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And some other relevant links in terms of the mind body problem.
It would like to recommend a book for you. Maat 11 Laws of God by Ra Un Nefer Amen. He discribes consciousness in a similar, thought provoking way. It’s a deep interpersonal read. Bless up 🙏🏾
🧠🌍✨
(I got this for $15 on another website but it is currently out of stock!) Here is the link to that https://www.tauinetwork.com/Maat-The-11-Laws-of-God_p_35.html
Here is the amazon link https://www.amazon.com/Maat-laws-God-Nefer-Amen/dp/1930097751
Rupert Spira and Bernardo Kastrup share the same idea. Kastrup explains and backs-up this view with science and philosophy.
Bernardo Kastrup (doctorate in Philosophy and Computer Engineering, worked at Cern, former director at Philips Innovation Lab) blew my mind with his book:
—> consciousness only explained with a metaphysical framework that works with known science (e.g. evolutionary, quantum and neuro). No hard problem or combination problem. Very well written must read and paradigm shifting work.
You can also watch a small course on Idealism on YouTube of the Essentia Foundation. Explains everything simple and digestible parts. There are also many podcasts Kastrup explains his view.
Are you familiar with Arthur Schopenhauer? Your description of "consciousness is the force of the universe" is reminiscent of Schopenhauer's idea that everything is "Will" a blind, omnipresent, perpetually striving force which manifests as everything from gravity to volcanic eruptions to light, to spinning planets, standing plants, and yes, human consciousness. The whole universe and everything in it peers out through a single eye, which is Will. ( I hope I got him right!)
See: The World as Will and Representation
YES, i highly recomend to read about Near Death Experiences (NDE). Theres a really good book that im reading about it, https://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Beyond-Life-Near-Death-Experience/dp/0061777269
Bernardo Kastrup (doctorate in Philosophy and Computer Engineering, worked at Cern, former director at Philips Innovation Lab) blew my mind with his book:
—> consciousness only explained with a metaphysical framework that works with known science (e.g. evolutionary, quantum and neuro). No hard problem or combination problem. Very well written must read and paradigm shifting work.
You can also watch a small course on Idealism on YouTube of the Essentia Foundation. Explains everything simple and digestible parts. There are also many podcasts Kastrup explains his view.
I think a certain state of matter is worth being looked at for it’s possible connection to consciousness. Bose-Einstein condensate matter is found within living cells, & recent work from Eric Adriano Zizzi, Marco Cavaglià, Jack Adam Tuszynski, and Marco A Deriu > suggest a transient interaction between anesthetics and microtubules in general anesthesia, and contact probability analysis shows interaction strengths consistent with the potencies of the four compounds.
Microtubules shown to have superfluid properties.
> In the very tightly confined space inside microtubules and interface’s EZs, water is structured in a specific way by entangled H-O chains. Such chains could have dangling electron-proton bonds linked to well-ordered. This could provide strong electron-electron and proton-electron interaction necessary for superconductivity with very high critical temperature (Tc), namely the temperature at which a phase transition occurs and the electrical resistivity of a non-superconductor drops to zero turning it in a superconductor, like it is in the model suggested by W.A. Little.
Bernardo Kastrup (doctorate in Philosophy and Computer Engineering, worked at Cern, former director at Philips Innovation Lab) blew my mind with his book:
Why Materialism Is Baloney: How True Skeptics Know There Is No Death and Fathom Answers to life, the Universe, and Everything
—> consciousness only explained with a metaphysical framework that works with known science (e.g. evolutionary, quantum and neuro). No hard problem or combination problem. Very well written must read and paradigm shifting work.
https://www.amazon.com/Why-Materialism-Baloney-Skeptics-Everything/dp/1782793623
Correlation does not mean causation. Ever heard of the hard problem of consciousness?
If interested I would suggest reading the works of Bernardo Kastrup (doctorate in Philosophy and Computer Engineering, worked at Cern, former director at Philips Innovation Lab) His book
Why Materialism Is Baloney: How True Skeptics Know There Is No Death and Fathom Answers to life, the Universe, and Everything
blew my mind.
—> consciousness only explained with a metaphysical framework that works with known science. No hard problem or combination problem. Very well written must read and paradigm shifting work.
https://www.amazon.com/Why-Materialism-Baloney-Skeptics-Everything/dp/1782793623
Bernardo Kastrup
Why Materialism Is Baloney: How True Skeptics Know There Is No Death and Fathom Answers to life, the Universe, and Everything
https://www.amazon.com/Why-Materialism-Baloney-Skeptics-Everything/dp/1782793623
Sea stars have no eyes, face or brain, but in Soul of an Octopus, Sy Montgomery describes how a sea star would try to take a toy away from an octopus whenever the octopus got a new one. If a staff member moved the toy away from the sea star, it would hurry to retrieve it. Pretty amazing for a creature without a brain.
