Matter generating consciousness?

[misaeld7]

Just forget about the concept of "alter", "dissociation", etc. I used to give it a bit of credit for being a useful "low representation" symbol, but now I am coming to realize it can't even be given that much credit, because it causes so much confusion of the sort you are expressing here. You are not the first to wonder WTF is going on there and you won't be the last. It causes way more confusion than clarity at this point.

Under idealism, we do not create "new consciousness" or " new conscious beings" - both are fundamental and eternal. That is not to be confused with "static" or "unchanging" - there is constant and ceaseless metamorphosis of conscious perspectives.

Forget about that too - it is not the "only image" of "dissociation". There are only living beings and living activity of those beings. There are no inert or lifeless "blobs of consciousness" or whatever floating around, because as you rightly intuit, that makes absolutely no sense. The rest of your questions as to how we know what sort of livings beings and activity we are specifically dealing with cannot be answered by way of intellectual concepts - they can be pointed to in various ways, but that is not actually true knowledge, only the first steps in the direction of true knowledge.

Thank you for your reply.

I must admit from my ignorance that, even though analytic idealism seems closer to truth, materialism seems like a more useful fiction/myth to me.
"Forget about this" and "forget about that", even though I think I sort of understand where you are coming from, looks like a way of killing curiosity. Or a false sense of understanding reality that would prevent us from exploring everything related to the so called "hard problem of consciousness".

It's like "Hey, I'm a conscious being. And I know I can give birth to many conscious beings. I wonder whether I can artificially create one, or if what the best biological methods are", and then someone says "No, you can't. And there's no such thing as an "I" that experiences. And forget about things like "a conscious being" and so on". That looks like something Daniel Dennett would say, paradoxically.

Perhaps off topic and I'm just repeating myself, but I've heard BK claim, with proof, that the universe looks like a brain... and how is that even relevant, if not under materialistic assumptions?

I'm not saying to "forget about it" and stop asking questions and seeking detailed knowledge, actually I am saying exactly the opposite - you need to forget about those abstract concepts so that you can free up your Thinking and orient it in the proper direction. In my opinion, BK is simply wrong to use those concepts in the way that he does. The reason for that is pretty clear to me - it stems from Schopenhauer's idealism which, IMO, is also wrong at a deep level. Those concepts are used because it is assumed we cannot get more detailed knowledge of the ideal dynamics you are asking about. I disagree - we can get that knowledge, but we must abandon a lot of modern prejudices before we can even get started. Those prejudices have seeped into materialism, dualism, and idealism, so we cannot take refuge in this or that "useful fiction". They are all fundamentally flawed in a manner that will kill curiosity, as you say. I completely agree with your intuition here - that is precisely what the modern prejudices do: kill curiosity. And that only leads to nihilism of one sort or another.

I have written many posts and essays on this topic, so it would be easier for me to reference and quote those to you if I get a better sense of where you are coming from. Maybe you can elaborate more on your previous worldview and what are the biggest questions you have. Not that I will have all the answers, but I may have a sense of where to start looking.

Thank you very much, AshvinP. I'll be reading those posts.

[misaeld7]

He said, and I quote, "Of course I can't create consciousness out of matter, because matter itself is something that appears in consciousness". Doesn't that imply "we can't create consciousness (PERIOD)" (since he also claims that everything is, by definition, IN consciousness)? I think so.

Nothing creates consciousness.

I'm sorry, I'm not used to the quoting system here. I'll have to write "You said" and things like that.

THANK YOU FOR THE BOOKS SUGGESTIONS.
Now...

You said "My thought that 2+2=4 is not a conscious being" and then immediately afterwards you claimed we don't know whether the sun is conscious or not. Help me with that: how do you know "the thought that 2+2=4" is not a conscious being? Why are you open to the possibility that the sun might be conscious if the sun is also a thought? Are there different kinds of thoughts and would "matter" be one of them? Why?

I said "create" and put it between quotation marks because it wasn't meant to be taken literally (it's AS IF we create something). You said we do not create conscious beings. What's your definition of "creating something", then?

You denied the fact that dissociation occurs when we cut the corpus callosum. Why? How do you know it is "the same person who experiences some things differently" and not "different persons within one body"? What's your rationale there, supported by evidence and a definition of "person"?

You said "Under idealism, everything is alive". Is a rock alive? Is "the thought of 2+2=4" alive? What's life, "under idealism"? I'm pretty much sure BK doesn't claim "everything is alive".

You said "There are various ways to think about physical but non-biological objects. One is to view them all collectively as the external appearance of a single subjectivity called MAL. Another is to think of them as the external appearance of multiple subjectivities, so there might be one that shows up to us as the sun, another as the earth, and so on"...
And that's nice. I think BK would stick with the first one due to the parsimony principle, right?

To my question "Is the cosmic mind alive?", you replied "Sure is, if one defines "alive" as having experiences". What does the cosmic mind experience? Could we even know? Does the cosmic mind experience time? Does it experience space? Perhaps it does, and (as I think BK would say) it doesn't know it does?
This is more interesting to me: does our experience count as experiences the cosmic mind is having? Does that imply that the cosmic mind is just as meta-conscious of my thoughts as I am, have always been and will ever be? Does that imply that the cosmic consciousness is also meta-cognitive of the second person perspective of itself (the one that we have of the cosmos)?

I see you disagree with BK on the fact that the cosmic mind is "NOT meta-conscious". WHY???? I would LOVE to hear why...

With regards to the fact that the universe resembles a brain, you said BK "doesn't say it does prove anything. He just finds it suggestive". SO DO I, OMG... How would someone not be amazed if something like that turned out to be true? Just by imagining possible implications...

[ScottRoberts]

I'm sorry, I'm not used to the quoting system here. I'll have to write "You said" and things like that.

To quote something, surround it with {quote} and {/quote} tags, only use square brackets, not curly brackets.

You said "My thought that 2+2=4 is not a conscious being" and then immediately afterwards you claimed we don't know whether the sun is conscious or not. Help me with that: how do you know "the thought that 2+2=4" is not a conscious being? Why are you open to the possibility that the sun might be conscious if the sun is also a thought? Are there different kinds of thoughts and would "matter" be one of them? Why?

The difference is when I think "2+2=4" I have awareness of the whole thought. This is not the case with the sun. There is more to the sun than what my senses perceive.

I said "create" and put it between quotation marks because it wasn't meant to be taken literally (it's AS IF we create something). You said we do not create conscious beings. What's your definition of "creating something", then?

In idealism, all things are thoughts. Therefore a thing is created by being thought.

You denied the fact that dissociation occurs when we cut the corpus callosum. Why? How do you know it is "the same person who experiences some things differently" and not "different persons within one body"? What's your rationale there, supported by evidence and a definition of "person"?

Why would you say there are two persons? Does one say "I am Sam" and the other "I am Linda"? Don't think so. But this is what happens in the case of DID.

You said "Under idealism, everything is alive". Is a rock alive? Is "the thought of 2+2=4" alive? What's life, "under idealism"? I'm pretty much sure BK doesn't claim "everything is alive".

I misspoke. I should have said "everything is alive or the thoughts of an alive entity."

You said "There are various ways to think about physical but non-biological objects. One is to view them all collectively as the external appearance of a single subjectivity called MAL. Another is to think of them as the external appearance of multiple subjectivities, so there might be one that shows up to us as the sun, another as the earth, and so on"...
And that's nice. I think BK would stick with the first one due to the parsimony principle, right?

Probably. I'm not sure.

To my question "Is the cosmic mind alive?", you replied "Sure is, if one defines "alive" as having experiences". What does the cosmic mind experience? Could we even know? Does the cosmic mind experience time? Does it experience space? Perhaps it does, and (as I think BK would say) it doesn't know it does?
This is more interesting to me: does our experience count as experiences the cosmic mind is having? Does that imply that the cosmic mind is just as meta-conscious of my thoughts as I am, have always been and will ever be? Does that imply that the cosmic consciousness is also meta-cognitive of the second person perspective of itself (the one that we have of the cosmos)?

All questions that we can only speculate about.

I see you disagree with BK on the fact that the cosmic mind is "NOT meta-conscious". WHY???? I would LOVE to hear why...

