If Nothing Survives Death, Can Conscious Life Still Be Circular?

Philosophy of Mind
41

Oh yes, I very much agree.
I imagine some other highly evolved creatures have the beginning of looking outside of themselves, (that is, beyond our mindscape) While humans with our learning and remembering abilities and social structures and science have been able to build proverbial windows through the bubble of our mindscape. Affording us a look at the world beyond our bodies, like nothing else that has ever existed.

I’m just profoundly deeply scared by how we humans failed to meet our existential challenge, to intellectual/philosophically/spiritually go face to face with our self-absorbed thinking and self-serving nature, and to make room for learning about Earth, Evolution, other creatures and our global biosphere - to learn to love and value, and nurture. Instead we chose peddle to the metal - too much is never enough - and burn it up as spectacularly as possible.

That’s why I make a point of identifying as an Earth Centrist, trumpeting the Physical Reality ~ Human Mind divide. And defend an evolution respecting perspective most unfortunately can’t seem to fathom.

Thanks for the dialogue.

42

Excuse me jumping in, still it’s important to mention consciousness is a continuum. It is the product of creature complexity and interacting with self and the world. How do we know a creature is conscious, through its observed self interested behaviors. Realize scientists have been finding signs of self awareness everywhere they’ve looked for it. All the way down to single celled creatures.

It’s not panpsychism - it’s about biological matter and complex systems striving the thrive.

It about the need for even single celled creatures to have a sense of Self, To Feel Like Something, the I AM.

“Introspection” is but the top layer of creature consciousness, and that is special and rare indeed.

On a tangent — think about your bodily organs, and imagine all the communication and coordination that must be needed between organ subsystems, and other organs, and external inputs, along with changing bodily demands. That’s multilayered interwoven maelstrom of “consciousness” in action.

It highlights the difference between biological reality and philosophy limited to idealized linguistic constructs, that doesn’t do living complexity any justice.

It’s okay, no other way for it to be. We do the best we can with what we have. Which is why we ought to be more cognizant of the more complex dynamics at work, folds within folds of harmonic constructive complexity in motion.

I imagine that comes down to how complex the creature’s suite of senses/body/central processing. And is probably reflected in the complexity of said creatures life-style.

Since consciousness is all about interaction and feedback loops, as time races past.

Check out the scientific work of: Nick Lane, Arthur Reber’s CBC, Mark Solms

43

Hey, PatternChaser. If you’re interested in saying more about how those things affect you–what it’s like–I’d be curious to listen.

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44

Happy to. But this topic is about other things, and I don’t want to derail it[1]. But it’s not a secret, and I’m happy to speak of these things, if you wish to listen. But elsewhere, I think? :+1:

  1. I mentioned that I have these two different, but both neurological, conditions to illustrate what I meant by connection and connectedness. It is the latter that I felt relevant to this topic, not the conditions themselves. :wink:
45

Yeah, I have been known to despair from time to time myself.

But when I take a long view of our history, I sometimes allow myself a little hope. It’s just a question of whether we’ll destroy ourselves and take the whole place with us… or else straighten up and move forward.

I will admit that I am currently on the downward slope of my hope.

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46

We can argue that consciousness cannot arise from physical substance. That is true since, within physicalism, elementary particles are not conscious. Moving in certain ways or having a certain configuration also does not grant consciousness.

Animals have a sense of self. It is through this property that they react to the environment differently. For example, they react to a predator and escape. That is because they see themself in danger and feel fear.

47

I wonder if it’s too late for the latter, now? What we have already done — even if we stop adding to the damage immediately and completely — will take more than 500 years (maybe a lot more) to ‘ripple through’.

I see no clear avenue for optimism, I’m afraid. I see extinction for us, and for even more of those species that still survive. Our greed has destroyed our home; the place where we live. The only place.

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48

I’m still struggling to figure out the mechanics of posting and keep up with a thread-at-a-time, but I would like to hear about it.

Maybe give me a chance to find my sea legs and then start a discussion?

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49

Language is a wonderful tool, but it seems to me that some of us give it too much authority. Nihilism, for example. I think I’ve known guys who became nihilistic mostly by letting language push them there.

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50

I would suggest it’s not about “granting” consciousness, it’s about biological complexity “producing” the spectrum awareness-consciousness being documented.

Oh do I hear you! I’m terrified and without having fully taken on the reality of me, myself, and I being an evolved animal and a filament in Earth’s pageant of creation, I’d have lost my mind and degenerated into a lost mess.
But I’ve learned to compartmentalize, and fully embrace the act of living as a one day at a time thing. Dealing with what’s in front of me the best I can, letting tomorrow out of my thoughts. Especially when with my grandchildren - the now is awesome, their future I can’t think about.

But even in our little cabin, watching the drought dig in a little more each year - that is the Colorado River Drainage - good clean water, without that all the gold and mega-data centers in the world won’t do us any good.

So I’m a fatalist doing the best I can with what I have. Finding comfort in memories and being able to relate to all those horrors humans have learned to deal with over the ages. I find more comfort in the biological view of being an element in the pageant of evolution.

As for my metaphysics, I love the notion of being The Eyes of the Universe. No other creature has ever had the abilities to look outside itself the way we humans have done, with our writing, religion, arts, philosophy, sciences. And each of us has but one lifetime to live, so I figure why not widen and deepen my mindscape as much as possible. I’ll enjoy the experience and the “Universe” and do what it will with what I’ve experienced.

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51

How would you describe the difference between human consciousness and that of other mammals?

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Life is pretty resilient, though. I am old enough to have seen that. New worlds grow up from the ruins. So my hope is that there are at least some ruins left.

Anyway, it seems to me that we are going to end one way or the other. So I’m curious to look around while I’m here. For me, the joy or the despair are secondary to that.

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53

What is well-documented is the correlation between neural processes and consciousness. There is a difference between correlation and causation. People in the scientific community mistakenly equate these two, saying that because there is a correlation between neural processes and consciousness, then the brain is a conscious entity.

54

The main difference is that humans are very sophisticated linguistic animals, and they are rational thinkers.

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If you met my mother-in-law, you might soften that opinion. (If I had a mother-in-law, I mean, of course.)

Anyway, I wonder if we need the concept of self–as the word ‘I’–in order to stand back and manipulate it in our imaginations.

We were apparently conscious for a very long time before some kind of change happened, often marked by burials and art. To me, it seems like a difference in kind. And I will admit that I am intrigued with watching it.

56

I’ve been listening to a lot of Alan Watts lectures lately, and he frequently points out how the boundary between the indivdidual and everything that is “outside” of the the individual is entirely an artificial creation of the “one” who thinks. In fact, you can slice up this swirling collection of quarks and atoms that we call the universe in an infinite number of ways.

In a very real sense, you are not seperate from the air around your fingers, the Earth you stand on, or the other individuals you share the planet with. It appears that you are because there is a collection of neurons forming a brain which can send signals within itself but which can’t send those signals into other brains.

Additionally, the instinctive sense that you are a concrete entity persisting across time is also an artificial phenomenon. What exists is the individualized experience that is happening at this instant, with memories that come along with it. However, every past moment of your life has already occured and thus does not exist. If you slice reality this way, you “die” every second. Its just that at some point there is no successive concious moment that carries the accumulated memories of “Jean-Marc”. We call this death of the individual.

Still, atoms and energy continue to flow in the universe, and concious experiences continue to happen. There is no “you” that owns the experiences you are having. Nor is there a “you” that loses an identity following death. The universe is just manifesting an experience of “you” right now and will manifest that experiece through someone else when you are gone.

So, a lot of what you say in your post aligns well with eastern philosophy. As far as the exact pattern of you re-emerging billions or trillions of years in the future, there is nothing scientifically inconsistent about this, so it could be the new iteration through which experience continues after you die. As far as whether this is the same person or not, there is no definite answer as, again, you can divide the universe in as many ways you want. From one perspective it is you, from another perspective it is something else.

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57

What do you base that on?
Can you explain?

58

The OP title “Circular” is problematic. Circular means shape of circle in geometry, or motion of something is going round.

Life is not shape, and it is not a motion. Life is living and experience of biological agent or being. Hence there is a serious categorical error in the OP title.

59

so if you say two life experience is identical then that would mean everything is identical, universe will not do the same thing twice,and if u say it had did twice then there’s no evidence not connection that might make a difference in them, this makes that if you live your life again in next world the same.it just doesn’t have any difference from head to toe that might be called as two life. So it’s one in your question sense. But if its not identical then is life just a perpetual loop?
universe have created everything and every sense of knowledge in your present time according to your time. if universe had completed all its wisdom in one life what is needed for more.
if you say then 1.universe doesn’t have an length of knowledge that might actually suffice in one life?, here is where the concept of afterlife comes. With afterlife there’s no life because that had already sufficed the question no.1 .

60

It’s the poisons that we will leave behind, so many, poisonous in so many different ways. If the world must disperse (or otherwise negate) the harm done by radioactives, it will take 10ks, maybe 100ks, of years before life can recover… :person_shrugging::fearful: