Matter generating consciousness?

[misaeld7]

I'm new. And of course I'm missing something.



"Whatever you do, however you design a piece of hardware, there is nothing about structure and function that could suggest that there is accompanying experience. So you can change the structure and the function whichever way you want - you have no reason to think that that structure and function would be accompanied by something it is like to be that thing. It's just processing data"

So Bernardo realized his starting assumption, that "material arrangements are primary and somehow give rise to consciousness, to experience", was wrong. He claims there is nothing about material configurations (mass, chaege, momentum, spin, geometrical relationships, frequency, amplitude, WHATEVER), nothing about physical parameters in terms of which you could deduce the qualities of experience...
And that's how he decided to change his initial assumption: "matter doesn't create consciousness. Matter is a content of consciousness"
He then claims "Of course I can't create consciousness out of matter, because matter itself is something that appears in consciousness".

Perhaps my question has been already answered dozens of times. Perhaps it is indirectly answered by answering those questions that point to the fact that brain activity and certain physical / neurophysiological changes CORRELATE with (and do not cause) changes in experience. But I still can't figure out an answer:

"matter" may be a content of consciousness or however you want to call it... But, let me see... We know at least one method that "generates" consciousness (would Bernardo still use this word? Perhaps it's just a differentiation process or something like that, I'm not quite sure yet)... "out of matter"? I mean, how does human reproduction not count? What is it exactly that makes gamete or a zygote SPECIAL? Contents of consciousness that we call matter, that we can produce, that give rise to consciousness. That's a method by which we can generate new conscious agents, let's say. Is that the ONLY way or what? Let's say... 10 000 years into the future, or 10 000 000 000 years: is Bernardo Kastrup claiming we can't emulate the process that gave rise to US? WHY?

So this universal mind may behave predictably, or think up patterns or archetypes that we then call "the laws of physics"... Is that ONE of them: that only that thought that we call "biological matter" can give rise to consciousness? WHY? And how would that "solve" the hard problem of consciousness? Is there even a hard problem anymore - because Daniel Denett claims there has never been one to begin with, and I'm sure this is not Bernardo Kastrup is claiming. R-right?

Anyway, I don't know if I managed to express my doubt clearly or not. I mean, if it's not about structure or function, then WHAT? We'll just leave that unexplained? Why would the universal consciousness decide to differientiate into me or you, and not into something artificially created with exactly the same features, structure, function, etc?

[lorenzop]

Bernardo never begins as a Materialist, he begins by presenting the Materialist arguemnt and then defeating the materialist argument by suggesting that there is nothing about matter (what we know of matter) that would predict matter generating experience, or matter becoming aware of itself.
While Bernardo is not a materialist, I would suggest he is a realist - meaning that structure\patterns\etc. exist outside of individual minds - so he is contending with the appearance of 'matter'.

[ScottRoberts]

We know at least one method that "generates" consciousness (would Bernardo still use this word? Perhaps it's just a differentiation process or something like that, I'm not quite sure yet)... "out of matter"? I mean, how does human reproduction not count? What is it exactly that makes gamete or a zygote SPECIAL?

BK would not use that word. Under idealism, nothing generates consciousness (it is primordial). Instead, consciousness generates every thing, including human reproduction.

[misaeld7]

We know at least one method that "generates" consciousness (would Bernardo still use this word? Perhaps it's just a differentiation process or something like that, I'm not quite sure yet)... "out of matter"? I mean, how does human reproduction not count? What is it exactly that makes gamete or a zygote SPECIAL?

BK would not use that word. Under idealism, nothing generates consciousness (it is primordial). Instead, consciousness generates every thing, including human reproduction.

Thanks for your reply. That answers one question between brackets, but that's in part why I put "generates" between quotation marks, because it's not meant to be taken literally and I didn't know how else to put it.

What I understand (and this is me trying to answer my own question) is that it is not possible to literally "create" consciousness (although I don't know if we can create anything, like, strictly speaking - in part because all there is should be patterns in mind, right?), and all we can do is perhaps INDUCE that dissociation process (since life itself is the image of dissociation). Then, I would say... Perhaps there are other ways "outside the biological realm" to induce that dissociation in the cosmic mind, but there are no good reasons yet to believe that's the case: that we in fact could (?).
I really have no idea, I'm just guessing.

