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It sounds like nonsense
What, exactly, sounds like nonsense? The belief in souls and spirits and such, or my objective take on consciousness?
Yep nonsense!
What, exactly, sounds like nonsense? The belief in souls and spirits and such, or my objective take on consciousness?
Both
The last two sentences are where things really took a left at Albuquerque, as Buggs Bunny would put it. Awareness as we recognize it is entirely based on physics. Single celled organizisms have awareness of a sort due to an identified signaling mechanism. That signaling mechanism evolved in multicellular life and began to be more recognizable in the late precabrian era. Nervous sytems began to grow and reached a more elegant state in animals with a notochord, leading to the Vertebrates, though they aren't only ones (such as with cephalopods like the octopus.) All cellular orginisms have some degree of sensitivity, but I don't see what any of this has to do with nirvana or Moksha. We're not talking about the interaction of fundamental particles; we're talking about awareness. If I understood your write up correctly, I have to disagree with you.
I can see how bringing Vedic traditions into an argument based on cell-molec biology and physics could turn people off. It doesn't have to be that way, however. Reaching 'nirvana' is not what people think it is, in the West. It's literally just an understanding and then an involved feeling (call it 'spirituality' but it's not -- that's a New Age term) that all things are connected. DeGrasse Tyson would agree (see pic). Everything you said up until the last few sentences agrees with my statements, by the by. Consciousness arose from awareness which became more and more developed upon by biology (Universe 2.0 as I like to call it) from simple atomic attraction and repulsion, ionization and such. And I'd like to say thank you for being an intellectual by way of actually applying a thoughtful response to my post instead of just "It's nonsense" (quite a lazy shot there).
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You completely misunderstood Degrasse Tyson.
He basically said that everything is made of the same stuff, not that we all have a common conscience. You are basically elevating what you call awareness which in fact is fanciful speculation.
It seems you are walking a very delicate line, trying to come as close to newage (to rhyme with sewage) without taking the last step. I wish you luck in not teetering over it.
I'll add that you said "awareness is eternal." Neither you nor I have any way of commenting intelligently about what happened outside of the big bang. I won't even say "before" the big bang because "before" is a relative term that applies to time, and time as we know it came into existence 13.78 billion years ago. So "eternal" is not a term or concept that I am going to agree with. And I strongly disagree that awareness has even been a persistent state during the lifetime of our universe. As stated by Myckob4, Tyson was describing our interconnectedness with the universe, not awareness. Wherever awareness has existed, it is due to some form of evolution in the professional opinion of Dr. Richard Dawkins. I think you've stepped outside of science and are relying on your imagination. That is dangerous terrain. I tell you this warmly and friendly: Come back, spaceman.
Sariel:
Whatever consciousness is, it's not the grab-bag of science, religion, new agism, and general non-sequiturs that you've proposed here.
Some fascinating work is being done in this field, and you'd do better to study that. I think some interesting breakthroughs are on the horizon. Here's an example.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20161102-quantum-neuroscience/
Matthew Fisher, a physicist at the University of California, has proposed a theory that the brain actually operates at the quantum level. He thinks it's possible that certain chemical processes split up phosphorus compounds, creating pairs of tangled phosphorus ions. These then form compounds with calcium and oxygen, called Posner clusters, that preserve the entanglement of the phosphorus ions over relatively long periods. So we can get spooky action at a distance in our brains. The theory's still controversial, but it makes a lot more sense than your cosmic consciousness story.
Yuval Noah Harari raises some interesting questions about consciousness in his book "Homo Deus." Wheh we say we're aware, what are we aware of? Are we aware of ourselves being aware? Is there another us that watches us thinking? We think we know what we want, but can we choose what we want?
Very cool, Algebe! I've wondered if our brains might have some interaction(s) at the quantum level. I thought it was less likely than more, but perhaps! I can't wait to follow your link to see what the experts are coming up with.
I've read on this, and it's very interesting! Thanks.
Well of course our brains interact quantum mechanically. I think the real question is: does a "decent model" of conciseness require QM or is chemistry/electromagnetism good enough?
With the help of the soul’s concept, priests fabricated an imaginary notion—the idea of ghosts, and that also became a global illusion in the course of time. People of almost all ancient civilizations endowed ghosts with more or less similar attributes; they believed that these were the wandering souls of the dead. Each ghost was supposed to be an unseen force that had the ability to disturb, destabilize or even destroy humans.
