Philosophical Speculations

A story, beginning with a Big Bang type event, and reality as entirely inert brutish physicality. Reality builds and evaluates physical models (aka physical\biological evolution) - these physical models don't appear out of thin air, they are physical so come from reality, as a model airplane is mad...

A story, beginning with a Big Bang type event, and reality as entirely inert brutish physicality. Reality builds and evaluates physical models (aka physical\biological evolution) - these physical models don't appear out of thin air, they are physical so come from reality, as a model airplane is mad...

If nature\evolution selects for bigger brains, one could predict that ultimately the cosmos selects\models to become one giant brain. There's no reason to suspect we're not already 'there' - the model is reality and we're right back to where we started. The brains of evolution are biological. It's ...

Cleric, Sorry, but the Cosmic Brain is completely off-base. A few comments on your analogy. and that's basically what I was asking. I only tried to emphasize the seriousness of the problem by making analogy between neurons and, say, galaxies. The whole point was to make us more conscious about the f...

If I'm sitting in a movie theatre, and the projected 2 dimensional image and screen represent 'reality'; I understand how my experience of the movie could be described as a constructed model - the model is a participation, a the model building a process. But the above doesn't attend to the 'being p...

I think the problem you guys are having is that, when you think of models, you are thinking of something conceptual and abstract.

But I am talking about the brain generating a concrete, non-abstract model, of reality that is what we call consciousness.

Of course, if our interest only lies in having models for others to gawk at, rather than confronting the modeling activity itself, then all of the above will "make no sense", because we simply have no desire for it to make sense. Of course, one of my points about calling this limited soli...

Federica, 1- I have no idea what you are asking and why it matters. Representations are representations of representations which are representations of representations.. You can spin this forever but to what point? No there isn't an infinite series. Your model of the world is your consciousness. End...

I didn't - quite an eye-catching sentence, almost impossible to miss! I understand the intent in the parallel with the planes: What if bypassing theories and constructs is the solution? What if going directly to a literal reading of reality that reads itself is the solution to the complications of ...

Lastly, what does the model do? What are the consequences of understanding consciousness in this way? Once you have packed the whole of personal experience and labeled the package “model”, what is the usefulness of this act? Did you miss this sentence from the article? Could the evolution of consci...