Strictly speaking, I would just say that we don't know whether or not MAL is meta-conscious. I lean toward saying "is meta-conscious" because I don't think this world could be thought into existence without reflection on the thought process that does so.

[AshvinP]

You denied the fact that dissociation occurs when we cut the corpus callosum. Why? How do you know it is "the same person who experiences some things differently" and not "different persons within one body"? What's your rationale there, supported by evidence and a definition of "person"?

Why would you say there are two persons? Does one say "I am Sam" and the other "I am Linda"? Don't think so. But this is what happens in the case of DID.

It should also be noted here that, in the case of split brain (severed CC), each conscious disposition still experiences the same phenomenon, but perceives-cognizes them in polar opposed way (to put it crudely, right = more integrated, left = more fragmented). They can "both" recall having experienced the same phenomenon. It seems that is not the case with genuine DID.

[misaeld7]

The difference is when I think "2+2=4" I have awareness of the whole thought. This is not the case with the sun. There is more to the sun than what my senses perceive.

I'm sure that's not the case, so I don't think thats a good reason to reject the possibility of "2+2=4" being conscious. Could you expand more on that? Because the implications of something like "2+2=4" are infinite, and even the mere demonstration of the truth/validity of that thought is extremely complicated. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principia ... _54-43.png and I'm sure you were not aware of this, just like you aren't aware of all there is to be known (or experienced, which includes knowing) about the sun)

It also reminds me of another doubt of mind:
When you dream, you experience alters. Your awareness or conscious experience is limited to a certain point of view, so there seems to be no way of determining whether the people you meet there are conscious or not. I guess that would be one of the implications of analytic idealism (that it is something to be like them), but I don't know if there are any good reasons to believe they are. This seems crucial, because it would help me differentiate this framework from solipsism.
I've heard BK point to evidence that shows that people with DID (25% of them in a study or something like that) report experiencing the same dream with all alters, and every alter experiencing it from a different point of view (a different avatar?).
It's hard to tell even if THE AIR is conscious. Or whether something like ghosts could be a thing under this framework. I can, for instance, experience a third person experience (kind of) in a dream, for example: like a hypothetical camera moving and following a main character I don't identify my-dreaming-self with. What's up with that? That sounds like... Mind-At-Large being able to experience this reality from a spaciotemporal point of view, if this analogy turns out to be precise enough.

In idealism, all things are thoughts. Therefore a thing is created by being thought.

That sounds interesting. I guess I have no problem with that, since one could add/keep that definition/meaning for this level of analysis, and still use the word in the colloquial sense in his everyday life.
At some level, "beyond space-time itself", everything we know and will ever know is being remembered. But our limited view of reality truly discerns between "creating something new" and just copying someone, for instance (LOL).

Why would you say there are two persons? Does one say "I am Sam" and the other "I am Linda"? Don't think so. But this is what happens in the case of DID.

That's actually a good point, in my opinion. And a good question as well. I would tend to believe we are conscious (but not meta-conscious - perhaps most of us are only meta-conscious of a sense of UNITY, of "being one person" across decades) of an unlimited amount of personalities (for instance, every single person -who under this framework is yet another image of the cosmic mind, just like you and everyone else- that you have met is already "part of you", in some sense... plus you ARE and interact with parts of you that you are not meta-conscious of in your dreams). but there are modes of being we identify ourselves with and modes of being we don't identify ourselves with. Having said that...
Until the corpus callosum was cut from someone, there was an "unconscious" (conscious but obfuscated by everything the person is experiencing) and perhaps constant interaction between the personality (alter? sub-alter?) associated with the left hemisphere and the personality associated with the right hemisphere. What the left hemisphere experiences is not the same as what the right hemisphere experiences, and that's just more obvious when their communication is permanently interrupted. It's as if both hemispheres identified themselves with "Sam", even though they had always been different from each other, and obviously would still identify as Sam AFTER the corpus callusum is cut.

