physical ‘memory storage’ akin to computer data storage. It remains a belief.
As you know that I write novels, you can probably guess that I am open to anything that has not yet been disproven, even if integrating some subjects into my stories retains a subjective and nuanced character. My latest story centres on the mystery of a young girl who claims to have lived multiple lives. Although this is only one aspect of her life, I revisit her experience at the end, raising the serious question of how we cope with people whose subjective experience is so transformational that we cannot ignore its effect on them.
I invite readers to consider the following:
The impact of extraordinary subjective experiences on mental health, identity and relationships.
How communities and individuals cope with experiences that defy ordinary explanation or challenge shared reality.
The tension between scepticism and openness when responding to transformative narratives.
The broader philosophical and existential questions about the continuity of self, memory, and consciousness.
I want to humanise the mystery, focusing less on proving or disproving reincarnation and more on the lived consequences and meaning such experiences hold for the person and society.
Not clever enough apparently. Whatever does that mean? There seems to be some implicit theory of causation underlying this proposition that I don’t understand.
The I am sits above the Self/Soul.The Self/Soul sits above Awareness.Awareness sits above Consciousness.Consciousness sits above Thoughts.Thoughts sit above Emotions.
The Self/Soul is Aware of the vibratory nature of Consciousness and CONTROLS it and in doing so CONTROLS Thoughts and resultant Emotions.
I know the moment Jung was mentioned in this conversation you’d join it, since his Weltanschauung seems to resonate yours in many ways. Yes, I see what you mean, I respect his work very much [just as I respect Freud’s] and I know he had much difficulty in conveying what his innermost being perceived as truths to others- he mostly intuited them, but could not convey them in a comprehensible manner, because of their own nature. That’s exactly why Freud would criticize him, his down-to-earth approach being more concerned with verifiable, demonstrable facts than with the ineffable.
In his search for meaning, understanding, freedom, ie, for light, he echoes my own cosmovision, but I just prefer not to let my spirit get drowned to what could be just ideas floating in my head but which I’ll never be able to fathom or word properly. He “embraced” his own transcedental experiences of reality- whereas I prefer to analyze my own experiences carefully and with an unrelenting desire to remain lucid at all costs.
Yes, coming to the closest of a complete understanding of our mind is desirable, but maybe not tenable, as the darkness is always there, the obscured recesses of one’s person, which begin to form very early on as soon as consciousness emerges. But here is where I think Jung gets wildly confused too, because his work was that of an analyst, a psycho-analyst, and yet his general conclusion seems to revolve around a “how can we hope to understand that?” attitude. It’s like his working with his patients led him to the extreme opposite of Freud’s conclusions, while the latter came to believe it was possible to free a person from neurosis by illuminating the aspects of their past responsible for it, Jung posits the hole is even deeper than it seemed at first, hinting at the uselessness of his own work as an analyst! So one needs to balance the two views- let’s dive, but not so deep as to lose all sense of footing and direction. That’s why I counterbalance both guys’s views.
Yes, I know the difference between kennen and wissen, a difference English doesn’t know of. Jung felt he had a profound, inner knowledge of a deeper reality- whatever he decided to call God, since it was clearly not the Christian anthropomorphic entity- that he could not transmit to others but yet was as real as any other of his perceptions or ideas.
Here’s where I posit that one’s beliefs are intimate and personal AND also that such a thing proves individuality behind almost a shadow of a doubt, BECAUSE the subject believes something he can’t properly communicate to others but YET as far as he’s aware, that belief is as real for him as knowing the sun is hot. Here’s also where I leave Carl Gustav alone with his own beliefs and experiences in life, where I recognize I was never in his shoes nor lived anything he went through in life, so can never simply come and say “The guy was insane!” BUT I feel the need to contrast his famous statement with his own confession in his spiritual biography, “There is nothing I am quite sure about”. That is, he knows God, but has no idea what God properly is. Meaning, his God can mean or be anything, including a peculiar mental state. Since it’s indefinible, it can be anything and also nothing. Just a fixed idea in his head. Whatever it is, one thing is sure: for all practical purposes, it’s a personal belief, as undemonstrable as any other religious belief.
I can read this. I can understand all of it. Doesn’t contradict my perception of things. Yet here we’re talking how one internalizes knowledge, right? Because some criterion is needed so that we do not feel we’re all living in a dream. So we create what we could call the convenient way of wording concepts, which then become communicable and understandable. Also, some notions, like the fact that the world is out there, regarldless of our perception of it, occupy a higher level of reliability than an inner belief in an abstraction of whatever nature. Because all people in this planet share this same belief in the external world, for all practical purposes it becomes a fact, not a mere interpretation.