Hello I would like to recommend
Mysteries at Treasure River by Nipuna D. Ranasinghe
New book release - Amazon Kindle Free Promotion
I would suggest studying "Philosophy of Mind". Consciousness alone is just one aspect of the mind (a term encompassing all mental phenomenon).
This is a book I can recommend on the subject:
Do you think this book is a fairytale?
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mathematical-Foundations-Mechanics-Princeton-Mathematics/dp/0691028931
>Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics was a revolutionary book that caused a sea change in theoretical physics. Here, John von Neumann, one of the leading mathematicians of the twentieth century, shows that great insights in quantum physics can be obtained by exploring the mathematical structure of quantum mechanics. He begins by presenting the theory of Hermitean operators and Hilbert spaces. These provide the framework for transformation theory, which von Neumann regards as the definitive form of quantum mechanics. Using this theory, he attacks with mathematical rigor some of the general problems of quantum theory, such as quantum statistical mechanics as well as measurement processes. Regarded as a tour de force at the time of publication, this book is still indispensable for those interested in the fundamental issues of quantum mechanics.
>Consciousness cannot be fundamental. It developed through evolution and it’s main use is to survive reality. It simply cannot be fundamental to the universe, because the universe will still be with or without it. It belongs to things that need to survive reality, things without consciousness need not survive reality.
There's no necessary link between consciousness and the need to survive. Plants need to survive, but that doesn't mean they need to be conscious.
As for whether consciousness developed through evolution - that is very much an open question. I believe there is a logical problem with materialism, and if you accept that materialism is false then materialistic accounts of evolution also have to be rejected.
See: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755
I think the real question we need to ask is how to square what we do know about evolution with what we don't know about consciousness, and we will not end up at a position where we can safely conclude that consciousness isn't fundamental (or something along those lines).
You would probably enjoy this book. The author (Iain McGilchrist) is not a panpsychist (and neither am I), but there's enough in the the rest of your post to suggest this as reading material, if you have not already read it. Not to be rude, your post is kind of feeling around for something, and I think you will find what you are looking for in this book.
I too believe science and mysticism/spirituality are both needed (and obviously compatible), but I approach it in term of epistemology (what sort of knowledge is possible, and how). McGilchrist approaches it in terms of neuroscience and philosophy, focusing on a ne theory of the different roles of the two hemispheres of the brain.
I am currently half way through it, and would say it is already looking like a contender for the most important modern book I have ever read.
I don't think rocks are conscious, no.
>Will is defined as the ability to make a decision and create an intention to execute that decision. Making decisions automatically determines the behavior path of a conscious organism through time and space, which we assume will display artifacts of conscious will. Any non-willful creatures, of course, will be overlooked
If you are interested, the quantum mechanical metaphysical mechanism is described in this book.
>Free will not only is an illusion, not only does it not exist, but it's a flawed concept that
>
>can't exist.
Not only can it exist, but the precise quantum mechanical mechanisms have been described: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mindful-Universe-Mechanics-Participating-Collection/dp/3642180752
>There are 2 possibilities: either 1. something happens as a result of something else or 2. something happens by true randomness (e.g. quantum physics). Neither of these is free will.
1 can be free will. Something can happen as the result of will. That is free will.
I don't understand your point at all.
>I can tell... You are not understanding my post.
>
>I will say that this post is more likely to be understood by a software developers.
I was a software engineer for 15 years. I programmed in C/C++ on high end unix machines, developing software for flight simulators and similar devices for the military. After that I studied philosophy and cognitive science to degree level at a leading university for the subject of cognitive science and AI (Sussex University in England).
The reason I cannot understand your posts is because you are using the words "is" and "consciousness" to mean completely different things in different sentences. Sometimes you want to say that consciousness is a physical process, and at other times you want to say that consciousness is the product of a physical process. This confusion runs through every post you make, and it is really quite astonishing that you are incapable of understanding that you are doing this even after I have explained it repeatedly in fine detail.