They way I would try to answer my questions and yours today:
The term "person" is just nominal. We are all "the same Person who experiences some things differently". And "things" are nothing but experiences themselves. We are all the same mind, dissociated. It is something to be like mind at large, and we don't know how exactly it feels. It is something to be like me, and it is something to be like you, and they are different - and we are not able to tell HOW different, nor "why". And, just like a fractal, my personal internal world is full of alters I'm not even aware of. It is something to be like my left hemisphere, it is something to be my right hemisphere. It is something to be like my 7-year-old self, it is something to be like my 20-year-old self, it is something to be like my future self. And these are just metaphors - language will never be enough. What someone with DID experiences is something completely different to what I experience, and the method to study how my experience and theirs differ is to study the image all these mental processes: OUR BODIES. The image of a person with DID differs from mine in a way we can measure by scaning both brains. When an alter of someone with DID is blind, their visual cortex looks off to us: just like it would happen with a blind person, I suppose. But keep in mind 1) we are all alters of the same mind, and 2) mind is not limited in time and space but space and time are in mind... so the fact that it looks as if "two people are sharing one body" with DID doesn't mean anything fundamental: those 2 alters are just that, two alters of mind and large, just like you and I and everything we call "person", and just like my left-hemisphere self and my right-hemisphere self, and my hungry self and my angry self (my brain and neurophysiological activity -things/processes perceived in space and time- change, but those are just changes in mind - what I call "myself" at one level of analysis, what we call mind at large at another level of analysis, and many other (perhaps unlimited) intermediate levels of analysis - maybe it is indeed like something to be humanity as a whole, or "every single person I've interacted with". We just don't know how those "super-conscious alters" experience the world like, in a similar way to how I don't know how you experience the world like or how my future self will or how my baby self did (or in a similar way to how my left-hemisphere self doesn't know how I (like, ME) or my right-hemisphere self experience the world).

I misspoke. I should have said "everything is alive or the thoughts of an alive entity."

Thanks for the clarification. I agree.

All questions that we can only speculate about.

For sure. I'm interested in your opinion, though. Since I bet there are ONLY questions we can speculate about, at a fundamental level. Our certainty about anything is just an illusion (in the sense that NOTHING we experience as a true belief/intuition can be fully confirmed as an absolute truth) - which doesn't mean "all truths are of equal value", I wouldn't claim that.

Strictly speaking, I would just say that we don't know whether or not MAL is meta-conscious. I lean toward saying "is meta-conscious" because I don't think this world could be thought into existence without reflection on the thought process that does so.

I believe I agree with that. Why would you conclude that? Why don't you think this world could be thought into existence without reflection on the thought process that does so?
There are so many things for which a meta-conscious mind could be the simplest explanation of...

[misaeld7]

It should also be noted here that, in the case of split brain (severed CC), each conscious disposition still experiences the same phenomenon, but perceives-cognizes them in polar opposed way (to put it crudely, right = more integrated, left = more fragmented). They can "both" recall having experienced the same phenomenon. It seems that is not the case with genuine DID.

Thank you for the fact. Could you send me a link of any source?

I haven't read anything about divided brains. Shall I start with Iain McGilchrist's "The master and his emissary"?

[AshvinP]

It should also be noted here that, in the case of split brain (severed CC), each conscious disposition still experiences the same phenomenon, but perceives-cognizes them in polar opposed way (to put it crudely, right = more integrated, left = more fragmented). They can "both" recall having experienced the same phenomenon. It seems that is not the case with genuine DID.

Thank you for the fact. Could you send me a link of any source?

I haven't read anything about divided brains. Shall I start with Iain McGilchrist's "The master and his emissary"?

Yes I would definitely recommend that book. McGilchrist is pretty close to metaphysical idealist view if not already there, and also a panentheistic Christian perspective. I am pretty sure that I actually got the fact above from his book.

[misaeld7]

Yes I would definitely recommend that book. McGilchrist is pretty close to metaphysical idealist view if not already there, and also a panentheistic Christian perspective. I am pretty sure that I actually got the fact above from his book.

Wow, thank you. I didn't even know about the term "panentheism", LOL.

I've been wrestling with similars ideas lately. Like "What if...?", you know...
Bernardo Kastrup claims Mind-at-large is not meta-conscious. However, that's how it seems from our point of view (it's as if we are limited by space and time - we certainly experience those). If both space and time are in mind, there it is: a rationale for God being atemporal. So this is when it gets interesting...