I like how this view equates being a slave of concepts with superficiality, yet some concepts are needed, and some ground must be established for us not to feel we’re always living in a dream within another dream. That’s why I refer to what looks more reasonable or acceptable based on careful observation. In this sense, the idea of corporality is way more reasonable than the notion of a consciousness existing without a body.
I know that, and it’s just as ethereal and mystical as the Platonic notion. It has no demonstrable reality on scientific terms.
I see, and I realize that’s what you believe, but I don’t subscribe to such a notion. He sees individual consciousnesses as aspects of one single phenomenon, that does not have connection to the world I perceive, where consciousness is related to the physical body of a living entity and entirely dependent on such a body existing independently of other bodies. What he seems to do is disregard individualist existence in favor of an unifying view which sees living beings as whole, consciousness being a word to describe awareness itself, as a thing in itself, which has some logic to it, but I don’t see how it could be demonstrable in comprehensible terms. Beginning with the fact that consciousness happened accidentally, like life itself, and that as long as life didn’t exist in the universe, consciousness was never there, we would see that the whole of the universe seems to be consciousness-less, not conscious, because conscious beings exist solely in this restricted corner of the universe (an infinitesimal spot), whereas the rest of the universe is dead matter, as far as we know.
I realize the fascination of such an idea, but to me, consciousness is not something abstract like that, and surely not something Platonic, existing in itself, it’s a phenomenon related to life itself, manifesting itself through the living, and ceasing with the death of whatever body it may occupy.
And there’s where we identify the genesis of a religious conception of the world.
So, you don’t manifest something, but it’s “there”, somewhere, in the ether. Nope, the individualized unconscious is something tenable- as we spend long years living without hardly being aware of it, but a collective mind which we inherit independently of our real bodily and life conditions, existing as something in itself? I can’t buy that.
I posit that there’s no such thing as “universal consciousness”. Consciousness is an individualized experience of a physical body in touch with its external environment. It’s something demonstrable, if not totally comprehensible. The notion of universal consciousness or a greater mind, a mind of the universe, does not rely on anything but a need to create an unifying conception of the world. Again, it’s up to what one wants to believe in life, but it’s a belief coming from the ether, literally, like the Platonic soul. The world is mindless. The universe is mindless. The world is dead matter without the living beings on it. And if you’d kill all living beings, where would the universal consciousness reside? Since it’s essentially a consciousness without a body? Kill all life- consciousness disappears, the universe disappears, or rather, the universe remains as it mostly is- dead space.
That is, a religious understanding of reality.
I know you’re describing Kastrup’s ideas, but it is obvious you share them otherwise why would you bother.
Such a point of view seems obnoxious to me, Bob. Not only it leads us back to the darkness of religious dogma, where things are so because they must be so, independently of demonstration, but it takes the whole fascination of life’s uniqueness, which is each sigle living being’s uniqueness. Death is not an appearance- death is the destruction of a person’s body, which includes their brain, the seat of their minds and of all they ‘are’. To posit the opposite is to give birth to lot of questions that can’t be answered, as you yourself admit.
If Buddha was really that wise, that could only be metaphor, as I don’t really see how a person could remember a past life when the brain literally is born out of nothing. When the experiences of an individual in this world begin from scratch, almost a tabula rasa. I understand though such concept is essential to many Eastern traditions.
Yes, I concur with that, they remain mostly mysterious, but to jump from that to “reincarnation is a fact” or “all consciousnesses are part of the same universal consciousness” is more than a reach, it’s an absurdity. We have still much to learn about it, that’s literally what I said. BUT RELIGION DOES NOT AUGMENT OUR KNOWLEDGE ABOUT IT, quite on the contrary, it establishes unprovable FACTS, unquestionable TRUTHS. I don’t see religious minds saying here “There is much we need to know yet”, I read them saying: “Reincarnation is a fact”. All of the weird events involving deep sleep, ND experiences, etc, ARE being studied, but we must rely on SCIENCE investigating it first and foremost, not on wishful thinking or gullible people who see any person affirming to be a reincarnation of an old Indian prince as “proof” that reincarnation is real.
It will mostly likely always remain a belief, a religious belief at that.
Even if that is accepted, about fungi, etc, one thing remains: the body needs to be there, in whatever form it takes. I myself said the consciousness came first, the brain came later. In our case, OUR case, the brain obviously plays a crucial role- what happens when the brain stops, exactly? Is the mind still “accessible” somehow? Only by mediums, by I take mediums with two grains of salt.
I understand the computer analogy may not be that accurate, but still the argument remains to be properly addressed: with death the body and the brain are utterly destroyed. It remains to be demonstrated that a special “something” remains when nothing visible is there anymore.
Again, man, such a “belief” is better than to posit consciousness fell from heaven or is permanently stored in the ether, isn’t it?
I’m curious to know how you will make such a story credible enough without indulging in too much fantasizing, ie how you can demonstrate such a belief has more to it than mere wishful thinking or misinterpretation of one’s own mind.
Scientists have managed to film plants communicating with one another, capturing something usually invisible to the human eye. They discovered that plants use airborne chemical signals to warn neighbours of danger and to defend themselves from threats like insects.
When a plant is attacked by herbivores, it releases imperceptible compounds into the air. Nearby plants detect these signals and respond by activating their own defences, such as producing chemicals that repel insects or by strengthening their cell walls.
Although scientists have known since the 1980s that plants release distress signals, the process of how other plants receive and respond to them remained unclear. To study this, researchers transferred these compounds from damaged plants to healthy ones and then used a fluorescence microscope to observe how the healthy plants reacted.
In one experiment, caterpillars were placed on the leaves of certain plants. Soon after, nearby untouched plants responded to the chemical warnings by preparing their defences, showing that communication had taken place.
Plants also share information in other ways. Through underground networks of fungi called mycorrhizae, they can exchange nutrients and signals about soil conditions, creating a hidden web of communication beneath the earth.
This research reveals that plants are far from passive; they are constantly sensing, signalling, and adapting in order to survive in their ever-changing environments.
The scariest question for those who like to dig into the details is WHY. Why do we need parts at all? Why do you BELIEVE? Why don’t you want to know? Why do you use labels? They wrote “do not enter” and a dead end in understanding. How can I explain this to you? Light is shit.
Remove the walls on the sartyrs? To make it obvious, how do you shit in the light?
That seems to summarize your whole thesis, which from your point of view I accept is small t true. So you think consciousness is something in your head generated by your brain.
Here you conflate consciousness and reason, whereas reason always appears in consciousness which continues when reasoning ceases as in meditation. Now I am describing an experience. This is not speculation. You can experience it yourself. If you did your conception of consciousness might change.
This is a kind of parody of Platonism from the outside. How do you know it isn’t mere speculation about what an experience you haven’t had, like trying to imagine a country you have never visited?
True; religious and mystical thought without experience is a waste of time.
That through which one enjoys sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste, and measurement is consciousness. Outside of consciousness nothing is seen heard touched smelled tasted or measured. And yet consciousness cannot be seen heard touched, smelled, tasted or measured. It’s true there’s still no universally, accepted definition or optimal method for empirically, measuring consciousness.
Curiously, consciousness itself plays a vital causal role in quantum mechanics experiments where it is required to bring about the so-called collapse of the wave function.This collapse is supposed to occur upon any act of measurement, and in one interpretation the only way to distinguish measurement from non-measurement is via the presence of consciousness.
Nothing is demonstrated outside of consciousness. When consciousness cannot be verbally reported demonstration relies on observing behavioral and neurological markers, indicative of an individuals awareness and responsiveness. There are a number of scientific instruments for doing this if we wish to go into that.
All phenomena appear in it.
It cannot be proven that consciousness exists yet we know about consciousness more directly than we know about anything else, so “proof” is inappropriate.
Yes consciousness is unseen. At one time in the mid 20th century, studying consciousness was considered taboo in scientific circles, but this is no longer the case. In recent decades, consciousness has emerged as a legitimate and important area of scientific study. Neuroscience in particular plays a central role in this interdisciplinary field, which draws from philosophy, theoretical approaches, computational, models, experimental methods, and clinical perspectives.
How do you empirically get beyond speculation about consciousness when considering preliterate humans? I mean paleontology can look at skeletal changes, and changes in cultural artifacts. Evolutionary psychologists cancompare human traits and behavior with other species look at cross-cultural research, genetic evidence, archaeological, and anthropological data, brain imaging in neurobiology psychological experiments and pathological studies and such. What does it tell them about consciousness?
As Chalmers pointed out, one could determine all the facts about biological function and human behavior and brain mechanisms by which it is caused but nothing in this vast cause story would lead one who had not experienced directly to believe that there should be any consciousness. How would the process of natural selection distinguish between a conscious person and their zombie twin?Eolution selects properties according to their functional role. What would the evidence consciousness changes with evolution look like? We know that there are differences between us and other animal species in terms of intelligence and behavior but how do we know or do we know that consciousness itself is fundamentally different for them?
Not necessarily. For example, according to Chalmers panpsychism, consciousness could be a fundamental property of the universe present in basic physical entities not just humans. That would provide a solution to the hard problem of consciousness by positing that the intrinsic nature of matter itself possesses phenomenal properties. This would avoid the gap between physical and mental realms seen by other views. This panpsychic theory would blend aspects of materialism and dualism. It aims to preserve the strength of physicalism while incorporating irreducible consciousness as a core feature of reality.
Then there is monistic idealism which defines consciousness as the primary reality, as the ground of all being. The objects of a consensus empirical reality are all epiphenomena that arise from the modifications of consciousness. There is no self-nature in either the subject or the object of a conscious experience apart from consciousness. According to the cosmologies of Aurobindo and Ken Wilber, descent or involution of consciousness must occur before ascent or evolution can take place. Transcendent consciousness, throws itself downward and outward into manifest levels that are grosser and grosser. As consciousness descends, it also forgets itself. Each descending level corresponds to one of increasing forgetfulness and decreasing freedom. The previous subtler level is forgotten, delegated to the unconscious. At the lowest level, all is unconscious, all is potential. This is the material level. This is called involution because all the higher levels are potential in matter ready to unfold.
Once involution is complete, evolution begins. Life doesn’t emerge from matter from material properties and interactions along a higher level, can never emerge from the interactions and causation of a lower one. Rather life emergence at a certain level of complexity of matter because it was already there potentially. Mind emerges likewise from a certain complexity of life because it was already present potentially. I find this theory sublime.
Then there is Roger Penrose’s theory that consciousness is not a computational process, but arises from quantum mechanics within brain microtubules. The theory of orchestrated objective reduction suggests that non-computational quantum gravity events called objective reduction occur in the microtubules and are orchestrated into conscious experience. This is based on the premise that human understanding, particularly in mathematics, goes beyond algorithmic limits defined by Godel’s incompleteness theorems requiring a new understanding of physics to explain consciousness.
I could go on, but you get the idea. The state of the philosophy and science of consciousness which emerged in the late 20th century is a wide open field. And it’s one of considerable urgency and potential particularly because of recent advances in AI.
Just a brief comment, not an overlong rambling which I know nobody will bother to read.
Two things that strike me are
a) how whenever science is incipient or can’t reach a consensus about a subject [whatever it is], mystical speculation takes the lead, until it forms an entire worldview with nothing tangible in itself except the desire of its proponents to feel themselves to be the supreme experts on existence
b) the need 21st people have of taking their feet off the ground and throw themselves headfirst into the ether, distancing themselves as much as possible from an approach that puts them in touch with real life, but instead embracing a stance that invariably leads them to believe, or rather, to affirm, that this so-called real life does not exist, that everything is an illusion of the senses, that we are all dust, a dream, etc., etc., all this while having to stop to think about how they are going to pay the damn bill that just arrived
That’s what we call promissory materialism which suggests that if a materialistic explanation isn’t currently available for a phenomenon, it’s only a matter of time before science discovers it. This approach often involves dismissing or minimizing the significance of phenomena that seem difficult to explain through purely materialistic terms. I will argue that metaphysical idealism is every bit as scientific as materialism in fact more so because it’s not incompatible with consciousness.
Yes , and the reaso(s) it isn’t of avail is that 1 it is available but put more simply, it doesen’t measure up to the complexity expected, therefore it’s merely the effect of a suppression of such terms, or, the mere fact of memory loss that could connect what predicates had been echoed through mystics laws ( like the Lotus Sutra), or recollect the derivative of the Greek root of the source meant by meme’s.
"First thing I realized was that it was cold. Very cold. I could not discern anything at first but that it was cold. Then I realized it was dark, very dark. The whole room was dark, but dark in a very suffocating way, it wasn’t simply a matter of getting up and turning on the light. The darkness penetrated everything, exerting a pressure on me, on my body, that I had never felt before and could compare to nothing else. It was an enormous weight, as if someone, or something, wanted to pull me, drag me with them to some place, some unknown hole. I felt fear, an intense fear, something I had never imagined feeling before. I screamed and got no help, my screams had no effect. So I desperately tried to look around. I couldn’t see anything discernible, only shapes. Horrible, warped shapes. The impression those strange forms gave me was that I would never be free of them, that they would be there forever, weighing me down, suffocating me, controlling my every movement. I couldn’t turn on the light; no matter what I did, I couldn’t turn on the light. Until suddenly the tension began to ease, the weight on my chest began to lift, the darkness began to slowly dissipate, as if Someone were guiding me toward freedom, toward the Light.
“What happened? Did you have an epiphany, a religious experience, an encounter with God, was it something like that?”