In terms of cognition, what is happening is that you are using the left hemisphere of your brain to try to understand this, when you actually need to use the right hemisphere. The left hemisphere has spent many years making the same conceptual mistake, so "cannot see it", even though it is right in front of you. The right hemisphere could see it straight away, but your left hemisphere is suppressing your right. See https://www.amazon.co.uk/Master-His-Emissary-Divided-Western/dp/0300188374.
>I like your sentence : “The only reason we know it exists is because we are directly aware of our own consciousness.“ If you say ‘we are aware of it’...the question is ‘who is aware of it?
The universal participating observer, as proposed by John Von Neumann in The mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics in 1938, and given a modern description by Henry Stapp in 2011.
>Whatever the answer, the ‘someone’ who is aware of it must be conscious, thus in essence, it is just the consciousness that is aware of being conscious.
No. The PO is aware of being conscious. In other words, the observer of a mind is not the same as the contents of a mind.
Yes and no.
Obviously what we experience is not the world as it is in itself. And eyes don't see anything. But can we be said to percieve the real world at all?
Think about the distinction between dreams and waking perception. In both cases we experience a world, and when we are dreaming, at least most of the time, we can't seem to tell the difference. And yet there is a difference, and we become aware of it if we think about it in the dream - that's how lucid dreaming starts. What accounts for this difference? Presumably it is because our brains can tell the difference between perception of the real world and perceptions of a dream world that only exists in our heads.
Then also think about our other senses - does the same apply to all of them? What about our sense of touch? What about if we encounter a wall and try to walk through it? In this case, the world "pushes back". Is the thing that is pushing back against us only in our mind? How can it be?
This is an argument in support of a position in the philosophy of perception called "direct realism".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_and_indirect_realism
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Problem-Perception-D-Smith/dp/0674008413
>While #2 is assumed (in a materialists’Universe, where else
>
>could consciousness come from?)
Outside the physical system, as proposed by John Von Neumann in 1932, in what is widely accepted to be "The Bible" as far as the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics go. He refused to accept the role of the "measuring device" in the Copenhagen Interpretation for extremely powerful reasons. What is special about a measuring device? It can be some high-tech piece of a equipment, or it can be a human eye...it is entirely arbitrary what it is. Von Neumann rejected this idea and then demonstrated mathematically why "the collapse of the wave function" can, according to the maths, happen anywhere from the measuring device to the consciousness of the observer. Brains are the only physical things in this process which aren't arbitrary, because they are associated with consciousness and nothing else is.
Von Neumann's theory has been modernised by Henry Stapp: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mindful-Universe-Mechanics-Participating-Collection/dp/3642180752
Consciousness is the result of the two-way interaction between a universal participating observer, and the unobserved quantum system as described by Schrodinger's wave equation (the uncollapsed universal wave function). This, in fact, was actually also Schrodinger's view. It is why he came up with the cat thought experiment to demonstrated the absurdity of the CI.
>Evolution is often portrayed as an "accidental process" whereby species evolve through a series of "random" mutations, which mysteriously seem to result the "optimization" of the species (or entirely new species).
>
>I am skeptical of this "accidental" view of Nature, although I try to keep an open mind.
OK. You really need to read this book if you haven't already: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755
Nagel argues that in the case of consciousness, evolution must have been teleological. And I think he is right.
>It is clear to me that humans have superior brains, because they have been "designed" to eventually leave this planet and "infest" other worlds. Yes, like cockroaches, only on a larger scale.
This, I think, is wrong. The purpose - the teleology - was only for the "purpose" of getting to a that first conscious animal. After that consciousness already existed - it did not need to evolve twice. However, that first animal was really stupid. It had a tiny brain. Intelligence is not consciousness - it does not demand a teleological explanation, because it is very obvious what intelligence is useful for, and how it evolved. Humans have got very large brains because about 5 million years ago our ancestors started depending entirely on brainpower to survive. It's got nothing to do with leaving the planet. It was about becoming a super-predator. Unfortunately we have become too good at this, and we will now be lucky to survive the eco-apocalypse we've created. We aren't going to leave the planet.
The Copenhagen Interpretation is metaphysics, so even if it was true that it is "the most widely accepted interpretation" by physicists, that is no reason to believe it is true. Physicsts are not philosophers, so their opinion on "what is really going on" should carry no weight than the opinion of anybody else. John Von Neumann is widely recognised as one of the greatest mathematicians and theoretical physicists of the 20th century, and is the author of what is widely regarded as "The Bible" in terms of the science of quantum mechanics (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mathematical-Foundations-Mechanics-Princeton-Mathematics/dp/0691028931). Should we just accept what Von Neumann says because he was a mathematical genius and arguably the last great polymath? No. We should assess the metaphysics and attendent arguments ourselves.
