(Un)consciousness of breathing?

[stratos]

"Einstein's theories are as stupid as physicalism gets. They are ridiculously wrong"

I don't understand.

"''You sound like Deepak Chopra'' is a nice compliment".

Ok, i understood

[Soul_of_Shu]

And so now that there is ample evidence that bears out the expectations of how this thread was bound to play out, trending so far away from a dialogos of the kind we aspire to foster here that it's hard not to feel let down by those who are capable of such dialogos enabling the intention of fostering of the opposite. But I suppose it's what happens when someone has entered a foreign land without any understanding of the language being spoken there, and the communication can't rise above the most rudimentary finger-pointing, hand-waving gestures. But hey, carry on if anyone really feels that it can find its way out of the tedious predicament.

[SanteriSatama]

"Einstein's theories are as stupid as physicalism gets. They are ridiculously wrong"

I don't understand.

That's a good start. Would you like to understand a little?

In Minkowski spacetime nothing computes and any and all motion is impossible, because real numbers don't compute and point-reductionism of infinite sets of points make motion impossible.

The rational "approximations" which compute are not real numbers, and don't allow the claimed continuum and hence Einstein-causality.

Your Emperor has no clothes.

[Ben Iscatus]

Ben Iscatus can you be more specific? In general i look for good reasons to believe something, not irrefutable necessarily. What were you referring though? And what's your opinion on that?

Santeri just said it!

[AshvinP]

So because i don't know the solution to the hard problem of consciousness i cannot know that earth is round? I cannot know that Santa Claus is imaginary? That's some deep philosophy here... And how you deal with the problems of hard problem?

You cannot explain how you know that the Earth is round. That is what philosophers and metaphysicians try to do... explain how these things are known. And yes, eventually, without knowing how we know things, we end up in a relativism where we question whether there is any such thing as true and objective knowledge... whether one person's claim that the Earth is round can be deemed any more objectively valid than another person's that the Earth is flat. That sort of relativism has already taken root in much of the Western world.

So i ask you again, how do you solve the hard problem of consciousness (in order to know how you know things in order to know things).

By recognizing that the one thing I experience, without a doubt, is conscious activity and specifically ideating activity (Thinking). Since that activity is fundamental, there is no hard problem of consciousness.

It is not wrong, rather it is plainly obvious. Instilling something with natural "rules" that allow for recognition of meaningful patterns is quite obviously our meaningful agency acting through a technological tool for expressing our agency. One must do all sort of unwarranted mental gymnastics, like you are doing, to avoid this simple truth. My bolded assertion holds true in your NN example.

Humans intervention is NOT needed for Neural Networks to operate. Wake up. Why you insist on this obsolete philosophical view that you too retracted from by accepting that natural selection suffice. Your... "agency" is unimportant. The process of selection according to fitness has happened to life itself before any human ever existed and is still happening to inanimate matter in general.

I already explained to you why human agency developed from natural processes and selection. It is not "supernatural". So I didn't "retract" anything by saying "natural selection suffice". It does suffice, but you just need to abandon this arbitrarily narrow view of what is "natural", which for some reason excludes humans and human agency, even though it is only through that agency you can ever know the meaning of "natural" or make distinctions between natural processes. Modern humans tend to think they can learn about the essence of the Cosmos by just building up intellectual structures on a flawed foundation, because it takes less effort and requires less sacrifice.

The bolded part is just your unwarranted assumption, which of course is the standard assumption of physicalists and even many idealists. I never claimed my view does not require radical departures from these standard unexamined assumptions. If you are going to simply hold on to them and never consider any arguments which challenge them, because you don't want to abandon them under any circumstances, which is the impression every comment you have posted gives me, then there is no point writing about it any further than I already have. There are many more people willing to have serious discussions here and learn something.

I will leave you with a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson on that last point. If you want to equate him also with Deepak Chopra so as to ignore the actual substance of what he is saying, then that's fine with me.

1. Words are signs of natural facts.

2. Particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts.

3. Nature is the symbol of spirit.

1. Words are signs of natural facts. The use of natural history is to give us aid in supernatural history. The use of the outer creation is to give us language for the beings and changes of the inward creation. Every word which is used to express a moral or intellectual fact, if traced to its root, is found to be borrowed from some material appearance. Right originally means straight; wrong means twisted. Spirit primarily means wind; transgression, the crossing of a line; supercilious, the raising of the eye-brow. We say the heart to express emotion, the head to denote thought; and thought and emotion are, in their turn, words borrowed from sensible things, and now appropriated to spiritual nature. Most of the process by which this transformation is made, is hidden from us in the remote time when language was framed; but the same tendency may be daily observed in children. Children and [archaic men] use only nouns or names of things, which they continually convert into verbs, and apply to analogous mental acts.

