Longest Thread Ever
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PearlWatson
Well-Known Member
kinda funny. . . . .
the whole "God is Dead" assertion without any proven definition of "God".
You said it.
addictionary
Well-Known Member
Is it coincidence that Karl Marx died the year Friedrich Nietzsche killed God (haşa)?
On the other hand, God might have got rid of Friedrich, but his notion stayed and grew within generations of thinkers for the years to come. And it's a common occurrence that philosophers usually are valued at a much higher level than their life times, when they are dead.
Is it coincidence that Karl Marx died the year Friedrich Nietzsche killed God (haşa)?
On the other hand, God might have got rid of Friedrich, but his notion stayed and grew within generations of thinkers for the years to come. And it's a common occurrence that philosophers usually are valued at a much higher level than their life times, when they are dead.
You'd do better to apply such logic to the death of Jesus, all things considered.
Consciousness Revisited
So here is a new idea I think I have come up, not to say nobody ever thought it before, but I haven't seen it in print.
Why would we suppose we are "conscious"? What is it that we mean by this? What is the inverse or negative of it?
I go to sleep usually sometime during most days, for maybe five or six hours. Usually that's enough. It's never solid though, well, not anymore. Nobody calls that "unconcious" exactly, it's just "sleep". I've been put under anesthesia a few times for relatively minor surgery, many years ago. Now they just use plenty of local anesthetics maybe for those things. That is achieved by relatively small lipid-like molecules that disrupt membrane/synapse functions. That would be something like "nerve death", but not "unconscious"
Cognition is probably synonymous with "conscious" in some people's ideas of it all. Awareness, yes, but it has to be more than passive awareness. A camera can be "conscious" if awareness it all it takes. A computer with a camera, and a program directing specific responses to specific optical events belies a definition that includes awareness and response. Such a response, imo, would be "unintelligent", lacking actual cognition. You can have a camera detect an intruder and detonate something. . . . a hydrogen bomb, for example. . . . you could even program facial recognition so it would only go off on the "right" person. Still not intelligence or cognition like humans routinely do, even the dullards amongst us. With perhaps only a few exceptions like SRI or SSRI-hyped parolees programmed to shoot cops in pizza parlors by darkside operatives of our "intelligence" folks, for all I know.
The essentially "human" thing about human beings is self-will. The ability to call the shot based on what we choose within ourselves. We see the world around us, and we choose an action from many possible actions present in our imagination, because we actually do have our own "will".
consciousness involves not just awareness, not just the capacity to act, but the presence of cognition totally within ourselves which processes some arbitrary but generally rich set of imagined responses, and chooses one as our own. "Will".
"Will" is not just chemistry, it involves something beyond that. If it were chemistry, we would have no choice.
The part of "us" that makes choices is something that transcends our physical nature, our chemical and physical structure.
If we have "will" now, what reason can there be for supposing we haven't had it before "life" or won't have it after "life". This is the core fact presented by most near-death accounts. Every story I have heard attributes to the human essence something that maintains "will" even in the "near-death" state. Consciousness independent of the human coil. . . .
So here is a new idea I think I have come up, not to say nobody ever thought it before, but I haven't seen it in print.
Why would we suppose we are "conscious"? What is it that we mean by this? What is the inverse or negative of it?
I go to sleep usually sometime during most days, for maybe five or six hours. Usually that's enough. It's never solid though, well, not anymore. Nobody calls that "unconcious" exactly, it's just "sleep". I've been put under anesthesia a few times for relatively minor surgery, many years ago. Now they just use plenty of local anesthetics maybe for those things. That is achieved by relatively small lipid-like molecules that disrupt membrane/synapse functions. That would be something like "nerve death", but not "unconscious"
Cognition is probably synonymous with "conscious" in some people's ideas of it all. Awareness, yes, but it has to be more than passive awareness. A camera can be "conscious" if awareness it all it takes. A computer with a camera, and a program directing specific responses to specific optical events belies a definition that includes awareness and response. Such a response, imo, would be "unintelligent", lacking actual cognition. You can have a camera detect an intruder and detonate something. . . . a hydrogen bomb, for example. . . . you could even program facial recognition so it would only go off on the "right" person. Still not intelligence or cognition like humans routinely do, even the dullards amongst us. With perhaps only a few exceptions like SRI or SSRI-hyped parolees programmed to shoot cops in pizza parlors by darkside operatives of our "intelligence" folks, for all I know.
