Yes, a lot of people leap straight from the HP (which is very real) to all sort of conclusions which do not follow, and many of which make no more sense than the physicalist position being rejected. The “there is no self” crowd tend to be wannabe spiritual teachers who are regurgitating Eastern / New Age ideas without any real authority or depth.
In my experience/estimation, nearly everybody who claims to have this sort of spiritual insight and development is a fraud. All they’ve done is allow their ego to get bloated on how deeply spiritual they are (i.e. how spiritually and intellectually superior they are to everybody else). I can’t stand it, personally. Talking the talk is easy, walking the walk is much harder, and those who actually manage to do so do not generally go around blowing their own trumpet about how spiritually developed they are.
If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.
You aren’t barking up the wrong tree, no. But I believe the answer is complicated by having two answers. The self is very real, and it is as brain-dependent as the physicalists think it is. What they get wrong is the claim that brains are also sufficient. This is where the HP matters – it tells us that even if we have a brain-based self, this is not enough to account for subjectivity. And this missing thing is not a “soul”, in the sense of something individualised that can be re-incarnated. Rather there is only one Soul, and every conscious being (animals and humans) shares it.
So who are you? You are the Void (Brahman, the One) being your brain. Meditation is an attempt to shut down the brain enough to directly experience the deeper identity. But at the end of your meditation you are still yourself (i.e. a dynamically updating self-model encoded in your brain). In other words, instead of trying to rid yourself of your self, just try to make yourself the best version of yourself you can be. Acceptance, not self-destruction.
My point seems to have been lost, or missed.
The word “myself”, to me, is an oxymoron or self-contradiction.
Who and/or what is the ‘self’ that owns “my” ‘self’.
Again, the word ‘my’ implies ownership. So, if there is a ‘self’ and a ‘my’, then it is implied that there is an owner of ‘that self’.
Just like, for example, ‘my house’ or ‘my car’ implies that there is an owner of ‘that house’ and ‘that car’. So, ‘we’ could say that a ‘human being’ is the owner of ‘a house’ and ‘a car’, but who and/or what is or could be the owner of ‘a self’, exactly? That is, if the word ‘self’ itself is referring to a ‘human being’ anyway.
Here also are the words ‘my body’. So, who and/or what could be ‘the owner’ of ‘my body’, exactly? The word ‘body’ is usually associated with ‘human being’, already. So, who and/or what owns a ‘human body’, exactly?
(By the way, ‘I’ already know the answers. ‘I’ am just putting these questions out here for people to think about and consider.)
In the days when
this is being written, I would like to add ‘the lessons’ still have not yet been learned and understood.
I agree, wholeheartedly, that within the body, like within ‘dna’ there is information, which I also call the ‘unconscious knowing’ within ‘us’ all. That is, until it is ‘tapped’, and becomes ‘consciously known’ or aware of, holds some of the so-called “mysteries of Life”, by the way.
Okay, but ‘we’ seem to be drifting away from who and what the words ‘my’, ‘self’, ‘Self’, and ‘I’ refers to, exactly, which supposedly has “their” own bodies, houses, cars, ‘conscious mind’s awareness’, etcetera.
Do ‘you’ mean ‘your’ and not ‘our’, human heart and mind?
By the way, the human heart longs for nothing, or has no longing for anything, and there is NO human mind anyway.
What challenge?
What do you mean by ‘God’s psychic niche’?
‘I’ think ‘you’ have drifted so far away now ‘I’ am not sure how to get ‘you’ back on track.
What was the actual ‘foundation’, exactly, that ALL that ‘you’ have experienced was built upon?
Was ‘it’ what “your mom” told ‘you’ about “God being a spec of dust that wanted to be more”?
How often do ‘you’ say ‘this’, and, have ‘you’ said ‘this’ in this forum before?
So, is the answer to the question, “Who am ‘I’?” “I am a filament in earth’s pageant of evolution”?
And, is ‘this answer’ the final answer for once and for all, because ‘that answer’ is backed up by what you just said and wrote here?
Okay.
What ‘empire’ is that, exactly, that you are referring to here?
What are that one person’s “life’s lessons”, exactly?
And, what your own life’s challenges, exactly?
Who and/or what is this ‘my’ word referring to, which ‘now’ has ‘a being’? And, what is ‘a being’, exactly?
Okay, but what was this ‘other epiphany’, exactly?
And, what were the prior ones before ‘this one’?
you have known about ‘what’, exactly, for decades?
I am not sure if I missed ‘it’, but what are you talking about here, exactly? And, where did you “arrive” at, exactly?
From and Earth-centrist bottom-up evolutionary perspective qualia is the living moment of now, literally coursing though my biological moment.
Or at least turn the other way.
It’s the biology that creates my insides and the body that takes me from birth to death. My mind is simply the inside of my body communication with itself, in the act of negotiating a difficult unforgiving world.
By body has a half a billion years worth of experience and learning within it, my mind has the cumulative total of all the experience of my lived-experience within it.
Yeah that was just a little insight into why I look at most thing differently that others. I don’t get the confusion, your self is the meat and blood, sweat, and tears. I don’t understand why that doesn’t suffice?
Let’s not get too picky, heart a rhetorical label we don’t need to haggle over. It the emotions and the being alone and memories of mom that create the fertile ground for our minds to create god.
That obsession with God that permeates all human beings. Even for most atheists, It the rejection of God, that seems central. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate there are other God neutral, “it just don’t matter, never on my mind” people around, but it sure seems we’re a distinct minority. Who’s running the US government lately?
But it’s a totally natural thing. God was born in the bosom, viscera, heart, dealing with an awareness of the difficult, unforgiving, lonely world. The human spirit requires others, we are social animals, and we are animals filled with an imaginative mind and social pressures, existential pressures. Like a child needs a favor it doll! Especially when things get scary. Why holding hands created something moderns can’t even imagine. Though we still do it, but it matters less in our world.
Do you talk to yourself? I’ll bet most humans have alway had an ongoing dialogue with themselves.
Were you born and weaned by a mother, who still brings back memories of warmth and safety to mind. Think about what a God provided, or what belief in Jesus provides, a partner that’s always there when you long for him. Always willing to listen, and provide comfort and advice. It’s like if gods didn’t exist we’d create them in our own minds.
Wrapped around an amalgam of loving safe memories, support and advice as we deal with a scary lonely unforgiving world. The connection and progression seems almost self-evident to me.
It’s like I’m the last one to dispute the existence of supernatural gods. Though I will insist they are part of our mind-scape. Not the physical biological realm
As real or unreal–as one decides for themself.
I simply believe we should be clear and honest with ourselves about it and admit as much - finally take responsibility for ourselves.
Indeed conversations drift, it’s all connected.
That I looked at the things of this world differently and followed a path that exposed me to a parade of experiences and lessons others haven’t experienced. Now that you have me on the spot, how to express it?.. Most folks are wrapped up in careers and modern living and such, and I’m a different kind of species. It was simply a sharing.
Sorry I don’t want to do this, it was explained clearly the first time, simply reread it.
Instead of an idol with tons of stories that had meaning and were important, I had a weird riddle, and a challenge to be more, and a drive to see, experience and understand. And it was viscerally important to this young that was still biology on its way to making an adult. No room in there anywhere for a God to take my hand, from the get go.
Because that is an important key. It reflects a deep down “owning” of the fact that we humans are made of the same stuff as all the other creatures around us and before us. That is big. Imagine an emotional connection to nature, rather than . . .
What a wonderful world it might have been.
But of course it’s anathema to society where people take pride in “too much is never enough.” And guess my that story about me, because it explains who I am and what I’m writing about.
No, no. You simply don’t get it.
It isn’t about an intellectual philosophical supposition, it is about a personal emotional relationship. It is something either you feel or you don’t. “Feeling it” requires a deep understanding of evolution and how your body formed over the eons, among other matters.
Hopefully a wave to some others who might be able to relate to the feeling of nature as part of one’s family, as oppose to empty words. That cannot be taught or argued.
How about our current world situation physically and sociologically.
The usual stages of life, acton, reaction, cascading consequences, balancing things done right with the things screwed up. Making peace with the competing voices in one’s head and impulse in one’s body. Pretty universal stuff I believe.
What you want to do an expose’?
Sorry was in autobiographical mode, thought it was clear
That must be serious philosophical stuff.
“My being” is the character who is alive within my body. Are there problems with such a description?
Appreciating the
It turns around Descartes “I think therefore I am” into
I am, therefore I think
Enough.
Suffice it to say, life has blessed me with a wonderful parade of experiences. None of the superhuman kind, all having to do with insights driven by scientific learning, and of course, life’s lessons. But a few definitely fitting the bill:
A sudden flash of insight.
A quick understanding of a complex problem.
An unexpected real-life realization.
The great philosophical arguments, and the historic hero’s, and admittedly “Cliff notes sort of glosses” and sugary biographies. Enough to get the questions into my imagination. Just the fact of living on the road and every day a new experience, nothing but hello and good bye, but what a time and how else to really meet people. That kind of living and then in-between alone, drives a person to philosophizing.
It.
That satisfactory feeling of having arrived, to inhabit the feeling of being at home. Knowing who I am, not through imagination, but through remembered achievements and failures. Feeling at home with myself. Loving at the “I am” of that weird kid long ago, still resides in a little niche that can even come out when a long a good 'ol rock’n roll song that has meaning to me. To think of the lofty goals I made for myself. To know that I did pretty good, and have some solid outside of objective support for such a notion. Being able to balance the horror & rage of what we are doing (and I’ve watch and bemoaned the train of big mistakes that led to this horror show. I can compartmentalize that and ride the waves. Bet I could keep going, but there’s no point to it.
It was simply background.
Well, yeah, I would think so. Explain, you’d be better served by, Lane (book transformer, Reber (I really like the video I share and especially that Q/A where I think he pushes back pretty well), and many others
Now you’re pushing this upstairs to the big boys. I read a lot and am amazed at the difference breakthroughs and discovers being made and different part of the story, but I am not competent to teach, just to scream it needs to be learned about
You may not be able to give the detail the big boys can. But, surely, if you have been convinced that they have proven consciousness is the product of physical things and processes, you have some general understanding of it? Some broad strokes? I’m nothing close to an expert in protein synthesis, but I can give a general outline. DNA is this. Protein is this. Here’s how you get from A to Z. That kind of thing.
It’s a learning curve, and the following has plenty of flaws, something much sharper will be coming up shortly, because of late I’ve been getting some serious coaching.
Does the Krebs cycle provide the key to unlocking the “Hard Problem”?
My comments: While the metabolic science described by biochemist Nick Lane is based on empirical observation, the claim that this biochemistry explains or solves the “Hard Problem of Consciousness” is still a leap!
Metabolism (via the Krebs cycle) produces a continuous flux of protons and electrons across biological membranes. This flow generates a high electrical potential (a membrane voltage) and localized electromagnetic fields. Biochemists can measure these voltages, charge gradients, and field fluctuations down to the millivolt. That part of it is still empirical observation.
The leap occurs when you (and to an extent, Nick Lane) suggests that this electrical dynamic or flux doesn’t just support life, but actually “feels like something” or forms the “stream of consciousness in its most elementary form.” That is an inference, as it can’t be empirically observed. Me, I fully accept it! But I’m still going to ask what is driving this process. Is it still something that can be explained in terms of, or reduced to, physical causation? Or is the appearance of the organism the manifestation of a primitive sense of self? Which is what your sources seem to be saying. So they’re no longer materialist in the pure sense. They’ve already absorbed a phenomenological perspective. And I’m all for that.
Recall that the “Hard Problem” (as framed by Chalmers) asks why and how physical processes give rise to subjective, qualitative experience (qualia)—the subjective feeling of seeing red, feeling pain, or “what it is like” to be an organism.
But observing an electromagnetic field generated by mitochondria is still an observation of a physical, quantitative process. Stating that a collapsing electrical potential “feels like dying” to a bacterium is an attribution of subjective experience to physical dynamics, not proof of that there is such a feeling.
What you’re exploring is a framework for grounding consciousness in bioenergetics rather than purely in complex neural computation. And bravo for that! Furthermore that if consciousness has a physical substrate, it might be rooted in the continuous thermodynamic work and membrane potential of living cells rather than just “information processing” in a brain. Bravo again! But regardless, attributing subjective experience (feeling) to those physical electrical fields remains an interpretive, philosophical inference, not a demonstrable fact. And why? Because feelings can only be experienced by the subject who has them. They are intrinsically subjective.
In fact, perhaps these efforts to address the hard problem really amount to an acknowledgement of the cogency of Chalmer’s original argument! The fact that hard-headed biochemists like Nick Lane feel obliged to offer an account of ‘what it is like to be a bacterium’ is a tacit acknowledgement of the cogency of his argument. So it’s not so much a matter of ‘solving a problem’ as ‘acknowledging the challenge that has been posed’.
I’m sure they are! Nick Lane’s presentation on Electricity Creates Consciousness was given at IAI, the Institute of Art and Ideas, to which I subscribe. It hosts many conversations with scientists and philosophers - of which Nick Lane is one. All part of the conversation. Again, he’s not the old-school materialism of ‘it’s all just chemistry and physics’.
But, again, ‘the human condition’ is a subject much larger than biology alone. We’ve been genetically identical for well on 100,000 years, since the cro magnons emerged. We’re biologically still the same, but, you know, a lot else has changed!
But that’s not what I’m saying. To use a sloppy analogy think about Ben Franklin, at the time astounding capturing a lightning bolt, inventing the grounding rod. It was still a long road to Edison and Tesla and Marconi - and still a long road to get to New York City at night.
What Krebs cycle did was impart a “motive force” that biology was about to use to construct more complex organic molecules, then on ton slowly step my creating the building blocks of complex life. It a signified a supremely important 2nd class of atomic matter, that I believe gets glossed over too easily, fuzzing up our vision.
As yes I’ve learn that apparently it doesn’t matter how much biological mechanisms we come up with, somehow it’s been preordained never to enough to meet the expectations of the explanatory gap.
So the problem with the Hard Problem goes deeper.
That’s a misunderstanding. Lane was talking about the electrical potential across membrane barriers, and that it is the condition of that membrane, content function, or disintegrating, or in between, “must feel like something”.
Definitely, that’s not me talking, that is what various scientific fields are developing.
But I thought we were talking about origins of consciousness?
Although bring up the human timeline, a problem is that many don’t bother to make clear the distinction between awareness, consciousness and introspection, so that tends to complication dialogue.
Thanks for taking the time to pen that interesting helpful response. Hopefully in a few days I’ll have something less hippy dippy and a bit more grown up and focused on the actual philosophical arguments - as opposed to my incomplete interpretations that I’ve been limited to up to recently. How’s that trope go: seek and ye shall find.
It’s not that biological mechanisms are preordained to never be enough to meet the expectations of the explanatory gap. It’s simply that no explanation has been given. Saying that it evolved because it gives a survival advantage is not an explanation of how it came to exist and how it works. No amount of detail regarding the biological mechanisms is an explanation of how they are conscious.
So, to see if I have this right and correct, to ‘you’, the ‘self’ is “the biology” that creates what ‘you’ now call “your insides” and “the body” that takes ‘you’ from birth to what you call “death”, correct?
Why do you believe that ‘this world’ is what you call a “difficult, unforgiving world”, exactly?
I am not sure HOW 'the biology", that creates the insides of the body and the body itself, has a mind, but anyway.
But ‘you’ have not yet explained who and/or what ‘you’, ‘that self’, is, exactly? Which is what ‘I’ was asking and looking for here.
WHY ‘you’ ‘look at’ and ‘see’ most things differently from all of the other ‘you’s’ and ‘selves’ I already know.
‘I’ am just seeking out if ‘you’ really do know ‘you’, ‘that self’, and if ‘you’ do, then by how much, exactly?
What ‘confusion’ are ‘you’ referring to here, exactly?
Once more, by ‘you’ writing “your self”, ‘you’ have missed and/or misunderstood all ‘I’ have been saying and pointing out about how the words and terms “myself” and “yourself” are oxymorons and contradictions in terms.
WHY ‘that’ does not suffice is because when some people talk about and use the word ‘self’, they are referring to a ‘person’ or ‘people’, and a ‘person/people’ are NOT the visible physical human body that ‘we’ can ‘look at’ and ‘see’.
For the very simple reason that if ‘we’ were to cut off an arm or a leg from a human body, for example, then ‘that person’ does NOT become ‘less of a person’. So, when the word ‘self’ is used, and ‘we’ are referring to a ‘person’, then the “meat, blood, sweat, and tears” are NOT the ‘self’, nor the ‘person’.
Why not? ‘We’ are in a philosophy forum after all, and to some people anyway, ‘philosophy’ is about finding Truth, or HOW ‘we’ can come to find and know the Truth of things.
‘you’ are absolutely free to say what you do not mean, and, to mean what you do not say. But, then some people wonder WHY there is still so much misunderstanding in ‘the world’ and WHY they are, still, searching out and looking for answers, and/or the truth.
But there is NO such thing as “our minds”. Although this claim and fact are very contrary to the popular belief in the days when this is being written.
WHY do ‘you’ have an obsession with God?
And, what even is God, to you, exactly, anyway?
To be honest, you’ speak and write in a somewhat confusing way, well to me anyway.
Human beings. The same things that always have.
‘We’ can see very clearly, from ‘your writings’, that ‘you’ talk to what ‘you’ “yourself”. Are ‘you’ aware of just how much of ‘this dialogue’ ‘you’ have come across in ‘your writings’ here?
‘you’ speak and write as though ‘you’ already know ‘the answer’ or what ‘you are talking about’ that ‘we’ will automatically also.
LOL, LOL, LOL
your question, without a question mark, here, could not be asking something more further from the actual Truth of things.
Who and/or what even is this God thing that you speak of and write about here now, exactly?
And, why do you believe that God has male reproductive organs for?
WHY?
If “your” mother was a Truly ‘good’ person, for example, then they would have listened to as much as ‘you’, human beings, NEED. Therefore, ‘you’ would NOT be going to other places for what ‘it’ is that ‘you’ ALL Truly need, and want.
‘I’ do NOT see absolutely anything scary, lonely, nor unforgiving in ‘this world’, except, OF COURSE, from what ‘you’ adult human beings do.
Okay, but again, because ‘you’ have an ongoing dialogue with “yourself”, ‘you’ may well have got into a habit of ‘knowing’ what ‘you’ “yourself” are saying and talking about, exactly, whereas ‘I’ do not. So, when ‘you’ speak and write here, like ‘you’ just have, ‘I’ have absolutely no idea nor clue as to what ‘you’ are talking about and meaning.
What even is this thing that ‘you’ have named and labeled ‘mind-scape’ exactly?
I agree, accept and take actual responsibility for “yourself”. So, what is the ‘it’ word that ‘you’ just used here in reference to, exactly?
If ‘you’ took responsibility here, then ‘you’ would not drift. ‘you’ are, after all, in conversation with ‘another’ and not just in dialogue with “yourself” only this time.
Were ‘you’ under some sort of illusion that everyone ‘looks at’ and ‘sees’ things not differently?
Firstly by defining what the word ‘it’ is even in reference to, exactly.
Who cares what ‘you’ imagine or believe what so-called “most folks” do.
And, what are ‘you’ supposedly sharing here, exactly?
you appear to have missed and/or misunderstood what I was asking you exactly.
you referred to some ‘foundation’ thing. I was just seeking out clarification if this ‘foundation thing’ what in reference to when your mommy told you about “God being a spec of dust that wanted to be more” OR was your use of the ‘foundation’ word in relation to something else?
Okay.
‘you’ humans are made of the EXACT SAME stuff as absolutely EVERY other thing in the Universe is made up of. In fact, the whole entire Universe, at Its fundamental level, is also made up of the exact same stuff.
Why only an ‘emotional connection’, only?
There is not a single part of ‘you’ human beings, nor a single thing human beings do that is NOT connected to Nature nor is even ‘not natural’. Although some of you adult human beings certain believe that you are above, beyond, or not a natural part of Nature, Itself.
But ‘you’ have NEVER explained what ‘the answer’ is to ‘the question’, ‘Who ‘I’ am?’, exactly, fully, nor at all here.
Also, your so-called ‘story about you’ has NOT explained what ‘you’ are writing about either.
When you speak and write in ‘the way’ of using the word ‘it’, like you just did here, then the reason WHY I do not get ‘it’ because, as you just demonstrated, once more, when you use the ‘it’ word I, literally, do not get what ‘it’ is, exactly.
Again, what is ‘it’ here, exactly?
What are ‘you’ even talking about here?
The fact that absolutely every thing is natural and all just a part of the family Nature is obvious, already known, and very easy and simple to express and understand.
So, ‘you’ are referring to ‘the’ or ‘our’ (whoever that is) ‘current’ (for however long that is) situation, both physically and sociologically, as being some so-called “empire”.
Why do ‘you’ still have competing voices in ‘that head’?
And, what does this continual dialogue that ‘you’ have with “yourself” sound like, exactly?
Which one is the True, Right, Accurate, and Correct voice, exactly?
So, ‘you’ ‘thought’ it was clear before, but now that ‘you’ have been asked to clarify, and therefore’ you’ ‘now know’ that it was not clear, ‘you’ still decide not to clear things up at all.
If one talks about “my” ‘being’, “my” ‘self’, and/or “my” ‘body’, but does not yet know and so is completely unable to explain who and/or what the “my” word is in reference to, then some people might find that a sort of ‘problem’.
Okay, but they both mean more or less the exact same thing. Which, by the way, what do they mean, to you, exactly?
So, you come to a philosophy forum to tell ‘us’ that ‘you’ had epiphanies, but when asked to just clarify what these epiphanies were, exactly, your response is “Enough”.
How do ‘you’ think those who endured many abusive experiences feel when they here say, “i was blessed with wonderful experiences”, but yet it could appear that ‘this’ is about all ‘you’ really want to say and share here?
What did ‘you’ exactly learn from ‘your experiences’, which could help guide or influence others in a philosophy forum in some positive or enlightened way?
Okay, do ‘you’ imagine ‘others’ are excited to come to realise and know that an older human being has known about thousands-of-years-old, still unresolved, philosophical arguments, for decades?
Are ‘you’ able to provide the answers, solutions, or resolutions to any of those very old and outdated ‘philosophical arguments’?
The formula, solution, and answer in HOW to resolve all of them, by the way, has already been uncovered, and is thus already known.
Just in case ‘you’ were interested.
What does ‘philosophising’ mean, or refer to, ‘to you’, exactly?
Okay. Do ‘you’ think or believe that ‘your response’ here clears up and clarifies anything here?
That is GREAT if ‘you’ really have. But, some might suggest that ‘you’ not informing anyone else HOW, exactly, ‘you’ were able to achieve this is not really that helpful here.
Some might be thinking that ‘you’ are just gloating and do not want ‘others’ to find out HOW ‘you’ achieved what ‘you’ claim ‘you’ have here.
Claiming that ‘you’ ‘know who ‘I’ am’ is very simple and easy to do, but if ‘you’ cannot provide an actual answer and clarity to ‘Who ‘I’ am, exactly?’ then ‘your claim’ is really nothing at all.
Are ‘you’ here ‘trying to’ claim that just through ‘remembered achievements and failures’ a person can know who ‘I’ am, exactly?
Yet ‘you’ still cannot recognise and see the oxymoron and self-contradictory term “myself”.
Some might not think that ‘you’ continuing to commit horror and do rage is really a good or balanced thing to do in Life.
In perfect balance.
‘I’ just do NOT ‘look at’ ‘the world/Universe’ in the ‘same way’ that ‘you’ adult human beings do. ‘I’ therefore do NOT ‘see’ what ‘you’ people do.
Let’s not forget that self in constant interaction with the outside environment. That gets way too little attention.
Yes, the self is basically the animal me and all I entail.
Are you a child?
I had a tough construction boss, and every so often I’d ask him something and receive a withering look and: “you didn’t have to ask that” in other words, think about it for a moment.
Are you aware of evolution and previous generations, and other lived realities besides your own?
Where do you think mind should originate?
What is consciousness for in the first place?
Yes I have. Now it’s time to give those words a few minutes of your thoughts.
Because I’m a very different person from you, with a very, very different lived experience.
Damned straight so try getting serious and you might develop a different understanding and get more out of our dialogue than this cynical interrogation.
What confused are you talking about, ever look at suicide rates, mental illness, homeless, Jobless about to be homeless.
I mean if you have to ask what "blood, sweat and tears of living means, how much have you experienced?
If you could unwrap that in a rational manner, it would be fun to discuss.
Also might include a few words about biology’s place in your reality.
When some people talk about? …
What frame of reference?
My frame of reference is Earth’s evolution and my being born out of Earth’s geological/biologica processes, Full stop.
My perspective is built upon a deep appreciation for the Physical Reality ~ Human Mind divide
(or mindscape, as I like to refer to it as),
That is my first base foundational observation, upon which all else is built using the building blocks of observed facts that science has been collecting and learning about.
What a quaint idealistic statement for someone who has never lost a limb.
Again, this is why Frame Of Reference is so important, and why idealism and absolutism is a deadend.
This stuff is for people with little to do. I live an active real life and talk is cheap, what you do is what matters.
Again, truth requires a frame of reference for it to be meaningful.
Many people use philosophy as a cynical game, there’s nothing that can’t be dismissed, lets count the ways.
I’m a more serious person than that, always have been. And from this sharing of perspective, seems like I’m right to think I’m a very different person than you.
(not that there’s anything wrong with that - just say’n)
No worries, I’m coming to understand your perspective better! And we’re not as far apart as you think. But I still feel you’re misidentifying the real target of the ‘hard problem’ argument. It’s not an ‘anti-science’ argument.
Here’s an excerpt from the transcript of the Nick Lane video on bioelectricity and consciousness that you provided:
…this is a quote from Derek Denton, who died a year or two ago at the age of 97 and had thought a great deal about consciousness. This was an example he used to use about a fox caught in a trap that gnawed its own leg off to escape. The point he makes is: is the animal aware that it’s held by its paw in the trap’s jaws, and does it have an intention to get free? Gnawing through its own skin, muscle, and bone to set itself free is a purposive act and very probably extremely painful. It seems a plausible viewpoint that the animal has enough body image sense to see that its paw is part of itself that is held, and its intention is to get free—it is self-aware and has a plan. I am sure that not everybody in this room would agree with that, but I would like to think most would. It seems kind of obvious to me, and most people who are familiar with animals would probably see at least that level of consciousness about them.
Now, take (the single-celled organism) Stentor: it’s got all these little cilia beating continuously, and it whirs like an electric battery going around. Consider an amoeba that comes in and starts to engulf this Stentor very gently and gradually. Stentor figures out what’s going on, zooms away, and comes back for a look later on, while another cell gets engulfed and eaten by the amoeba. You can see it’s figured out at some point what’s happening, and you feel quite sorry for it because it’s just being digested. But the top bit somehow wriggles itself free and escapes. You’d have said it was dead, but then these cilia start beating again; they flicker to life, pull themselves free, and off it goes.
I wanted to show you that because if the fox has a sense of self in escaping from a jaw trap, does the Stentor have a sense of self? It’s very easy to overstretch the imagination and say, “Okay, well obviously I’m reading human emotion into a cell which obviously has none of those things.” But to any unbiased eye, it really looks like it’s struggling to get free, it finally does get free, and off it goes. I don’t think in any meaningful sense that it has an understanding that it exists, that it has a self, or that it has awareness, but it certainly struggles to stay alive and acts as an entity. Those are two things that I think are perhaps quite important.
Now consider this passage from my essay, Is the Mind Cause or Consequence?
Even granting that primitive organisms are oriented, bounded, and self-maintaining — how could we know that they are, in reality, subjects of experience? How could inwardness, even if present, ever be disclosed to us?
Evan Thompson’s answer, in Mind in Life⁵, picks up on Jonas’ suggestion: life can only be known by life. Quoting Jonas, he writes: “This inwardness or interiority is disclosable to us because we ourselves are living beings who experience our own bodily selfhood firsthand.”
In observing other creatures struggling to continue their existence — starting with bacteria that actively swim away from a chemical repellent — we can, through the evidence of our own experience and the Darwinian evidence of the continuity of life, view inwardness and purposiveness as proper to living being ~ Evan Thompson, Mind in Life, p. 165.
So: we don’t infer inwardness in living beings only from their behavior, as we might infer the existence of dark matter from gravitational disturbance. We recognise it — because we share something with the phenomena we are trying to understand⁷. Which in turn implies something close to empathy: we know creatures — at least to some extent — because we of what we are.
So, Nick Lane is doing just what I said! He’s saying, look, we don’t know if bacteria or foxes have a ‘sense of self’, but we can imagine they do! And I agree with him, of course. But it’s also a fact that neither he or I knows that for certain — because it’s a judgement about the inner state of a being. And that is what can’t be known, in the same sense that ‘voltage differentials’ can be known.
I understand what you are saying. As you point out it’s a judgement call.
Honestly that “we can’t know for certain” argument doesn’t impress me much. It seems more like an excuse - If you want to get down to brass tacks, we don’t know “for certain” that the sun will come up tomorrow. I’ll admit, I do believe the sun will come up, but I can’t claim certainty.
This is where the preponderance of evidence comes in.
How we weight the lines of the evidence we have.
How we weight our intellectual notions against the physical evidence and so on.
And doing the best we can, with what we have.
We do more than simply imagine that other evolved creatures have awareness, the way we imagine philosophical notions.
We have a growing confluence of circumstantial evidence, which to me ought to hold more value than retreating to, “we can never know the inside of another,” as if that fundamental fact of life were some sort of evidence against the notion.
But think about it. In respect of the empirical observations, great certainty can be obtained. But not so with respect to the felt nature of the inner states. And as that is central to the entire debate, it can’t just be brushed off.
If ‘that’ is what the ‘self’ is to ‘you’, then okay.
Was “he” ‘tough’, or were ‘you’ just ‘weak’?
Okay, but so what?
My question was, and still is, 'Why do you believe that this world is what you cal a difficult and unforgiving world, exactly?
Is it because you had one boss that you considered ‘tough’ the reason WHY you believe this world is supposedly difficult and unforgiving exactly?
Yes to the first one, some to the other one, but why do you ask?
I do not think the Mind ‘should’ originate anywhere.
The ‘consciousness’ relates more or less to ‘awareness’ itself.
So, to “citizenschallenge” when it talks about the ‘self’ it is referring to the ‘human body’ among other things like ‘the biology’ that creates what it calls “your insides”.
So, if an arm or a leg is chopped of a human body, for example, or the appendix or tonsils are removed, then ‘that self’ becomes less of ‘a self’.
But, this is “citizenchallenges” opinion and belief only here.
Did you not read what I wrote, or did you just miss and/or misunderstand what I said and meant?
I already informed ‘you’ that I already KNOW WHY ‘you’ ‘look at’ and ‘see’ things differently from everyone else.
And, the reason WHY ‘you’ do is that ‘you’ are very different from everyone else.
Do you know WHY you have this belief that this is a ‘cynical interrogation’ for exactly?
‘you’ are ‘the one’ who introduced the ‘confusion’ word, so I am talking about ‘that confused’.
Yes. And, I KNOW WHY they exist also.
But I was NOT asking ‘that’. What led you believe that I was?
‘I’ was just asking ‘you’ completely open questions, for clarity’s sake, regarding whether ‘you’ really believe that the ‘self’ refers to the ‘human body’. ‘you’ clarified that it does. So, that is ‘now’ settled.
I was trying to ‘unwrap ‘that’ in a rational manner’, but you kept appearing to miss the part where I was discussing how the word ‘my’ implies ownership.
Can you and did you comprehend this?
If yes, then ‘we’ can move along. So, if the word ‘my’ refers to ownership, then whenver the word ‘my’ is used, then there would be some sort of ‘owner’, which when discussing human beings are being referred to would mean that when the word ‘my’ is used it is in reference to some ‘human being’.
Therefore, when the word “myself” is used, who and/or what is the word “my” in reference to, exactly, which supposedly has “its” own ‘self’?
Now, if ‘you’ can comprehend and understand ‘this’, then ‘we’ can keep moving further along. However, if you did not understand either of these, and ‘you’ are interested and curious to learn and understand more and/or anew, then it is now up to ‘you’ to ask some Truly open clarifying questions, for clarity’s sake.
Can you rephrase this sentence of yours here?
Why did you write ‘this sentence’, but then put a question mark at the end of it?
What are ‘you’ even referring to here, exactly?
Ah, this explains WHY ‘you’ have such a narrowed and closed field of view and perspective here.
Do ‘you’ believe that ‘you’ KNOW what the ‘Physical Reality’ is, exactly?
And, WHY do ‘you’ talk about some thing called a “human mind” when NONE exists?
If ‘your’ own personal first base foundational observation is some so-called “mindscape” thing, then what is ‘it’, exactly?
Can ‘science’ explain ‘Physical Reality’ fully and precisely yet?
If no, then WHY ‘you’ claim to know ‘Physical Reality’, exactly?
But, if ‘science’ can, then where is ‘that literature’, exactly?
Do ‘you’ think or ‘feel’ that by ‘you’ saying what ‘you’ said and wrote here gives ‘your own personal opinion and belief’ here more weight or more credence?
Oh, and by the way, why do ‘you’ believe, absolutely, that ‘this body’ has NOT so-called “lost” a limb?
See just HOW MUCH ‘these people’ are NOT able to ‘look at’, ‘see’, and ‘understand’ while they are holding onto and maintaining ‘a belief’.
LOL ‘this stuff’
It could be said and argued that ‘your talk’ is cheap, but then there would be too much more to discuss and understand here.
So, what ‘frame of reference’ are ‘you’ coming from, exactly?
But many, many things can be dismissed outright through logically reasoned discussions.
Again, this was ALREADY KNOWN before ‘you’ even came to a philosophy forum?
If the actual Truth be known, there is absolutely nothing that can be known with absolutely certainty’, other than ‘I’ exist, and ‘thoughts’ arise.
See, if ‘we’ want to get down to the very deepest understanding of ‘knowing’ itself, ‘I’ cannot ‘know’ with any certainty at all if the ‘thoughts’ that arise are actually True or not. For all ‘I’ know, with certainty, is that ‘I’ exist, and ‘the thoughts’ that do arise may or may not be of any Real thing at all.
But, once ‘that’ is fully understood, then ‘we’ human beings can get down to ‘looking at’ and ‘discussing’ other things.
