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redgreenvines
irregular verb


Registered: 04/08/04
Posts: 37,706
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talking about consciousness and creatures and nothingness
#26709700 - 05/31/20 06:04 PM (3 years, 8 months ago) |
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I get referrals from Pocket based on my use of Firefox - here is one I think I should pass on.
The Spiritual, Reductionist Consciousness of Christof Koch
It describes a kind of enlightened approach to the questions people here are frequently considering.
I thought I would share.
Also an interesting comment was included anecdotally from the Dalai Lama.
lmk what you think.
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laughingdog
Stranger

Registered: 03/14/04
Posts: 4,829
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Re: talking about consciousness and creatures and nothingness [Re: redgreenvines]
#26710176 - 05/31/20 10:44 PM (3 years, 8 months ago) |
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sudly
Darwin's stagger

Registered: 01/05/15
Posts: 10,953
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Re: talking about consciousness and creatures and nothingness [Re: laughingdog]
#26710269 - 06/01/20 12:38 AM (3 years, 8 months ago) |
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Redbloods.
Our spiritual pressures are connected. In our branch of the tree of life.
-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
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The Blind Ass
Bodhi



Registered: 08/16/16
Posts: 26,731
Loc: The Primordial Mind
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Re: talking about consciousness and creatures and nothingness [Re: sudly]
#26710303 - 06/01/20 01:38 AM (3 years, 8 months ago) |
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I dig it. I appreciate the straight forward candor & the lack of baggage. It can be really hard to communicate with many people and get anywhere if I don’t forcibly add religio-spiritual baggage to my words or while expressing an idea or experience (not that I’m too grumpy over having to do that, though it can end up taking a lot of extra work at times) .
As some may have noticed, I myself borrow a good bit of language from Buddhist & Christian traditions since I grew up with it, so yeah . My preference is for 1 on 1 discussing off line since I find them easier to directly convey things more truly, imho. Online I have to hope some popular semi-globally shared narratives & their “language” does the trick. Even via the sciences, some sort of shared narrative & language is used - but it’s propositions are generally rooted in the quantifiable & sensory - besides some theory. However, even that requires learning & study like anything else. Religion and-or Science both.
Anyways..RGV
The aforementioned being so, I found the whole thing fairly down to earth, and the way he talks about the subject matter in that interview resonates with me big time.
Oh, and Hi Sudz.
-------------------- Give me Liberty caps -or- give me Death caps
Edited by The Blind Ass (06/01/20 01:58 AM)
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Forrester
aspiring sociopath


Registered: 02/05/13
Posts: 9,351
Loc: Northeast USA
Last seen: 1 month, 12 days
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Re: talking about consciousness and creatures and nothingness [Re: The Blind Ass]
#26710389 - 06/01/20 03:26 AM (3 years, 8 months ago) |
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I ran across this one early yesterday, maybe I was hoping for something different but I didn't find it very enlightening.
Dude says right in the beginning he can't prove I'm even conscious, so what's the use with all the talk of whether rocks or bees have consciousness? "It feels like something to be a bee so they have this level of..." 
The one question I WAS interested to hear his answer on, the one about "hive consciousness", he doesn't even answer, at all.
Another catholic who 'grew up' and turned athiest by the virtues of science. Hoorah. Catholicism itself would be enough to turn me athiest 
I don't know, maybe it was the interviewer I didn't like, but the whole thing seemed juvenile. "Remind us what the Fermi paradox is". I could google that... And the subtitle says "What the neuroscientist is discovering is both humbling and frightening him", but there really didn't seem to be too much about what it is he was discovering. Maybe it was the AI stuff I skimmed over because it was boring  edit: actually I think I figured out, it wasn't the interviewer I didn't like, it was the interviewee. I think it would be far more interesting to hear RGV answer these questions than this guy. Honestly.
I dunno, just my worthless opinion, maybe I'll try to re-read later...
Edited by Forrester (06/01/20 04:05 AM)
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Yellow Pants



Registered: 05/14/17
Posts: 1,386
Loc:
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Re: talking about consciousness and creatures and nothingness [Re: Forrester]
#26711086 - 06/01/20 09:52 AM (3 years, 8 months ago) |
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The part that jumped out to me was the bit on Bertrand Russell where he references a part of his philosophy on the direct experience being a physic from the inside as opposed to the conventional external physics, chemistry etc. That these are really the same substance and not two in reference to the question asked about the mind-body problem. I’ve given this a good bit of thought and have yet to come to a satisfying answer. I don’t feel satisfied with the idea of experience being an internalization of physics.
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The Blind Ass
Bodhi



Registered: 08/16/16
Posts: 26,731
Loc: The Primordial Mind
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Re: talking about consciousness and creatures and nothingness [Re: Yellow Pants]
#26711114 - 06/01/20 10:05 AM (3 years, 8 months ago) |
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I doubt any attempt to language it out will ever be completely & totally satisfying to everyone at once. But what it can do -imho - is do the trick & convey/transmit the essence of it - for those who don’t get too caught up in the trappings of language & or the messenger - it can be seen through/received - to & in the core, and grok the heart of it.
-------------------- Give me Liberty caps -or- give me Death caps
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Ferdinando


Registered: 11/15/09
Posts: 3,678
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Re: talking about consciousness and creatures and nothingness [Re: Forrester]
#26711319 - 06/01/20 11:38 AM (3 years, 8 months ago) |
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I found there is something about scientists, an invaluable innocence
or almost
like centering or meditating or innocence that is a fineness that is like a good substance to almost everything on the planet or less dope abuse or cigarette abuse
it gave me more belief in life
also I think we should be careful about technology we should have a team finding out risks in technology
technology life should be worth living
flowers and garden and god consciousness could help
it should find ways technology can be worth living like it's time
I think we should live together
I'm not fucking losing humanity to some computer
even more important technology should come to be able to make anything
sudly, me
it better not destroy humanity before and not itslef
there are gnomes/spirits in my rooom
did't believe it my first time on acid but now 99 % sure
-------------------- with our love with our love we could save the world
Edited by Ferdinando (06/01/20 11:48 AM)
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Yellow Pants



Registered: 05/14/17
Posts: 1,386
Loc:
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Re: talking about consciousness and creatures and nothingness [Re: The Blind Ass]
#26711506 - 06/01/20 01:13 PM (3 years, 8 months ago) |
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Quote:
The Blind Ass said: I doubt any attempt to language it out will ever be completely & totally satisfying to everyone at once. But what it can do -imho - is do the trick & convey/transmit the essence of it - for those who don’t get too caught up in the trappings of language & or the messenger - it can be seen through/received - to & in the core, and grok the heart of it.
Right and this is the point of this. To language it out.
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Moses_Davidson
Non-Prophet



Registered: 05/21/20
Posts: 613
Last seen: 4 months, 16 days
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Re: talking about consciousness and creatures and nothingness [Re: Ferdinando]
#26711548 - 06/01/20 01:35 PM (3 years, 8 months ago) |
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1. I think reductionism is great up to a point. Heisenberg tossed reductionism out the window to come up with what became quantum physics. All reductionism is scientific, but all science is not reductionistic. Sometimes a more qualitative research approach to the data is more helpful than a reductionist focus on what caused the data, such as that which is being done by physicists following some of Heisenberg's work from the 40's.
2. Ditching a set of Catholic dogmas one inherited as a child is a non sequitur after learning that one's thoughts come from the brain. This shedding of an entire package of dogmatic beliefs seemed to have no place in a scientific discussion about consciousness... and no place in an empirical discussion about the existence or non-existence of God. I learned that your thoughts and inner monologue come from your brain when I was six years old and thought everyone already knew that.
3. The consciousness of a bee hive is really cool stuff... hive intelligence seems to have a lot of things in common with mycelium intelligence, in terms of ability to find the most efficient routes. I guess that is a non-reductionist observation... a true reductionist wouldn't want to prematurely comment on that similarity until after understanding the mechanisms behind hive intelligence and mycelium intelligence, and seeing a similarity between the two mechanisms.
4. If a bee can have consciousness, then I'd also say mycelium can feel things (light, water), be perceptive of food, etc., and also qualifies as conscious by that definition, but I don't think it has an ego and doesn't identify with itself like a bee might.
5. The Dalai Lama's laughter at Paulson's poignant question was a disappointing blow-off. The guy deserved a real answer. I don't believe in reincarnation, but to assume that reincarnation cannot happen just because one's thoughts come from one's brain is another non sequitur. We shouldn't use limited knowledge to leap to conclusions which science cannot test, cannot demonstrate, cannot support, and cannot disprove. Carl Sagan was a big proponent of teaching about 4 dimensional and other higher dimensional space. He also said, "Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known." I think if prominent atheist scientists such as Sagan are proponents of multi-dimensional existence that are beyond Newtonian physics (a.k.a. beyond natural), we should keep an open mind as well.
-------------------- "In finance, everything that is agreeable is unsound and everything that is sound is disagreeable." --Sir Winston Churchill "The world may not only be stranger than we suppose, it may be stranger than we can suppose." J.B.S. Haldane "Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't." Mark Twain
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redgreenvines
irregular verb


Registered: 04/08/04
Posts: 37,706
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Re: talking about consciousness and creatures and nothingness [Re: Moses_Davidson]
#26711814 - 06/01/20 04:12 PM (3 years, 8 months ago) |
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Quote:
Moses_Davidson said: ...
4. If a bee can have consciousness, then I'd also say mycelium can feel things (light, water), be perceptive of food, etc., and also qualifies as conscious by that definition, but I don't think it has an ego and doesn't identify with itself like a bee might.
5. The Dalai Lama's laughter at Paulson's poignant question was a disappointing blow-off. The guy deserved a real answer. ...
4. I agree about the bee having consciousness because I believe that memory is essential for consciousness and experimental evidence shows that bees have memory, can learn and act in non-arbitrary complex ways that require memory and other learned skills.
Connecting that up to mycelium does not make sense for me. the bee's brain is connected to sensory and body effectors - the mycelium has no sensory organs nor any effectors, it is just a living mesh growing and circulating protoplasm and fruiting when it meets the right match - no sensory context nor memory. So it has no sensory impressions that are retained in connection with an experienced sequence - no impressions that are similar to previously experienced sensations and sequences.
Mycelia exhibit tropism only, and I think most single celled creatures are also insensate, without memory, while highly trophic, responding to chemical gradients and triggers, without any awareness or sensory organs.
Otherwise the mycelium can function as a network between other entities, such as trees, which might, experience and remember but I don't know for sure if that is true, or how it can be true. Consciousness is more of an animal thing.
Does the hive have any consciousness beyond the collective of the conscious bees? The hive can be injured like any home or structure, but the bees feel it, not the hive, the bees respond. Proposing that the hive is a mind is a mistake IMO. like saying a village has a mind. It may have a tv station but that is not a mind, the mayor is not the mind either.
A worm however can learn, but it can't watch tv. (Is Trump therefore superior to a worm?)
5. I am sure that the D.L. did not blow him off but he was consistently playful around the issue of reincarnation. This would suggest that the arcane details of reincarnation of a lama or tulku are part of the social engineering of their secret order, and their culture, and he really does not (at this point) remember any details of history prior to being a child. As a public and religious figure I think his answer was perfect. Anyone can take it either way, you would have to be there to judge for yourself, and we weren't. As for secret traditions, for that you need to be a member.
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