The essentially "human" thing about human beings is self-will. The ability to call the shot based on what we choose within ourselves. We see the world around us, and we choose an action from many possible actions present in our imagination, because we actually do have our own "will".
consciousness involves not just awareness, not just the capacity to act, but the presence of cognition totally within ourselves which processes some arbitrary but generally rich set of imagined responses, and chooses one as our own. "Will".
"Will" is not just chemistry, it involves something beyond that. If it were chemistry, we would have no choice.
The part of "us" that makes choices is something that transcends our physical nature, our chemical and physical structure.
If we have "will" now, what reason can there be for supposing we haven't had it before "life" or won't have it after "life". This is the core fact presented by most near-death accounts. Every story I have heard attributes to the human essence something that maintains "will" even in the "near-death" state. Consciousness independent of the human coil. . . .
PearlWatson
Well-Known Member
Part of being conscious ain't just awareness it is self awareness.
If you put a mirror in front of a cat it thinks there is another cat there.
The same is true of toddlers until they do a little testing...look behind the mirror...see that the being in the mirror does everything they do.
If you put a mirror in front of a cat it thinks there is another cat there.
The same is true of toddlers until they do a little testing...look behind the mirror...see that the being in the mirror does everything they do.
Nobody thinks cats are "unconscious", or toddlers, either. lol
toddlers and cats are alike in their extreme capacity to drive "controlling" humans stark raving mad, sometimes. And, btw, the capacity for going "stark raving mad" could be worked up as part of my definition of "consciousness". IMO, the only reason "liberals" and in fact most citizens are not "stark raving mad" about their politicians is because the media is wholly-owned, or otherwise bought-out, and like dogs that been thrown huge slabs of meat, are busy feasting, while the political theives are sacking our "house". In a word, people don't know what's going on, or why. If they did understand, the only clearly sane and rational response would be to go "stark raving mad". Maybe even vote for some third party candidates. . . .
I've been thinking some more. . . .
Clearly, the "human" nature includes imagination and the capacity of conceive of things that clearly have nothing to do with the "real", or even with the physically objective world or universe. We have universes of our own "creation" made up in our own heads.
Any man who has a significant interest in a woman. . . . any woman who gives a crap about some man. . . . knows what I'm talking about. There is just no way men and women are going to see the world the same way.
Fantasy and Will.
No computer will ever have these characteristics.
No merely objective construct of flesh, bone, and DNA can determine such things.
So, obviously, the "materialists" are morons, self-blinded by their own conceits. . . . which they have of course constructed using their own talents for fantasy and will.
PearlWatson
Well-Known Member
You're right. Self awareness is just a higher order aspect of consciousness.
Your last sentence was genius.
Your last sentence was genius.
What are you defining as a "materialist?"
An excellent question, which probably I can't answer.
Most philosophical "materialists", which I'm sorta doing a soliloquy more or less "agin", define the universe in terms of observable, measurable stuff. Mass, Energy. And phenomena related somehow to these things, like electricity, magnitism, gravity. . . . But it gets sorta ill-defined when you really try to get down to the details. Particle physics, Cosmology. . . .
Most philosophical "materialists" balk about discussing metaphysical or supernatural phenomena like ESP, remote viewing, or even irregularly reproducible scientific results, like "cold fusion". Pretty clear to me that they aren't going to show up to discuss bizarre human phenomena like fantasies, imagination, or even "Art".
I will personally take a stand that there are "material" forms of existence that we don't know how to observe or measure, yet. I envision that in my fertile imagination as stuff that might be somehow in another "world", in other "dimensions" of the universe we just can't "see". . . . . So it might mean, ultimately, that I'll get into a sort of vision of things that nobody will believe, maybe not even me. I imagine a universe of this sort or that sort, and hold it out as "possible" on some basis or another. . . . . I will stand up straight, purse my lips, and look you straight in the eye, and say we don't know it all, yet.
But beyond even those kinds of "material" universes, it seems to me that our human capacities for fantasies, illusions, dreams, and other essentially "unhinged" perceptions. . . . dreams of "freedom" and "liberty" for example. . . . . are essential for our creativity. For our ability to conceive of things that don't exist objectively in the universe, and then even contrive some way to actually "create" what we have imagined. . . .
Yep, we can dream of political fantasies like world peace and social justice, and even try to make it real. . . . . We are freakin' amazing. . . .
We can even imagine that we are doing that, when in fact the power of government is being fought out behind closed doors by maybe less than five real honchos who each want it all.