BK in conversation with Tom Cambpell

[Soul_of_Shu]

This may be of interest to some ...

[AshvinP]

This may be of interest to some ...

This came up on the discord server, so I will just paste my thoughts here as well. I will say, this is one interview which still makes me appreciate BK's work to a certain extent when compared to where he could be intellectually, reflected in TC. Right at the beginning, TC says his model has explained everything about the "objective and subjective" worlds. That should be a huge flashing warning sign.

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It's interesting to look at what modern materialist science has brought us in the way of scientific knowledge. Here are a few examples:

1) There is a singular, unobservable force prior to linear time which 'delaminates' into fundamental forces of the Cosmos.

2) These three forces are gravitational, nuclear, and electromagnetic and are omnipresent in all particular forms of the Cosmos.

3) The great stars, such as those which constellate the Zodiac, were formed and were the source of energy for all subsequent evolution of solar systems.

4) Our own Sun is the source of all energy for the plant and animal ecologies which imbue the Earth with life and structure its otherwise chaotic physical activity.

Many more things could be added at even higher resolution within the various disciplines of modern science, but I think the above shows a pretty clear trend and one that is quite consistent with Christian spiritual cosmology. We can see how the above stages align with the perfectly united Godhead, the personalities of the Trinity, the hierarchies of angels between God and man, the creation of the visible world through the Logos (Divine Word) ordering principle, resulting in the plant and animal kingdoms which were "very good", and eventually humanity who was also part of God's very good creation, but Fell through knowledge of good and evil.

Yet, after that Fall, the spiritual within the physical begins to awaken to itself through us, as images of God, with the development of Reason and recognition of ethical virtues only made possible by the physical creation. The pursuit of Self-knowledge progresses through human mythology, aesthetics, literature, philosophy, and science. The materialist age, of course, confuses the human abstract creations for the Reality itself and therefore entirely leaves out the qualitative/meaningful aspects of this Cosmic evolution. It leaves out the intentional, aesthetic, and moral aspects of it, i.e. Truth, Beauty, and Goodness that Plato spoke of. But, otherwise, there is no need to forsake any of its quantitative conclusions, as long as they are understood as incomplete symbols for higher meaningful realities.

Compare that to some of things TC mentioned in that interview:

1) Primordial Consciousness evolved to lower its own entropy.
- Instead of going from Divine simplicity to the complexity of Earth, TC's model says it went in the opposite direction.

2) Consciousness broke off pieces of itself because it realized it needs free will to lower entropy.
- The Fall, i.e. physical fragmentation, according to TC, is the event which simplifies the world from the complexity of Divine Consciousness.

3) Human individuals don't exist at all, except as simulated 'information' in the mind of Consciousness.
- Clearly this portrays the physical creation as the Matrix, the completely evil and mechanistic simulation imposed on Consciousness by the machine intelligences, with each human individual as a mere illusion.

That being said, TC's view is also incomplete. It is incomplete because it starts from the Fall, rather than the Divine Godhead. It has blacked out all of the '6 days' of creation prior to the Fall. This sort of incompleteness is much harder to rectify. We must add both the qualitative meaning back and millions of years of spiritual evolution. It is actually a version of the "young Earth creationist" position which simply collapses everything prior to humanity's Fall; a more Eastern mirror of modern Prostestant theology. The qualitative aspect is so flattened out that everything is conceived in only machine processes and terminology, rather than the languge of living spiritual realities.

[Ben Iscatus]

Thanks for this, Dana (and pleased you're back after your hiatus!).

There was more agreement than I expected, but they come from such different places, the gaps will be hard to bridge. As BK said, TC's view of Free Will is not standard. That choices are made does not mean they are not determined by internal conscious forces of which we are metacognitively unaware. TC seems to think that if we eliminate fear, we can be metacognitive of all psychic contents and be fully focused with a free intent. BK, through Jung, sees it as rather more complicated than that.

[Ben Iscatus]

Further thoughts:
In many ways, TC's computer game metaphor is bizarre. He said a Virtual Reality works by setting up initial conditions, then pushing the "run" button. In due course, life evolves. But since consciousness has to "log on" to avatars, there is an implicit assumption that the avatars exist as philosophical zombies (like elves in a computer game) until consciousness "logs on" to them. And what about the bacteria? Does pre-existing metacognitive consciousness really find it interesting to "log on" to them? Pretty weird!