[ScottRoberts]

What I understand (and this is me trying to answer my own question) is that it is not possible to literally "create" consciousness (although I don't know if we can create anything, like, strictly speaking - in part because all there is should be patterns in mind, right?), and all we can do is perhaps INDUCE that dissociation process (since life itself is the image of dissociation). Then, I would say... Perhaps there are other ways "outside the biological realm" to induce that dissociation in the cosmic mind, but there are no good reasons yet to believe that's the case: that we in fact could (?).
I really have no idea, I'm just guessing.

Ok, if I have understood you correctly, you are asking how do alters (dissociated centers of consciousness) form. Answer: we don't know. We are, however, fairly confident that they can form, as we have the evidence from Dissociated Identity Disorder (DID).

If you are asking if alters in biological form are the only alters, again, we don't know, just that these are the only alters we normally encounter. However, there are many people who say they have encountered non-physical alters (e.g., in Near Death Experiences).

Then you seem to be asking if we can create alters directly from the cosmic mind. I suppose it might be possible to intentionally inflict DID on someone, but I very much hope we can't. One does find in the esoteric literature the idea that there are alters (higher spiritual entities) that create alters, and we are such creations. But we can't do that.

Then there's this bit:

(although I don't know if we can create anything, like, strictly speaking - in part because all there is should be patterns in mind, right?)

We can certainly create things. You just created your post, for example. So I don't see a problem here.

[Ben Iscatus]

BK has said many times that he believes abiogenesis is possible - but they would have to be biological, metabolising entities - because biological metabolising entities are the image or representation of dissociated life as viewed through the lens of our evolved sense organs.

[misaeld7]

Bernardo never begins as a Materialist, he begins by presenting the Materialist arguemnt and then defeating the materialist argument by suggesting that there is nothing about matter (what we know of matter) that would predict matter generating experience, or matter becoming aware of itself.
While Bernardo is not a materialist, I would suggest he is a realist - meaning that structure\patterns\etc. exist outside of individual minds - so he is contending with the appearance of 'matter'.

Back in his 20s he was a materialist.

[misaeld7]

What I understand (and this is me trying to answer my own question) is that it is not possible to literally "create" consciousness (although I don't know if we can create anything, like, strictly speaking - in part because all there is should be patterns in mind, right?), and all we can do is perhaps INDUCE that dissociation process (since life itself is the image of dissociation). Then, I would say... Perhaps there are other ways "outside the biological realm" to induce that dissociation in the cosmic mind, but there are no good reasons yet to believe that's the case: that we in fact could (?).
I really have no idea, I'm just guessing.

Ok, if I have understood you correctly, you are asking how do alters (dissociated centers of consciousness) form. Answer: we don't know. We are, however, fairly confident that they can form, as we have the evidence from Dissociated Identity Disorder (DID).

If you are asking if alters in biological form are the only alters, again, we don't know, just that these are the only alters we normally encounter. However, there are many people who say they have encountered non-physical alters (e.g., in Near Death Experiences).

Then you seem to be asking if we can create alters directly from the cosmic mind. I suppose it might be possible to intentionally inflict DID on someone, but I very much hope we can't. One does find in the esoteric literature the idea that there are alters (higher spiritual entities) that create alters, and we are such creations. But we can't do that.

Then there's this bit:

(although I don't know if we can create anything, like, strictly speaking - in part because all there is should be patterns in mind, right?)

We can certainly create things. You just created your post, for example. So I don't see a problem here.

THANKS. Yah, that was pretty much it.
However, with regards to creating alters directly from the cosmic mind... That's what life is about, isn't it? Why wouldn't that be ONE method (in vitro fertilization, for example)? And why would you reduce that to "intentionally inflict DID on SOMEONE" ("someone" didn't seem accurate to me, since we're talking about that cosmic mind)?

(what I meant with creating anything: the meaning of the word comes down to "rearraging pre-existing patterns of thought" or something like that. I hope you could also expand on that)

[misaeld7]

BK has said many times that he believes abiogenesis is possible - but they would have to be biological, metabolising entities - because biological metabolising entities are the image or representation of dissociated life as viewed through the lens of our evolved sense organs.

How does he know biological metabolising entities are the ONLY image/representation of dissociated consciousness?
I guess he wouldn't necessarily claim they are the only image/representation, but he would perhaps claim we have no good reasons to assume that there are any other possible ways of creating alters directly from the cosmic mind (other than generating metabolising entities, that is).

(I'm sorry if I express myself poorly)

[Ben Iscatus]

he would perhaps claim we have no good reasons to assume that there are any other possible ways of creating alters directly from the cosmic mind (other than generating metabolising entities, that is).

I agree.