There is no reason to believe the CI is the correct interpretation of QM. It is entirely justifiable to believe in various alternatives, including Von Neumann's and MWI, both of which are more parsimonius, elegant and consistent than the CI. The CI is a confused mess - the result of comittee of physicists trying to agree on a philosophical position they didn't want to have anything to do with.
>As I'm sure you know, there is plenty more where that came from.
Sadly, yes.
Panpsychism can be thought of as an offshoot of materialists schools of thought. Both say there is only 1 type of stuff in the universe: idealists thinks its mental stuff, materialists thinks its matter, Descartes and dualists thought there was only one type of stuff but it had both physical and mental properties.
Capacity for consciousness refers to the very explicit presence of a consciousness within all matter, that there is an experience associated with something as minute as an electron. But I must make it clear here that the definition of "experience" in my field refers to a very vague "being of." It does not necessitate cognition, emotion, memory, or awareness. There is an experience to things like electrons but not as complex as an evolved organism such as mammals.
Whitehead is a very difficult read and its seen as a baptism by fire amongst my colleagues. I encourage you to engage with his philosophy through his contemporaries like David Ray Griffin in this and this book.
Yes! Thanks for asking. The next get-together is this Sunday (we decided to switch to Sundays) from 6:30-7:30 PST/9:30-10:30EST. We’re discussing Be Here Now by Ram Dass (most of us are in the Cookbook for Life section). We also are picking mantas to share. We’d love to have you join us. https://meet.google.com/ght-evcn-ogr
Hi ablissful. We are reading Ram Das’s Be Here Now at a no pressure pace.
Our next meeting is Sunday, March 14 6:30-7:30PST. Also, we’re each picking a mantra that speaks to us (from the book or not), displaying in our home, then talking about how it’s related to our week.
Here’s the zoom link: GoogleMeet: Join: https://meet.google.com/ght-evcn-ogr
I can send you the Google Calendar invite if you DM me your email and I can send you my phone number if you have issues getting into the call.
Not sure why it didn’t work for you. My apologies. We’ll be meeting again Sunday, March 14 6:30-7:30PST. We are reading Ram Das’s Be Here Now at a no pressure pace. Also, we’re each picking a mantra that speaks to us (from the book or not), displaying in our home, then talking about how it’s related to our week.
Here’s the zoom link: GoogleMeet: Join: https://meet.google.com/ght-evcn-ogr
I can send you the Google Calendar invite if you DM me your email and I can send you my phone number if you have issues getting into the call.
You could go get a neuroscience or psychology degree. You have the passion and are at the right age to pursue it! You have some spot on ideas that are mixed in with mysticism and non science or whatever.
Check out this book by a neuroscientist. It’s an easy fun read.
Brain Bugs: How the Brain's Flaws Shape Our Lives https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393342220/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_H4SHQQK51QAPVFW6PXSG?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1
Yes, memory is not a video. It’s a storage of associations. Everything you see in that hallway builds a connection in your head with another memory. So looking back you absolutely can’t trust it 100%. I’m 37 and thinking back to 16 walking around high school hallways I only have <10 general ideas there and they definitely blend together.
Brain Bugs: How the Brain's Flaws Shape Our Lives https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393342220/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_KWJZV7R29K1NC377F9Q2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1 is a good book on our “associative neural architecture” by a neuroscientist. Love this guy.
You might already know this, but all of mathematics is a measurement of some sort. If it can be observed it can be measured. However, finding a way to make it scientific is a bit harder.
You might like GEB or it's sibling I Aam A Strange Loop. If you like any of those as a follow up Metamagical Themas is pretty entertaining.
As for mapping the system of the mind, that has quite a bit to it, depending on what level of detail you're looking for. Hofstadter is a great start, but outside of that is there anything specific you're curious about? Consciousness is a big word, which is why there are multiple ≈thousand page books talking about only parts of it.
Your are spot on to say that consciousness is created relatively simple by the right neural architecture. There are a couple of twists in that architecture that give rise to the subtleties in it and some of the apparent philosophical mysteries.
I have just started a blog and published an e-book on how consciousness works, making everything as simple, clear and explicit as I can .
Please take a look and let me know your thoughts: Blog: http://pjm678.wixsite.com/consciousness E-book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mechanisms-Consciousness-How-consciousness-works-ebook/dp/B01N4LPLAD Regards Peter Martin