[Starbuck]

Further thoughts:
In many ways, TC's computer game metaphor is bizarre. He said a Virtual Reality works by setting up initial conditions, then pushing the "run" button. In due course, life evolves. But since consciousness has to "log on" to avatars, there is an implicit assumption that the avatars exist as philosophical zombies (like elves in a computer game) until consciousness "logs on" to them. And what about the bacteria? Does pre-existing metacognitive consciousness really find it interesting to "log on" to them? Pretty weird!

Indeed. Another example of the pernicious and stubborn legacy of materialism. Even held by someone of TCs own stated life experiences. He is positing something outside of consciousness that conscious 'jumps' into. Stubborn dualism in the mix too.

[Ben Iscatus]

He is positing something outside of consciousness that conscious 'jumps' into.

This is a good way of putting it. But thinking about it a bit more, he would say that the evolving VR is itself still a form of consciousness, just "partitioned off" from the rest. Or, in more usual Idealistic terms, the VR might be seen as akin to an "idea" formed by a mind - a content of consciousness. Then consciousness could inhabit its own idea by forgetting itself. (No wonder BK talks of consciousness constantly fooling itself!)

[Starbuck]

He is positing something outside of consciousness that conscious 'jumps' into.

This is a good way of putting it. But thinking about it a bit more, he would say that the evolving VR is itself still a form of consciousness, just "partitioned off" from the rest. Or, in more usual Idealistic terms, the VR might be seen as akin to an "idea" formed by a mind - a content of consciousness. Then consciousness could inhabit its own idea by forgetting itself. (No wonder BK talks of consciousness constantly fooling itself!)

Fooling itself, or perhaps the better metaphor would be dissociation. BK always wins in the end!

[Eugene I.]

Then consciousness could inhabit its own idea by forgetting itself. (No wonder BK talks of consciousness constantly fooling itself!)

That's exactly what it's doing most of the time, at least in the dimensions where we currently abide. Put it in another way: some activities (modules) of consciousness think that it can learn and evolve by fooling itself and lying to itself to become "somebody"/self/Self by creating ideas about itself and then forgetting that those are just fabricated ideas and starting to believe in their independent realities. I think Borges nailed it spot on. But I'm not convinced that it's a good way to evolve and learn though, I believe there is a way to evolve (and decrease enthropy as Tom calls it) without such self-deception. But regardless, this developmental stage may be inevitable because this self-deception is most-likely not intentional/pre-meditated, it just occurs naturally at certain evolutionary stages.

[Ben Iscatus]

That Borges quote is very insightful, Eugene!

According to TC, decreasing entropy without self-deception involves overcoming fear. The problem here is that fear is part of evolutionary necessity. Looking out at my garden now, there are no rats or mice visible in the daylight. That's because they sensibly fear the cats and magpies. When applying this kind of situation to humans (e.g. don't go into the woods if bears are there), TC doesn't call this "fear", he says it's being rational. So effectively, he redefines a lot of fear as rationality. Then there are other, primal fear-based responses - where we have to react without metacognition or we're toast. This stuff he ignores. So a huge chunk of fear is either redefined or ignored. I don't buy it.

[Eugene I.]

That Borges quote is very insightful, Eugene!

According to TC, decreasing entropy without self-deception involves overcoming fear. The problem here is that fear is part of evolutionary necessity. Looking out at my garden now, there are no rats or mice visible in the daylight. That's because they sensibly fear the cats and magpies. When applying this kind of situation to humans (e.g. don't go into the woods if bears are there), TC doesn't call this "fear", he says it's being rational. So effectively, he redefines a lot of fear as rationality. Then there are other, primal fear-based responses - where we have to react without metacognition or we're toast. This stuff he ignores. So a huge chunk of fear is either redefined or ignored. I don't buy it.

I agree, Ben, TC's view seems shallow to me and neglects the depths of subconscious and non-metacognitive processes in consciousness.
And it is indeed essentially the fear of self-nonexistence that motivates and maintains this self-deception while not recognizing that there is nothing that can ever threaten the existence of consciousness and it is impossible for consciousness to not exist.