Check this page probably you will get your answer: http://theevolutionofgods.com/life-after-death/
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I know it seems I've misconstrued what Tyson was saying in that quote, but when taken in context to how I break down awareness it makes sense. Look: the very goings-on of our consciousness rely on borrowed energy from resource (food, water, air, etc) consumption and whatever duration of life our DNA is happy to give us within its means to deal with environmental hazards. We have zero consciousness without said energy after due time, in that we die. The electrochemical activity of our brains ceases to be coordinated because of *chemical input*. This does not mean that, while we decompose, our bodies are without chemical activity - it just means that without organic orchestration and replacement of used components, it all just falls apart in time. But it *does* mean that consciousness relies upon a constant flow of chemistry in circuits that are evolved to have environmental awareness. And you cannot create or destroy energy; molecules retain their potential in one way or another always. That's what I meant by "eternal," although I admit that I am biased in my belief that there cannot be 'nothing' beyond the scope of our universe and that a constant in reality is attraction and repulsion -- this is perhaps a 'belief camp' that I am guilty of being member to, in that we have no proof. I realize that equating chemicals (the foundations of consciousness) to consciousness itself might seem like relating silicone to artificial intelligence code, but my contention is that the very attraction and repulsion of atoms is a form of self-organizing circuited awareness in and of itself - though not the kind of 'awareness' that we think of in common parlance. Atoms are not self-conscious. They react. But to react, they must sense, and, like chemicals, they do not do so in a self-conscious manner but rather automatically, much as snakes just go about their lives without intuition (going on gene-based instinct alone, without "higher" thought). So when I say that awareness is ultimately unified - and I know I articulated it well enough, but I'll say it in a different way here - I mean that everything shares in the same foundational sort of instinctual or automatic awareness that the cosmos seems to operate on, and so "souls" do not exist because personality is a manifestation of elevated or advanced biochemical awareness, and will simply disappear upon death, whereupon it must be realized that awareness had been in the body since birth and will continue to exist wherever the atoms of said dead person end up in time. And so 'awareness is everywhere.'
If you'd like to read that in poem form, I've got one for you. You just might like it.
___
"A Plea for Reason"
(Copyright Brendan Bombaci)
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
“We are what we eat,” as it goes, but it’s not often
that we heed hidden meanings in such prose, not forgotten
by the few with utmost reverence for the present and the here;
freedom can be yours if you only lend an ear.
If it is that we grow and we live from our consumption,
taking precious energy from all forms, for the production
of our bodies and our thoughts, then it only stands to reason
that all else takes from us in reciprocal cohesion.
With that being the case, we can derive that our bodies
are not the “soul traps” that the cardinals have lobbied
the tyrants everywhere to relate to the masses,
for to ease their submission on the way to death and taxes.
No, it is the case that our energy is shared
with our friends, with loved ones, with nature everywhere.
So while we’re here, we are one. We should treat each other so,
for when we’re gone, we are none but food on which to grow.
There is nothing lost in this, there is beauty, there is bliss,
because life is so much more without fear of the abyss.
Strength, it comes from knowing that you still can live forever
through your family, your creations, & your actions (absent never).
The marvel, it abounds and is plenty. Why ask more?
Even with its hardships, there is always good in store.
The promise of a place made just for us appeases ego,
the self-concerned defender, the survivor only greed knows.
It’s all so very simple – deeming real what is illusion –
for power lies in magic when you are one in the collusion:
social leverage is affirmed, with common threads we are the same,
there is comfort when your team has the most players in the game.
So what started as a salve has become a medication,
a placebo asking nothing but avoidance (for salvation):
close your eyes, say “I’m sorry,” while the world is needing care,
but “worry not your head, child, as Heaven pays your fare.”
“All is fair in love and war,” “it’s dog eat dog,” you know.
Then how on Earth are we much better, than a murder of crows?
Morals need no religion, for good and bad, you see,
are only the result of deliberate empathy.
Caring starts with an inkling, so simple – pristine –
that what makes us all different, we all use – a machine –
to break free from the prison of life’s primal instinct
and become gods amongst the creatures – new, stronger links.
The machine, we call it culture, and it makes us who we are:
individuals from ideas, from nurturing, from the stars.
Without such care, we’re nothing, as evolution has made us
dependent upon love and reason, capable to take us
anywhere we wish to go, and to give us cosmic power
to live forever, create new life and embrace the hour
that is upon us now, stemming from Enlightenment
and not from proto-thinking that has served the fight, the end.
As we have no souls, since our energy, unbound,
is not created or destroyed and always can be found,
and since there is no Heaven or mystic arbiter,
it’s up to us to spread the wealth and be glorious on Earth.
Sariel, I've not yet read your poem, but in response to your comments prior to the poem I will say this: I really think that Nyartathotep is right when he said that you're walking a delicate line. A good deal of what you've said is sound. But assigning the term "awareness" the way you do ignores the fact that the word awareness already has a definition. You must know that the word carries baggage. Based on extraordinary research and effort, humanity has come up with the Standard Model of Particle Phhsics and with the Theory of Relativity to explain the presence of and interaction of forces in the known universe. Labeling the forces of electro-magnetism and the strong and weak nuclear force and gravity and the others with the term "awareness" serves to cloud what we know, not clarify. I want clarification. If you think you are right, then submit a paper for publication and allow it to be subjected to peer review by people who are experts in this field. I am not about to be swayed into believing something that is not demonstrably true.
Truett, I suppose I am using the word out of definition. Perhaps I should rephrase... but in doing so, I don't believe that a paper would need to submitted, anyway, in that this is pure philosophy and nothing that requires objective scientific study (in that primary science is what already informs my view).
What is Awareness? Are Souls Real? Read Me.
Self-awareness stems from awareness.
Awareness stems from reactions. ---- There is no substantial proof that awareness stems from reaction. You could say reaction may infer awareness, yet there is no proof for that either.
The basis for biological reaction is chemical.
The basis for chemical reaction is atomic.
Atoms interact energetically with dark matter/energy
in rarity, and do so with insubstantial and sporadic, non-patterned fashion. ----- what does Dark matter have to do with anything here. Dark matter is a theoretical concept based solely so far to explain gravity of galaxies. (As a side note dark matter is postulated to exert an effect only through gravity and no other way; what did you mean by rarity here. The statement is nonsensical)
All atomic energy can be tracked and measured.---- As far as I my knowledge of physics goes 1. the total energy of a confined system is constant. 2. we are unaware of the total energy of any system including an atom, all we could measure is a change in energy.
Ultimately then, “awareness” is the reactive energetic attraction and repulsion within and between circuitous forms, and is trackable with instrumentation. ---- Now where is the proof for this statement? what makes you say that awareness is the reactive energetic...blah blah ? and where is the evidence that atoms have awareness ? you have made a presupposition and have expected all to just jump on the band wagon without any proof.
However you could have spoken of neutrinos and how they tend to remember their configuration and can change their type over long distances but even then that does not prove awareness (I am just saying the line of reasoning would be better, not that it holds any water)
Increasingly complex circuits, from molecules upward, allow
increasingly compartmental and hierarchical awareness. ---- once again there is no evidence to show atoms have awareness nor any evidence to show molecules have awareness nor any evidence whatsoever that increasing complex circuits have more evidence.
Even plants have awareness.
In many mammals and, now, in artificial intelligence, this facilitates greater memory capacity and logic computation beyond solely genetic and instinctual reactions; such "higher" intelligence is individualized and intuitive.
Personality and emotion manifests from this evolved capacity. - baseless statement. personality and emotion is regulated by neural circuitry and it has been demonstrably proven that lack of this neural circuitry leads to altered personalities and emotions. In fact autism is one such disorder.
1: In religion, “souls,” “spirits,” and "gods" have personality.
2: They are decreed as eternal,
originating either always and/or after the passing of life.
3: Some – prophets, mediums, shamans, e.g.,
claim to speak with them.
All of these three latter, religious concepts, are false
by the preceding facts because: (1) awareness may technically be eternal, as it stems from atoms and their energy which may only be transformed and never destroyed, but
self-awareness and personality are corporeal,
so, if there is any kind of “soul,”
it is the entire cosmos of energy and not anthropomorphic at all;
and (2) we can measure energy fields in environments and have established already that supernatural entities are non-existent in general, let alone emanating from or nearby a recently deceased individual, corroborating or at least theoretically supporting (1).
----- Now this entire paragraph is just pure conjecture with no basis. you claimed first that the circuitry is awareness. now you suddenly claim that the energy itself is awareness and then suddenly have relegated awareness and emotion a feature of the corporeal mind (brain) into something that is part of the atom ??!!! ludicrous!!!!
Awareness is omnipresent. It is not vertebrate life alone experiencing awareness, but the organic, the chemical, the mineral, the atomic interactions, in everything, as the reactionary fundament of action.
----- Now you have made the only claim left to make that awareness is God or omnipresent? where is the proof for all these tall claims?? and you go on and on in the following lines .....
Only the self-awareness, the self-consciousness, of higher mammals and of birds, is unique. And it is impermanent. ----
There is no invisible afterlife plane. Awareness is already eternal. We merely provide it, at the heights of biological life (perhaps yet unknown to humans), compartmentalized circuitry to recognize itself via the myriad ways it can exist.
------- now where did this invisible after line plane come from in your atomic theory of awareness. you haven't even given a single justification or theory or even a guess about it until this last instant when you just tried to force feed it to us.........
To experientially realize this - to embody this - in contemplative exploration or otherwise-achieved ego dissolution, is to reach the Nirvana of Vedantist philosophy, or, rather, enact Moksha.
These collective thoughts are scientifically articulated notions resonating with Samkhya philosophy - something at the foundations of, and yet far more reasonable than, the religions of Hinduism and Buddhism...
making it all nonsense...
Charvak, I believe you are missing the links between sentences here. You immediately say there is no proof that awareness stems from reactions, without addressing the following sentences. They alone prove how awareness is based in reactions, in particularly noted cases.
I brought up dark matter because some people claim that our personalities have relative "souls" that probably exist outside of our perception, either naturally or technologically. Some say that they are probably dark matter or on an 'alternate plane' or that they are part of another universe, yadda yadda.
In terms of measuring energy, we can only base measurements upon comparisons - and, in as much, we can indeed measure the energy of total systems including atoms, or we would not be able to determine the energy output (and therefore energy base) of a star, e.g.
Again, regarding awareness, you are being reactionary instead of reading into the thesis, when you tell me "there is no basis for this, so it's just blah blah blah."
Regarding your issue with my statement on religion and emotion, you TOTALLY misread it. Entirely. I never claimed that emotion and personality are atomic. So try reading instead of being fired up and getting confused.
Anyway, good luck with your debate skills.
The whole thing seems mighty fluffy. This notion of "reactions" and them somehow leading to "awareness" seems awfully vague; vague enough that if it was totally wrong or totally right, there would be no way to tell.
I know... it is basic philosophy based on scientific underpinnings, rather than scientific assay in and of itself, as I mentioned to Truett. But I feel it's an appropriate argument for people who believe in souls; and, that was the entire point.
There is no science underpinning your philosophy.
Why believe in souls? Is there ANY proof of a soul. You make a weak argument that there is an awareness a collective consciousness as if it were a proven entity. It's not. I dare say that I share the same DNA as my ancient ancestors, but I do not share the same consciousness. I certainly don't share a collective consciousness with every living thing that came before me. It what you propose to be true was, in fact, true, then all we would have to do would be to hypnotize one living person and extract everything from their brain to know the entire history of the universe. I state emphatically that that would produce nothing. No, I think I will stick on relying on the hard work of science to reveal answers and not jump to conclusions and suppositions or leaps of faith. It isn't a basic philosophy. It's utter nonsense. It isn't based on scientific underpinnings at all. It's based on wishful thinking.
You didn't properly digest the thesis. I said not that atomic reaction (as the subtlest form of awareness) is capable of forming memories, etc, but that - and mind you, this is in the start of the article so you shouldn't have missed it if you weren't starting off with a bias that just made you angrily browse instead of peruse - only biological life and artificial intelligence adds that to the hierarchy of awareness. Try reading next time and comment only when you have paid attention first.
As far as I can tell, you never actually said that until just now; so it was pretty easy to miss.
Again, I say, try reading. Don't miss anything, now
:
"Ultimately then, “awareness” is the reactive energetic attraction and repulsion within and between circuitous forms, and is trackable with instrumentation.
Increasingly complex circuits, from molecules upward, allow
increasingly compartmental and hierarchical awareness.
Even plants have awareness.
In many mammals and, now, in artificial intelligence, this facilitates greater memory capacity and logic computation beyond solely genetic and instinctual reactions; such "higher" intelligence is individualized and intuitive.
Personality and emotion manifests from this evolved capacity."
SO, it is complex biological and computer chip circuitry that gives rise to memory, emotion, and self-consciousness (and therefore personality).
I probably spent (now I suspect wasted) 15 minutes reading and rereading your thread before I pointed out that you have failed to state the conclusion you claimed mykcob4 missed. I got no dog in this fight; but your snide suggestion that I didn't read what you wrote might give me one.
edit to add: This is one of the problems with rank speculation. Since each part is only tied to the next by fiat, when you omit say a conclusion; it is difficult or impossible for the reader to reconstruct the missing piece since the converse of the missing piece is just as likely to have been meant as the actual missing piece (from the readers perspective).
Ah, but the conclusion follows the argument against the existence of "souls," and it goes like this:
"Awareness is omnipresent. It is not vertebrate life alone experiencing awareness, but the organic, the chemical, the mineral, the atomic interactions, in everything, as the reactionary fundament of action.
Only the self-awareness, the self-consciousness, of higher mammals and of birds, is unique. And it is impermanent.
There is no invisible afterlife plane. Awareness is already eternal. We merely provide it, at the heights of biological life (perhaps yet unknown to humans), compartmentalized circuitry to recognize itself via the myriad ways it can exist."
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