Criticism

[Soul_of_Shu]

The important question is not how did consciousness arise ...

Good, then one can just as well go with it never had to arise to begin with.

[JeffreyW]

The important question is not how did consciousness arise ...

Good, then one can just as well go with it never had to arise to begin with.

Go with whatever you want, but there is no reason to take it seriously.

[Eugene I]

If consciousness bathes the universe, why hasn’t the entire universe collapsed into Eigenstate?

Are you talking about a hypothesis that consciousness causes the WF to collapse into eigenstate? It was experimentally proven to be wrong. In QM experiments (e.g. the double-slit experiment) the measurement results are the same regardless whether there is an observer registering the results at the moment of the measurement or not. For example, in the double-slit experiment if you place a photographic plate at the plain of observation, the same interference pattern will show up on the plate, and this pattern will be destroyed if a measurement device will try to measure the occurrence of electrons at one of the slits, regardless whether there was any conscious observer in the room or not.

[JeffreyW]

If consciousness bathes the universe, why hasn’t the entire universe collapsed into Eigenstate?

Are you talking about a hypothesis that consciousness causes the QF to collapse into eigenstate? It was experimentally proven to be wrong. In QM experiments (e.g. the double-slit experiment) the measurement results are the same regardless whether there is an observer registering the results at the moment of the measurement or not. For example, in the double-slit experiment if you place a photographic plate at the plain of observation, the same interference pattern will show up on the plate, and this pattern will be destroyed if a measurement device will try to measure the occurrence of electrons at one of the slits, regardless whether there was any conscious observer in the room or not.

This isn’t even up to debate, you are simply wrong. As has been pointed out countless times among physicists, we are entangled with the measurement device in a quantum subsystem.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Go with whatever you want, but there is no reason to take it seriously.

Likewise, I can find no reason to take seriously immanently non-aware Being.

[Eugene I]

Are you aware of what occurs during your deep dreamless sleep?

- I had an experience of lucid dreamless sleep where there was absolutely nothing and no conscious activity whatsoever, yet it was experienced (="awared") and registered in the memory.
- There may be two reasons why we have no memories of dreamless sleep: it can be that the awareness is indeed absent in such state, or it can be that the awareness is present but the state is not registered in the memory. But there is no way to tell which one is true. And this is because:
- It is in principle not possible to experience a state of the absence of awareness. Therefore it is in principle not possible to experimentally prove from the 1-st person experiential perspective that such state ever exists. We have no capacity to be aware of non-experienced phenomena/meanings/ideas, therefor we have no way to experientiailly prove that such things exist.

I thought that one of the premises in idealism is that every phenomenon/idea/meaning is experienced from the perspective of the Thinking in general (at Large)? Individuated conscious activities only experience a potion of these phenomena with the rest happening in their individuated "subconsciousness". But all phenomena and meanings are actually experienced, be it by some corporeal or transcorporeal beings or by Thinking at Large.

Personally I do not accept a version of idealism that poses a unwarranted and unprovable hypothesis that conscious phenomena, meanings or ideas can exist without being experienced. They can still be experienced non-metacognitively. For example, we may never pay attention and quickly forget that there was a bird on a branch that we saw by our peripheral vision but never actually noticed it with our attention. Yet we still consciously experienced it, albeit non-metacognitively.

You said above that it is impossible to separate any meaning and its awareness (including the meaning of awareness itself), and that is true and can be verified by introspective meditation. But that simply means that they are experientially inseparable and we have no ground to assume that awareness can exist without meanings, as well as to assume that any meanings can exist without awareness.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Are you aware of what occurs during your deep dreamless sleep?

I may be an unusually active dreamer, but my experience is of non-stop dreaming. Only in retrospect can I surmise that deep dreamless sleep must have happened between one dream and another. But even if in such a state, what is aware of a thunderstorm, for example, that awakens one from it?

[AshvinP]

And so we turn to those who have been on this journey all along, letting their direct experience sing through them to presence Itself in our midst, should we let it - the poets, artists, and musicians. It is within their presented experience that we can poetically explore it ourselves.

But you are ignoring a whole bunch of poets and artists who, alhough bring considered excellent at their craft, flatly disagree with your position. Goethe, Coleridge, Emerson, Wagner, are just a couple who wrote at length about how Reason can bring us to the threshold of an entirely new, conscious mode of Imaginative cognition. I already explained the reason why you are ignoring them. You have no motivation to look at their arguments because you already foreclosed on the possibility they have knoweldge of Being to impart.

[Eugene I]

Unaware Being is a mere abstract metaphysical idea, it can never be (1-st person-perspective) experienced and therefore can never be experientially proven to exist.

[JeffreyW]

Go with whatever you want, but there is no reason to take it seriously.

Likewise, I can find no reason to take seriously immanently non-aware Being.

The difference is we experience non-aware Being every day. We do not experience consciousness outside living beings.