Time (and space) is something we experience during our life. Life is how the process of dissociation looks like. When we die (and we get glimpses of what something like that means; NDE and psychedelics and so on), we don't experience time anymore - at least not in the same way. It's as if we are returning to whatever we were dissociated from. So, in time and space, we experience lots of things, and we as a whole become more and more self-aware and meta-conscious. It's as if the universe as a whole is increasing in meta-cognition through us and because of us. For what we know, there were no living beings on planet Earth 3 600 000 000 years ago, and humans became meta-conscious like 40 000 to 60 000 years ago - which is nothing. It's astonishing how fast (and exponentially faster, which may be irrelevant in some sense) self-awareness and meta-cognition are increasing. So there's a case to be made for some telos: it's as if the cosmic mind "is becoming" more and more meta-conscious through us. Just try to imagine how meta-conscious it would be (just by paying attention to us) in 50 000 more years. 500 000 years. 5 000 000 years... 5 000 000 000 years... 5 000 000 000 000 years, and so on. And then consider taking time out of the equation: what's left is something like "everything that the universal mind has ever experienced, is experiencing and will ever experience"... in the same mind. Now, that's omniscience, and a meta-meta-cognitive one. Causality may also be gone with time: the idea that the cause of an event "precedes" the effect is gone. Terms as "beginning" and "end" are also gone beyond space and time. And there's still something I guess we won't be able to fully comprehend: if the seemingly outrageous claim about Jesus being resurrected is right (whatever that means), it is perhaps pointing to the fact that this omniscient and meta-meta-conscious mind is also somehow caring about us and able to perform whatever miracle it wants. I mean, I get it: the behavior of the universal mind we experience as alters ("made in the image of God") is pretty stable, as if it were NOT meta-conscious... but if something so unpredictable like the event of the resurrection can happen and did happen and was somehow predicted and unavoidable... that does definitely mean christianity is really up to something deeply strange and transcendental o.O

So there's this glimpse of what God is that we experience during our lifetimes, which can only be something like potential (a God that "is becoming")... But since time is in mind, it's as if, for that same mind, the meaning of "becoming" is exactly the same as "being" (which reminds me of "I am the way, the truth and the life", for example). Whatever God is transforming into from our perspective, that's part of what God is (?). Something like identity is in mind, and so are verb tenses, and that's part of the meaning of a statement such as "I am who I am" (the experience of God that Moses had). Being, eternally being.

With regards to a benevolent God... That reminds me of the idea of "truth". No set of axioms can account for all reality, which may be accessible to some extent but never reducible (this reminds me of Gödel's incompleteness theorem). There are unlimited facts we can extract from the world, and that doesn't mean they are of equal value. Whatever exactly gives value to anything, I don't know, but let's not forget "everything is in mind", so "mind is what judges / gives value to everything" (the same spirit that discerns between good and evil, the same that separates the light from darkness, the same that differentiates (conceptually separates) between something and anything else) looks like a tautology or something deeply intuitive. Now... Let's imagine all humans disappear: why would we become extinct? It's either we were not intelligent enough to know better, or we were not wise enough to behave better. I would say untruth and hatred (perhaps the same thing, fundamentally) are what drives meta-consciousness exctinct, while truth and love are what keeps meta-consciousness alive and evolving. Now, THAT'S interesting, because that would mean that the God we study through the natural laws of physics and what we observe and so on, that mind that is becoming something, will unavoidably become what it truly is ("beyond" space and time) because of truth and love (concepts in mind but that transcend space and time). In game theory we can learn some things about optimal strategies and stuff... And games are metaphors of reality, so yeah. What we do matters, and it better be in alignment with the best/optimal strategy (instead of just being "objectively bad moves").

I feel like I needed to express this somehow. Of course I could have done it better, but that's what I'm trying to do.

What are your thoughts on this? Does this myth resonate with you? What would your criticisms be? What else would you add? What would you change or tend to disagree with?
How would you relate/compare this to a panentheistic christian perspective?

[ScottRoberts]

All questions that we can only speculate about.

For sure. I'm interested in your opinion, though.

Sorry, but I've kinda lost interest in these sort of questions, more interested in this sort of thing.