2. But this origin of all words that convey a spiritual import—so conspicuous a fact in the history of language—is our least debt to nature. It is not words only that are emblematic; it is things which are emblematic. Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture. An enraged man is a lion, a cunning man is a fox, a firm man is a rock, a learned man is a torch. A lamb is innocence; a snake is subtle spite; flowers express to us the delicate affections. Light and darkness are our familiar expression for knowledge and ignorance; and heat for love. Visible distance behind and before us, is respectively our image of memory and hope.
...
Throw a stone into the stream, and the circles that propagate themselves are the beautiful type of all influence... And the blue sky in which the private earth is buried, the sky with its eternal calm, and full of everlasting orbs, is the type of Reason. That which, intellectually considered, we call Reason, considered in relation to nature, we call Spirit. Spirit is the Creator. Spirit hath life in itself. And man in all ages and countries, embodies it in his language, as the FATHER. It is easily seen that there is nothing lucky or capricious in these analogies, but that they are constant, and pervade nature.

3. What is true of proverbs, is true of all fables, parables, and allegories. This relation between the mind and matter is not fancied by some poet, but stands in the will of God, and so is free to be known by all men. It appears to men, or it does not appear. When in fortunate hours we ponder this miracle, the wise man doubts, if, at all other times, he is not blind and deaf; “Can these things be, And overcome us like a summer’s cloud, Without our special wonder?” for the universe becomes transparent, and the light of higher laws than its own, shines through it. It is the standing problem which has exercised the wonder and the study of every fine genius since the world began; from the era of the Egyptians and the Brahmins, to that of Pythagoras, of Plato, of Bacon, of Leibnitz, of Swedenborg. There sits the Sphinx at the road-side, and from age to age, as each prophet comes by, he tries his fortune at reading her riddle.

There seems to be a necessity in spirit to manifest itself in material forms; and day and night, river and storm, beast and bird, acid and alkali, preexist in necessary Ideas in the mind of God, and are what they are by virtue of preceding affections, in the world of spirit. A Fact is the end or last issue of spirit. The visible creation is the terminus or the circumference of the invisible world. A new interest surprises us, whilst, under the view now suggested, we contemplate the fearful extent and multitude of objects; since “every object rightly seen, unlocks a new faculty of the soul.” That which was unconscious truth, becomes, when interpreted and defined in an object, a part of the domain of knowledge—a new weapon in the magazine of power.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature (1836)

[Soul_of_Shu]

... then there is no point writing about it any further than I already have. There are many more people willing to have serious discussions here and learn something.

Yes, there being a reason why this forum is called 'meta'-Kastrup and not 'pre'-Kastrup, where one hopes participants desire some inspired dialogos, like the one between Vervaeke and Kastrup, as opposed to the cheap thrills of polemic. But again, it may well be too much to expect when the parties are so obviously not speaking the same language. Yet clearly some here feel differently, and are otherwise compelled, so kudos for at least trying.

[stratos]

"Einstein's theories are as stupid as physicalism gets. They are ridiculously wrong"

I don't understand.

That's a good start. Would you like to understand a little? In Minkowski spacetime nothing computes and any and all motion is impossible, because real numbers don't compute and point-reductionism of infinite sets of points make motion impossible. The rational "approximations" which compute are not real numbers, and don't allow the claimed continuum and hence Einstein-causality. Your Emperor has no clothes.

I do not understand what you are saying. And if it was not off topic i would ask you what does "real numbers don't compute" mean, or "The rational "approximations" which compute are not real numbers" or they don't allow the claimed continuum and hence Einstein-causality", but it is off topic and i won't. It is funny though that you feel in a position to judge so dismissively the one of the two most powerful scientific theories in existence based on such...philosophical?... thoughts? Whatever. It is understandable that you find Chopra appealing. Have a look here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_ ... relativity

[stratos]

So i ask you again, how do you solve the hard problem of consciousness (in order to know how you know things in order to know things).

By recognizing that the one thing I experience, without a doubt, is conscious activity and specifically ideating activity (Thinking). Since that activity is fundamental, there is no hard problem of consciousness.

Firstly, only conscious activity is without a doubt. Thinking is not. Thinking, as interpreted to be a sign of the activity of a supposed thinker behind the experience, of an ego that produces or manipulates thoughts, is always doubtful. The Cartesian "i think therefore i am" is not undeniable, as it presupposes something that it is not there: the entity of an ego that does the thinking. The actuality of experience and the undeniable statement therefore is "thinking, therefore thinking". Whenever you are lost in thoughts, you can always doubt. The certainty lies in the phenomenal character of experience, not in it's interpretation. And relaying on thinking will forever keep this fact of experience out of your reach. That's why meditation is not about thinking. But ok.

Secondly, and most important, why rocks or robots don't have consciousness and humans do? This is the hard problem, and i didn't see it addressing it in any way.

It is not wrong, rather it is plainly obvious. Instilling something with natural "rules" that allow for recognition of meaningful patterns is quite obviously our meaningful agency acting through a technological tool for expressing our agency. One must do all sort of unwarranted mental gymnastics, like you are doing, to avoid this simple truth. My bolded assertion holds true in your NN example.

Humans intervention is NOT needed for Neural Networks to operate. Wake up. Why you insist on this obsolete philosophical view that you too retracted from by accepting that natural selection suffice. Your... "agency" is unimportant. The process of selection according to fitness has happened to life itself before any human ever existed and is still happening to inanimate matter in general.

It does suffice, but you just need to abandon this arbitrarily narrow view of what is "natural", which for some reason excludes humans and human agency, even though it is only through that agency you can ever know the meaning of "natural" or make distinctions between natural processes.

I don't believe in agents. There is nobody hiding behind mental phenomena, in a the same way that there is no Zeus hiding behind thunders.

The bolded part is just your unwarranted assumption, which of course is the standard assumption of physicalists and even many idealists. I never claimed my view does not require radical departures from these standard unexamined assumptions. If you are going to simply hold on to them and never consider any arguments which challenge them, because you don't want to abandon them under any circumstances, which is the impression every comment you have posted gives me, then there is no point writing about it any further than I already have. There are many more people willing to have serious discussions here and learn something.

I didn't come here to learn from you, or any other, nor i was supposed to. I didn't sign for a class. I came here to discuss matters, and the only thing that i supposed to do in this regard is to be open about what will the product of a discussion be, to teach or to be taught, and to to orient my self according to the truth. So there is no need to ask fellow members to be willing to learn from us. We are not their teachers, and in any case we might have nothing at all for them to learn. We can only appeal to the strength of our reasoning, and that's it. In my case, i consider your arguments but i don't find them persuasive at all. But as everyone knows, not being persuaded by weak arguments is indicative of bad intentions and unwillingness to learn...

[stratos]

"Einstein's theories are as stupid as physicalism gets. They are ridiculously wrong"

I don't understand.

That's a good start. Would you like to understand a little? In Minkowski spacetime nothing computes and any and all motion is impossible, because real numbers don't compute and point-reductionism of infinite sets of points make motion impossible. The rational "approximations" which compute are not real numbers, and don't allow the claimed continuum and hence Einstein-causality. Your Emperor has no clothes.

I do not understand what you are saying. And if it was not off topic i would ask you what does "real numbers don't compute" mean, or "the rational "approximations" which compute are not real numbers" or "they don't allow the claimed continuum and hence Einstein-causality", but it is off topic and i won't. It is funny though that you feel in a position to judge so dismissively the one of the two most powerful scientific theories in existence based on such...philosophical?... thoughts? Whatever. It is understandable that you find Chopra appealing. Have a look here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_ ... relativity

[SanteriSatama]

It is funny though that you feel in a position to judge so dismissively the one of the two most powerful scientific theories in existence based on such...philosophical?... thoughts? Whatever. It is understandable that you find Chopra appealing. Have a look here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_ ... relativity

Yes, it is funny that the Cantor-Hilbert-Zermelo formalism is a postmodern religion of absurd arbitrary axioms.
It is also funny that the materialistic-reductionistic paradigm is built on mathematical foundation of blatant absurdity.

The singularities of relativity are simply mathematical artifact of absurd mathematical theory of point-reductionism (which Zeno proved absurd ages ago) and "infinite sets" aka completed infinities, which is as such an absurd oxymoron. For empirical anomalies, see

https://www.academia.edu/40409260/The_D ... ok_Preview
https://www.academia.edu/41459778/Absol ... ent_at_CIF
https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/3 ... -wrong.htm
https://www.scientificexploration.org/d ... usland.pdf
https://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInfo ... erID=45017
https://philarchive.org/archive/SFEAOG

Etc.

For genuine sense making for genuine empirical science (to wake up from religion of abstract and absurd fantasies), this could be helpful: