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DividedQuantum
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I'm not saying I disagree with this completely, but I feel compelled to ask: Does this mean we are conscious automatons? Everything is just happening and we are only watching, powerless to steer anything? That consciousness is completely unnecessary?
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DividedQuantum
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Re: There is no doer [Re: Kickle]
#21238431 - 02/07/15 08:47 AM (8 years, 11 months ago) |
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I do not think we are conscious automatons. I think if consciousness exists, it more likely than not serves an evolutionary purpose. Even though we act like machines the vast majority of the time, it seems to me that we are not machines. Advances in physics in the last hundred years prove determinism to be false. Culture has not caught up.
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DividedQuantum
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Re: There is no doer [Re: Jaegar]
#21238487 - 02/07/15 09:11 AM (8 years, 11 months ago) |
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Both, in a way. Most physicists subscribe to the Heisenberg version of the Copenhagen interpretation, which essentially expressly denies determinism, and denies that mass-energy is the fundamental reality. Obviously, if matter is not fundamental, then the "billiard-ball universe" of determinism is rendered moot.
However, there are some physicists who subscribe to the "Many-Worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics, which in a nutshell converts the wave function back to determinism, saying that every possibility is realized, so there is no room for consciousness to be a causative agent. Most physicists, however, subscribe to the Copenhagen interpretation, which unequivocally banishes determinism and automatism. In a quantitative way.
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DividedQuantum
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Re: There is no doer [Re: Jaegar]
#21238554 - 02/07/15 09:33 AM (8 years, 11 months ago) |
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Jaegar said: I like the idea of probability..which isn't randomness.
That's a very perceptive point, Jaegar. Most people assume that because quantum theory uses probabilities to determine physical situations, that nature is somehow inherently random. Nothing could be further from the truth. The reality is that we're going to need a deeper theory, in the future, to account for exactly why we need to use probabilities, and what is really going on at the deeper level. To assume we've got the final theory and everything is a blind roll of the dice is unfounded, and unscientific.
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DividedQuantum
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Nobody said anything about control, or free will. All I am suggesting is that to say that there is no such thing as a conscious will (which has a very small, but nonzero, say in things), and that we are conscious machines, is a polarization and is basically throwing the baby out with the bath water. It doesn't have to be one or the other. Nature is more subtle than that.
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DividedQuantum
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Re: There is no doer [Re: Kickle]
#21238833 - 02/07/15 11:08 AM (8 years, 11 months ago) |
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Kickle said: no independent consciousness does not refer to consciousness being impersonal IMO. it refers to it's lack of distinctness and solidity. to it's interconnectedness and malleability. to let loose one's grips on it as though it could be held, but also not to forget that it does change.
Quite right.
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DividedQuantum
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Yeah but we don't know what awareness is (or does), so statements about it seem rather vague.
I would just like to reiterate that I am not really even disagreeing with the spirit of the OP, just suggesting that things may be more complex than we like.
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DividedQuantum
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Quote:
laughingdog said: DividedQuantum if you knew what awareness is that would be content not context.
Be that as it may, I would be particularly interested in a scientific treatment of consciousness (which I feel is possible).
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Do you know what space is?
Do you know what time is?
No, not really. I feel that both are relative dimensions within the explicate order, are not fundamental, and are conditioned by higher dimensions within the nonlocal implicate order. Why they have the appearance and essence they do, I have no idea. Once again, I do not regard them as fundamental.
You said this above:
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Likewise awareness is context for our lives and does not 'do' them. So 'self' is not a doer , but is rather an observer.
So are you saying awareness doesn't do anything? Because I feel that this ignores a lot of biological evolution, even the evolution of the cosmos itself. This is not a solid syllogism, in my opinion.
Perhaps, in the end, these are just silly word games. I don't know what consciousness is, but I feel dominant ideas about it are ludicrous.
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DividedQuantum
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Quote:
laughingdog said: "So are you saying awareness doesn't do anything?" Exactly Silence is context for sound, it does not make sound. Space is context for objects but is immaterial, and doesn't effect them. (although it does have some properties: there are only 17 wallpaper groups in 2 dimensions for example) Also more abstract than objects are thoughts. Awareness is the context of thoughts. Awareness is more subtle than space, but still, awareness is no more mysterious than "experiencing". If no awareness then no experiencing. We have made it into a big deal because we are so focused on the material. Everything is awareness. We never see the world. The world as we see it is two images upside down on our retinas, recombined in a brain that is totally dark, by multiple modules. This type of processing is true to some degree of all 'our' perceptions'. In that sense we are like automatons. I think the aim of vipassana practice is to disentangle the mix of perceptions that normally create a sense of self. The claim is that at some point the whole house of cards collapses. It is never claimed that just by thinking about it we can "get it".
No.
I just see things differently.
To me, awareness is consciousness is the implicate order (which has been treated quantitatively by Dr. David Bohm) is the macroscopic wave function, and it underlies everything. To me, the universe is almost certainly conscious, throughout. So, therefore, to me, awareness does something. I am now talking about realms and processes well beyond an individual human mind, but it is mirrored in the individual, and I do not think it is as simple as you seem to.
Conscious automatism is false. It is a by-product of Cartesian dualism, and Newtonian determinism. Science has even shown this to be the case.
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DividedQuantum
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Quote:
laughingdog said: I have no idea what "implicate order" means anymore than the "holy ghost"
you say "universe is almost certainly conscious"
I ask do you think the universe has a self?
dualism to me is when you divide the world into consciousness plus a subject that is conscious of an object, actually three parts here.
I think physics got stuck between particles and waves till they came up with fields and transcended their dualism
I have no idea whether the universe has a self, or really, what a self even is in this context. Regarding the rest, it would be way too involved to go into it here, and none of it really has any place in this particular forum. Suffice it to say, I think consciousness is more fundamental than mass, energy, space and time, but that all of these are a kind of special extension of it. The rest is for another place and time.
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