misaeld7 wrote: ↑Wed Aug 18, 2021 11:02 pm
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.
But we "can", to some extent, "create" new conscious beings - he would say those are "induced disociations of the cosmic mind"... But how is this not just a semantic trick? I mean, you can call it "create", you can call it "induce blah blah", we are talking about the same thing here: re-arraging that mind patter/content we call "matter" so that new conscious entities arrise. We know at least ONE way: that's what life is about. So, be it by natural means, be it "artificial" (in vitro fertilization, playing with genes and stuff), we know that's ONE method to generate conscious agents.
We do not create new conscious beings. Biology does not create new conscious beings. The biological process creates new bodies, but that process and those bodies are extrinsic representations of thoughts of MAL (Mind-At-Large, BK's term for cosmic mind, also abbreviated M@L). As the bodies develop and exercise their senses, they become the extrinsic appearance of alters, through unknown processes. Note that in reincarnation scenarios, the alter can in some sense pre-exist the body. Of course, analytic idealism does not assume reincarnation, but it doesn't deny it either. My only point is that answers to the how and why of the formation of alters will not come from philosophy (or natural science). Religious and esoteric sources have their answers, and are, in my opinion, worth exploring, if only to get one out of the materialist mindset.
[ We also know that, if we cut the corpus callosum, disociation occurs.
No it doesn't. You get the same single person who experiences some things differently. Dissociation (in the case of DID) results in different persons within one body.
And during sleep, disociation occurs.
Does it? Some would say in deep sleep there is re-association.
So I'm still curious: how does analytic idealism SOLVE the hard problem?
By removing the assumption that there is anything external to consciousness.
"The hard problem" perhaps becomes "How does abiogenesis occur?",
No it doesn't. Under idealism one need not assume abiogenesis. Everything is alive, or thoughts of living beings.
but I still can't figure out why would the image of a disociation be ALIVE.
Because, okay, fair enough, perhaps life (metabolism, reproduction, self-organization, etc) is indeed the ONLY image of "that which can perceive" or "a disociation of the cosmic mind"... But WHY would that be the case? Because he also claimed that there is nothing about physical parameters in terms of which you could deduce the qualities of experience - so WHY is life special/unique if we can't even talk about properties? The hard problem remains, in my estimation.
Lost you here.
We know everything is in consciousness, but not everything is conscious. Or do we?
Yes. My thought that 2+2=4 is not a conscious being, but is in consciousness.
How do we know the sun is NOT conscious?
We don't.
If "there is nothing about material configurarions or physical parameters in terms of which we could deduce the qualities of experience", if we can't talk about "how it looks like from the second person perspective" to deduce the inner experience, why would we assume the sun is NOT conscious (although "in consciousness")? Or why is metabolism or life even relevant to this?
I'm convinced BK has already answered this in many of his videos (which I may have missed), but... If not everything is conscious and abiogenesis is possible, would a universe prior to containing life (aka "disociating into alters") still be conscious? WHY?
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 if the ONLY image of an alter is "that which is alive", is the cosmic mind ALIVE?
Sure is, if one defines "alive" as having experiences.
Because, for example, he claims the cosmic mind is "NOT meta-conscious" because it didn't undergo the preasure of natural selection (since there's nothing outside consciousness, there's no such thing as an enviroment to be aware of for the cosmic mind).
Some here, including me, disagree with BK on this point.
And he also claims, with proof, that the universe resembles a brain - but how would that proove anything,
He doesn't say it does prove anything. He just finds it suggestive.
In another post you asked about esoteric literature on non-physical alters. Here's some (also about a lot of other stuff). Please note that I'm not claiming that such books provide us with The Truth (though they might). But they do provide us with ways to think about reality in non-materialist terms.
Jane Roberts,
Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul
Geraldine Cummins,
The Road to Immortality
Rudolf Steiner,
An Outline of Occult Science available on-line at
https://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA013/English/AP1972/GA013_index.html