Is consciousness an illusion?

Discuss any topics related to metaphysics (the philosophical study of the principles of reality) or epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge) in this forum.
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3017Metaphysician
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Re: Is consciousness an illusion?

Post by 3017Metaphysician »

The Beast wrote: May 26th, 2022, 10:17 am 3017:
It may seem like a digression, but paraphrasing must be addressed as a method of mind. Or what Kant said were the operation of mind. In another way, I could concentrate on the method of paraphrasing and disregard the content. It is two different things. I could theorize that matter paraphrases in the language of chemistry and so does DNA. So, I could classify this inquiry in a “metaphysical analysis” as a source of a priori cognition. Moreover, paraphrasing may be a cosmical conception, meaning that Nature is interested, and our freedom proposes it.
TB!

It's ok to digress. Accordingly, this speaks to both/and v. either/or (and touches a bit on previous discussions about materialism v. immaterialism, subjective experience, ineffability, sentience and Qualia) and may further speak to the 'illusion' component of multiple realities:

The pragmatists applied their theory of meaning and truth to language about reality to find that such language does not necessarily describe reality as it is or may be but that the word itself has whatever meaning is assigned to it by the group of speakers. Thus different groups can have different realities and that are equally accurate and truthful if the language satisfies the expectations of the group concerning the use of that language. The idea of reality is seen as a construct, which performs certain functions. There is not an external something to which the language refers and against which the language can be evaluated for its accuracy.

This idea served the postmodern movement to declare that there is no one reality and that there can be multiple simultaneous realities.


Example A:

There is a large object or entity in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. It is very large indeed. It has been there for some time and a very large and very expensive new building has been built around it rather than attempt to move it again. It was brought to the museum from the northwest of the United States. It has been labeled as a meteorite, the Williamette Meteorite, from the Williamette Valley of Oregon. It weighs 15 tons and scientists claim that it fell to earth about 10,000 years ago. There is a group of native people from a tribe (Clackamas) in the state of Oregon. They are part of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde of Oregon. The native peoples claim that it is not a rock but a messenger, the Sky Person, Tomanowos, from the sky god who came to earth as a messenger and guide and who speaks to their people. The want the messenger returned to their people. The museum acquired it from a woman, Mrs. William Dodge, who donated it to the museum. She bought it from a iron mining company that had it on land owned by the company. Both parties went to court. A settlement was reached out of court. The original peoples will get to visit the rock-messenger each year and perform rituals there in the museum. Now is the object an inanimate rock or an animated messenger? Is it both or neither? What is the reality? For the postmodernists it is both at once. They would allow that it really is a messenger and it really is a rock at the same time, because there is no one objective reality or truth.
“Concerning matter, we have been all wrong. What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter.” "Spooky Action at a Distance"
― Albert Einstein
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The Beast
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Re: Is consciousness an illusion?

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About the soul. In a quantitative metaphysical analysis, the amplitude of the soul concept can be seen in the historical content. As Jung paraphrases as Psyche, the Japanese uses Kokoro in a wider manifold of properties. It could have been in a synchronicity event that Loyola was paraphrasing as well since the concept of the soul can be trace back in time to the cave man. With the concept of the soul comes the soul eater as a figure, a representation, a hallucination existing as the others and therefore be consistent with the concept. It will be congruent in Putin’s Kokoro that he became a Tengu as evidenced in the hallucinations of his shining conceit experienced by the Japanese press at conferences before the invasion of Ukraine.
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3017Metaphysician
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Re: Is consciousness an illusion?

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The Beast wrote: May 26th, 2022, 5:57 pm About the soul. In a quantitative metaphysical analysis, the amplitude of the soul concept can be seen in the historical content. As Jung paraphrases as Psyche, the Japanese uses Kokoro in a wider manifold of properties. It could have been in a synchronicity event that Loyola was paraphrasing as well since the concept of the soul can be trace back in time to the cave man. With the concept of the soul comes the soul eater as a figure, a representation, a hallucination existing as the others and therefore be consistent with the concept. It will be congruent in Putin’s Kokoro that he became a Tengu as evidenced in the hallucinations of his shining conceit experienced by the Japanese press at conferences before the invasion of Ukraine.

TB!


Consider this scenario. SOULS or NO SOULS

Suppose you are on a boat in the ocean with someone you love most dearly. Suppose your loved one become extremely ill and is about to die during the trip and the captain gives you a choice as to which country or island the boat would stop at and place the body there for care or perhaps to die. There are two countries nearby : A and B.

In country A the people believe that there are souls that survive the death of the body and go on in some form living in another place or dimension forever. In country B the people there do not believe in an afterlife. There is no survival of death for human beings.

Now do you believe that bringing your loved one to country A or B would make any difference as to whether or not there are souls and your loved one would survive the death of the body?

Do you think that whether or not anyone has a soul depends on what people around them believe? Do you think that people in one country have souls but people in another country do not have souls?

If you accept multiple realities it would make a difference where a person was when they die as to whether or not they have a soul. If you do not think that it makes a difference you do not really accept multiple realities as being possible. Further, you should reflect on your thinking and drop the idea of there being multiple realities and instead think that there is but one reality that we may not know all about with clarity and certainty , but only one. There are different perceptions of and experiences of and views of the one reality but there is only one reality. We may not know what the reality is but it can not be both that there are souls and that there are no souls at the same time.


Do you think the soul operates similar to how quantum tunneling works? Perhaps some other questions might serve as some kind of enlightenment.

1. Is there just one reality 'out there'?
2. How can we unify this reality as a physical observation of only one reality?
3. How can we unify this reality as a meta-physical observation of only one reality?
4. As discussed earlier (Paul Davies video) if the mind is fundamental in the universe, are both its physical and metaphysical features quantitative and qualitative?
5. If we are hopelessly trapped in an illusionary reality, how can we expect to know what is truth? Is it [all] relative (like Einsteinian Relativity based upon the observers position or like Heisenberg/Wheelers PAP requiring an observer for its supposed existence)?
6. Does the concept of relativity, from a humanistic or existential view, make us unique in the world of observation and self-awareness, particularly when you include the qualities of feeling and choice?
7. It seems as though the dynamics of Being make change a constant (consciousness quality-Qualia-is dynamic not static or inert), as such, could a normal life of being and doing mean, some-thing? And is that meaning (whatever sentient-metaphysical-qualities one chooses to designate) and purpose, have universal or cosmological significance viz. conscious existence?
“Concerning matter, we have been all wrong. What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter.” "Spooky Action at a Distance"
― Albert Einstein
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JackDaydream
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Re: Is consciousness an illusion?

Post by JackDaydream »

3017Metaphysician wrote: May 27th, 2022, 8:32 am
The Beast wrote: May 26th, 2022, 5:57 pm About the soul. In a quantitative metaphysical analysis, the amplitude of the soul concept can be seen in the historical content. As Jung paraphrases as Psyche, the Japanese uses Kokoro in a wider manifold of properties. It could have been in a synchronicity event that Loyola was paraphrasing as well since the concept of the soul can be trace back in time to the cave man. With the concept of the soul comes the soul eater as a figure, a representation, a hallucination existing as the others and therefore be consistent with the concept. It will be congruent in Putin’s Kokoro that he became a Tengu as evidenced in the hallucinations of his shining conceit experienced by the Japanese press at conferences before the invasion of Ukraine.

TB!


Consider this scenario. SOULS or NO SOULS

Suppose you are on a boat in the ocean with someone you love most dearly. Suppose your loved one become extremely ill and is about to die during the trip and the captain gives you a choice as to which country or island the boat would stop at and place the body there for care or perhaps to die. There are two countries nearby : A and B.

In country A the people believe that there are souls that survive the death of the body and go on in some form living in another place or dimension forever. In country B the people there do not believe in an afterlife. There is no survival of death for human beings.

Now do you believe that bringing your loved one to country A or B would make any difference as to whether or not there are souls and your loved one would survive the death of the body?

Do you think that whether or not anyone has a soul depends on what people around them believe? Do you think that people in one country have souls but people in another country do not have souls?

If you accept multiple realities it would make a difference where a person was when they die as to whether or not they have a soul. If you do not think that it makes a difference you do not really accept multiple realities as being possible. Further, you should reflect on your thinking and drop the idea of there being multiple realities and instead think that there is but one reality that we may not know all about with clarity and certainty , but only one. There are different perceptions of and experiences of and views of the one reality but there is only one reality. We may not know what the reality is but it can not be both that there are souls and that there are no souls at the same time.


Do you think the soul operates similar to how quantum tunneling works? Perhaps some other questions might serve as some kind of enlightenment.

1. Is there just one reality 'out there'?
2. How can we unify this reality as a physical observation of only one reality?
3. How can we unify this reality as a meta-physical observation of only one reality?
4. As discussed earlier (Paul Davies video) if the mind is fundamental in the universe, are both its physical and metaphysical features quantitative and qualitative?
5. If we are hopelessly trapped in an illusionary reality, how can we expect to know what is truth? Is it [all] relative (like Einsteinian Relativity based upon the observers position or like Heisenberg/Wheelers PAP requiring an observer for its supposed existence)?
6. Does the concept of relativity, from a humanistic or existential view, make us unique in the world of observation and self-awareness, particularly when you include the qualities of feeling and choice?
7. It seems as though the dynamics of Being make change a constant (consciousness quality-Qualia-is dynamic not static or inert), as such, could a normal life of being and doing mean, some-thing? And is that meaning (whatever sentient-metaphysical-qualities one chooses to designate) and purpose, have universal or cosmological significance viz. conscious existence?
One aspect of the issue of the existence of 'the soul' is the way in which it was seen as the underlying basis, as psyche, underlying both the psyche and body. I think that this is consistent with Jung and the idea of the collective unconscious. It is parallel to Schopenhauer's idea of will.

The idea of the soul does also relate to the concept of the daimon, which goes back to Plato. A similar idea exists in some Eastern and esoteric traditions, including the writer, Paul Brunton, who speaks of the oversoul. Both the concept of the daimon and the oversoul suggest that the individual psyche is related to the larger psyche, which some may speak of as the Godhead. It may that this is where the individual's ultimate purpose can be found, especially in one's spiritual quest.

Of course, such a viewpoint is challengable because it can be regarded as being too bound up with a sense of purpose or divine plan, which may be the way humans find meaning. It can be asked how much is objective and how much is about subjective construction. However, in some ways the idea of the oversoul or daimon does make sense as the idea of blueprint in the psyche, just like the idea of DNA being the basis for the underlying structure of the body, as a memory inherent in the production of cell duplication throughout life.

The idea of the soul, or daimon, is disputed so much in relation to materialism. Going back to discussion previously, it can be problematic to have an either/or approach to materialism or idealism, because they both capture truths. Mind and body are like the two sides of the coin. The real challenge of the idea of the soul though, is that it gives rise to the possibility that life is not mere randomness, but about tuning in to patterns or larger pathways. It is like the microcosm being a reflection of the macrocosm. It probably also relates to Plotinus's idea of 'the One'.
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3017Metaphysician
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Re: Is consciousness an illusion?

Post by 3017Metaphysician »

JackDaydream wrote: May 27th, 2022, 9:53 am
3017Metaphysician wrote: May 27th, 2022, 8:32 am
The Beast wrote: May 26th, 2022, 5:57 pm About the soul. In a quantitative metaphysical analysis, the amplitude of the soul concept can be seen in the historical content. As Jung paraphrases as Psyche, the Japanese uses Kokoro in a wider manifold of properties. It could have been in a synchronicity event that Loyola was paraphrasing as well since the concept of the soul can be trace back in time to the cave man. With the concept of the soul comes the soul eater as a figure, a representation, a hallucination existing as the others and therefore be consistent with the concept. It will be congruent in Putin’s Kokoro that he became a Tengu as evidenced in the hallucinations of his shining conceit experienced by the Japanese press at conferences before the invasion of Ukraine.

TB!


Consider this scenario. SOULS or NO SOULS

Suppose you are on a boat in the ocean with someone you love most dearly. Suppose your loved one become extremely ill and is about to die during the trip and the captain gives you a choice as to which country or island the boat would stop at and place the body there for care or perhaps to die. There are two countries nearby : A and B.

In country A the people believe that there are souls that survive the death of the body and go on in some form living in another place or dimension forever. In country B the people there do not believe in an afterlife. There is no survival of death for human beings.

Now do you believe that bringing your loved one to country A or B would make any difference as to whether or not there are souls and your loved one would survive the death of the body?

Do you think that whether or not anyone has a soul depends on what people around them believe? Do you think that people in one country have souls but people in another country do not have souls?

If you accept multiple realities it would make a difference where a person was when they die as to whether or not they have a soul. If you do not think that it makes a difference you do not really accept multiple realities as being possible. Further, you should reflect on your thinking and drop the idea of there being multiple realities and instead think that there is but one reality that we may not know all about with clarity and certainty , but only one. There are different perceptions of and experiences of and views of the one reality but there is only one reality. We may not know what the reality is but it can not be both that there are souls and that there are no souls at the same time.


Do you think the soul operates similar to how quantum tunneling works? Perhaps some other questions might serve as some kind of enlightenment.

1. Is there just one reality 'out there'?
2. How can we unify this reality as a physical observation of only one reality?
3. How can we unify this reality as a meta-physical observation of only one reality?
4. As discussed earlier (Paul Davies video) if the mind is fundamental in the universe, are both its physical and metaphysical features quantitative and qualitative?
5. If we are hopelessly trapped in an illusionary reality, how can we expect to know what is truth? Is it [all] relative (like Einsteinian Relativity based upon the observers position or like Heisenberg/Wheelers PAP requiring an observer for its supposed existence)?
6. Does the concept of relativity, from a humanistic or existential view, make us unique in the world of observation and self-awareness, particularly when you include the qualities of feeling and choice?
7. It seems as though the dynamics of Being make change a constant (consciousness quality-Qualia-is dynamic not static or inert), as such, could a normal life of being and doing mean, some-thing? And is that meaning (whatever sentient-metaphysical-qualities one chooses to designate) and purpose, have universal or cosmological significance viz. conscious existence?
One aspect of the issue of the existence of 'the soul' is the way in which it was seen as the underlying basis, as psyche, underlying both the psyche and body. I think that this is consistent with Jung and the idea of the collective unconscious. It is parallel to Schopenhauer's idea of will.

The idea of the soul does also relate to the concept of the daimon, which goes back to Plato. A similar idea exists in some Eastern and esoteric traditions, including the writer, Paul Brunton, who speaks of the oversoul. Both the concept of the daimon and the oversoul suggest that the individual psyche is related to the larger psyche, which some may speak of as the Godhead. It may that this is where the individual's ultimate purpose can be found, especially in one's spiritual quest.

Of course, such a viewpoint is challengable because it can be regarded as being too bound up with a sense of purpose or divine plan, which may be the way humans find meaning. It can be asked how much is objective and how much is about subjective construction. However, in some ways the idea of the oversoul or daimon does make sense as the idea of blueprint in the psyche, just like the idea of DNA being the basis for the underlying structure of the body, as a memory inherent in the production of cell duplication throughout life.

The idea of the soul, or daimon, is disputed so much in relation to materialism. Going back to discussion previously, it can be problematic to have an either/or approach to materialism or idealism, because they both capture truths. Mind and body are like the two sides of the coin. The real challenge of the idea of the soul though, is that it gives rise to the possibility that life is not mere randomness, but about tuning in to patterns or larger pathways. It is like the microcosm being a reflection of the macrocosm. It probably also relates to Plotinus's idea of 'the One'.
Interesting... .

The soul could be viewed or interpreted as the cosmological "blueprint" or software that contains the qualitative (Qualia) effects of consciousness. Similarly, though complete Chaos and Order are extreme criterion to parse, mere randomness can happen not only to effect Darwinism, but also provide for the analogy of choice/free-will and determinism, which arguably both can co-exist. Accordingly, one can think of randomness like one's own steam of consciousness and how random thoughts just pop-up (like when you're driving your car on a long trip) all for us to freely select and choose from. Our way of Being in that sense is indeed free.

Interesting that there a 'psychology' to it all (like I think where you were going with the concept of soul) to where there is a fixed 'play' or Kantian a priori thing-in-itself that directs one's will (Schopenhauer) toward becoming (versus something that is static or inert), so that propagation or genetically coded emergence (that is set in motion much like the idea of the BB) can continue. As an aside, your post made me think of a psychological basis of the soul, where in this article he uses the concept of 'a play' in its place (this also ties to Kant's real notion of the synthetic a priori):

Chaos and order is the big subject of the universe – the creation of order out of chaos and the eventual return to randomness. This applies to the evolution of inanimate matter as well as all life forms including us. It should not be surprising that the operations of the brain itself encompass these processes. I certainly agree that “the brain’s main function is to protect us, like an umbrella, from chaos.” I propose that the brain not only operates via a balanced relationship between order and chaos on the micro level, but it operates in the same way on the macro level as well, fractal that the brain is.

It is consciousness that protects us from the chaos of our random environment. It gives coherence to actions and meaning by imposing its learned order as it incorporates chaos from the environment. The limbic-cortex creates a play in the theater of the brain. The ‘play’ is a synthetic representational world that consists of a cast of characters, personas, who relate together by feeling, scenarios, plots, set designs, and landscape. (See “The Secrets of Consciousness, the limbic-cortex is organized as a drama in the Brain.”). The ‘play’ constitutes the ‘order’ of consciousness. It gets established in the limbic-cortex over the first three years of life as the child fields his emotional environment and digests it through his genetic temperament. This results in an incredibly complex mapping throughout every aspect of his limbic cortex as a whole. Once established, the play operates as a top-down cortical process which imposes its already established order and form on experience.

We are constantly taking in new and uncharted experience at every waking moment. This is chaos. It is the interplay of chaos and order in the brain’s actual functioning that creates the stream of consciousness as mediated by the hippocampus. Cortical top down functioning allows us to manage chaos by imposing short-cut functionality and meaning to our moment to moment life. Consequently, we experience life through the synthetic and invisible prism of what we already believe. However, that is only half the story as to how the brain operates. If it were the whole story then new experience would be completely filtered and deterministic. Our lives would be Ground Hog Day. And of course it’s not.

It is through the brain’s ability to process chaos by being open to randomness itself, that we manage aliveness. The brain mediates new experience through the hippocampus and sends it into memory. It maps tracks of something new, on an ongoing basis, wiring new pathways all throughout the limbic cortex. This new experience is also filtered by the activated play, and is given meaning by the already established pathways, which extend and color the original play. This happens all day long. The unfixed and open capacity of the brain, filtered by the established order, as mediated by the hippocampus, generates a new, alive, and ongoing illusion of experience on an ongoing basis, a fusion of order and chaos.

New experience does not rewrite the established play. That remains intact via its established neuronal mappings and remains as ‘order’. However, when new experience is too powerful, limbically, it qualifies as trauma. Traumatic experience does rewrite the original play, and establishes a new one, grounded in sadism. The traumatic play then becomes the activated pathway of order and repeats and imposes itself on new experience. The antidote for a traumatic play is mourning. (See “Grief from a death of a loved one is part of life”. It is the biological process of the brain-body for healing recovery from loss”).

By operating in a balanced way between order and chaos, the brain integrates new information with its already stored order, present as the play. In doing so it generates an alive stream, albeit synthetic, in the waking trance.


Note he includes the limbic system where (meta-physical) feeling and emotion reside...enjoy!!
“Concerning matter, we have been all wrong. What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter.” "Spooky Action at a Distance"
― Albert Einstein
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The Beast
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Re: Is consciousness an illusion?

Post by The Beast »

3017: What is basic. There are always people sailing on ships because they bought the ticket. You should catch a ride back. Soul is what we paraphrase. Cognition is based on the soul. Therefore, it can be paraphrased by the understanding, so it becomes the personal soul… the soul of a Nation… the soul of humanity… and the soul of our ancestors… maybe I could include a Universal soul. In my paraphrasing, it is a manifold of many lights under the cognitive care. If there is wrong and right, we are acknowledging the fundamental truth of the cognitive care. The Earth’s soul paraphrases a Universal soul paraphrasing the existence of this which always existed. And so, you can paraphrase your soul or no soul and yet you could say right and wrong. It is the understanding as well as it can paraphrase a human soul. This could take the form of analysis. The question is of paraphrasing in the evolution of the species and in the evolution of the paraphrasing from the Original and immortal to the personal. A rock/meteorite does not care.
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3017Metaphysician
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Re: Is consciousness an illusion?

Post by 3017Metaphysician »

The Beast wrote: May 27th, 2022, 11:26 am 3017: What is basic. There are always people sailing on ships because they bought the ticket. You should catch a ride back. Soul is what we paraphrase. Cognition is based on the soul. Therefore, it can be paraphrased by the understanding, so it becomes the personal soul… the soul of a Nation… the soul of humanity… and the soul of our ancestors… maybe I could include a Universal soul. In my paraphrasing, it is a manifold of many lights under the cognitive care. If there is wrong and right, we are acknowledging the fundamental truth of the cognitive care. The Earth’s soul paraphrases a Universal soul paraphrasing the existence of this which always existed. And so, you can paraphrase your soul or no soul and yet you could say right and wrong. It is the understanding as well as it can paraphrase a human soul. This could take the form of analysis. The question is of paraphrasing in the evolution of the species and in the evolution of the paraphrasing from the Original and immortal to the personal. A rock/meteorite does not care.
TB!

Sailing is a great metaphor for life as, although you have an idea where you want to go, you have no control of the weather, the wind, the sun and the sea. The job of the proficient sailor is to be aware, to be mindful; mindful of the trim of the sails, the handling of the boat, of the changing wind and sea. It is to be simultaneously connected to the elements and to the boat in order to respond to what is happening. We cannot determine how quickly we travel or when we will arrive; we can only create the most favorable conditions to best take advantage of the prevailing conditions and maximize the speed.

Sailing provides us with a great lesson in acceptance and mindfulness. There is no point in denying the conditions of the weather (unforeseen circumstances and infinite possibilities of randomness), the sea or anything else for that matter. You just have to respond the very best way you can, being present with open curiosity, observing then finding the most positive way to act. You have no control over the elements so you have to welcome them.

The soul (the synthetic a priori thing-in-itself that is fixed in the brain) is that which we have no control over. The will to be, survive and effect one's own purpose and meaning. Relative to conscious existence, in the end, it may seem like we have little control over many things; an illusion, I wonder?
“Concerning matter, we have been all wrong. What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter.” "Spooky Action at a Distance"
― Albert Einstein
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JackDaydream
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Re: Is consciousness an illusion?

Post by JackDaydream »

3017Metaphysician wrote: May 27th, 2022, 10:58 am
JackDaydream wrote: May 27th, 2022, 9:53 am
3017Metaphysician wrote: May 27th, 2022, 8:32 am
The Beast wrote: May 26th, 2022, 5:57 pm About the soul. In a quantitative metaphysical analysis, the amplitude of the soul concept can be seen in the historical content. As Jung paraphrases as Psyche, the Japanese uses Kokoro in a wider manifold of properties. It could have been in a synchronicity event that Loyola was paraphrasing as well since the concept of the soul can be trace back in time to the cave man. With the concept of the soul comes the soul eater as a figure, a representation, a hallucination existing as the others and therefore be consistent with the concept. It will be congruent in Putin’s Kokoro that he became a Tengu as evidenced in the hallucinations of his shining conceit experienced by the Japanese press at conferences before the invasion of Ukraine.

TB!


Consider this scenario. SOULS or NO SOULS

Suppose you are on a boat in the ocean with someone you love most dearly. Suppose your loved one become extremely ill and is about to die during the trip and the captain gives you a choice as to which country or island the boat would stop at and place the body there for care or perhaps to die. There are two countries nearby : A and B.

In country A the people believe that there are souls that survive the death of the body and go on in some form living in another place or dimension forever. In country B the people there do not believe in an afterlife. There is no survival of death for human beings.

Now do you believe that bringing your loved one to country A or B would make any difference as to whether or not there are souls and your loved one would survive the death of the body?

Do you think that whether or not anyone has a soul depends on what people around them believe? Do you think that people in one country have souls but people in another country do not have souls?

If you accept multiple realities it would make a difference where a person was when they die as to whether or not they have a soul. If you do not think that it makes a difference you do not really accept multiple realities as being possible. Further, you should reflect on your thinking and drop the idea of there being multiple realities and instead think that there is but one reality that we may not know all about with clarity and certainty , but only one. There are different perceptions of and experiences of and views of the one reality but there is only one reality. We may not know what the reality is but it can not be both that there are souls and that there are no souls at the same time.


Do you think the soul operates similar to how quantum tunneling works? Perhaps some other questions might serve as some kind of enlightenment.

1. Is there just one reality 'out there'?
2. How can we unify this reality as a physical observation of only one reality?
3. How can we unify this reality as a meta-physical observation of only one reality?
4. As discussed earlier (Paul Davies video) if the mind is fundamental in the universe, are both its physical and metaphysical features quantitative and qualitative?
5. If we are hopelessly trapped in an illusionary reality, how can we expect to know what is truth? Is it [all] relative (like Einsteinian Relativity based upon the observers position or like Heisenberg/Wheelers PAP requiring an observer for its supposed existence)?
6. Does the concept of relativity, from a humanistic or existential view, make us unique in the world of observation and self-awareness, particularly when you include the qualities of feeling and choice?
7. It seems as though the dynamics of Being make change a constant (consciousness quality-Qualia-is dynamic not static or inert), as such, could a normal life of being and doing mean, some-thing? And is that meaning (whatever sentient-metaphysical-qualities one chooses to designate) and purpose, have universal or cosmological significance viz. conscious existence?
One aspect of the issue of the existence of 'the soul' is the way in which it was seen as the underlying basis, as psyche, underlying both the psyche and body. I think that this is consistent with Jung and the idea of the collective unconscious. It is parallel to Schopenhauer's idea of will.

The idea of the soul does also relate to the concept of the daimon, which goes back to Plato. A similar idea exists in some Eastern and esoteric traditions, including the writer, Paul Brunton, who speaks of the oversoul. Both the concept of the daimon and the oversoul suggest that the individual psyche is related to the larger psyche, which some may speak of as the Godhead. It may that this is where the individual's ultimate purpose can be found, especially in one's spiritual quest.

Of course, such a viewpoint is challengable because it can be regarded as being too bound up with a sense of purpose or divine plan, which may be the way humans find meaning. It can be asked how much is objective and how much is about subjective construction. However, in some ways the idea of the oversoul or daimon does make sense as the idea of blueprint in the psyche, just like the idea of DNA being the basis for the underlying structure of the body, as a memory inherent in the production of cell duplication throughout life.

The idea of the soul, or daimon, is disputed so much in relation to materialism. Going back to discussion previously, it can be problematic to have an either/or approach to materialism or idealism, because they both capture truths. Mind and body are like the two sides of the coin. The real challenge of the idea of the soul though, is that it gives rise to the possibility that life is not mere randomness, but about tuning in to patterns or larger pathways. It is like the microcosm being a reflection of the macrocosm. It probably also relates to Plotinus's idea of 'the One'.
Interesting... .

The soul could be viewed or interpreted as the cosmological "blueprint" or software that contains the qualitative (Qualia) effects of consciousness. Similarly, though complete Chaos and Order are extreme criterion to parse, mere randomness can happen not only to effect Darwinism, but also provide for the analogy of choice/free-will and determinism, which arguably both can co-exist. Accordingly, one can think of randomness like one's own steam of consciousness and how random thoughts just pop-up (like when you're driving your car on a long trip) all for us to freely select and choose from. Our way of Being in that sense is indeed free.

Interesting that there a 'psychology' to it all (like I think where you were going with the concept of soul) to where there is a fixed 'play' or Kantian a priori thing-in-itself that directs one's will (Schopenhauer) toward becoming (versus something that is static or inert), so that propagation or genetically coded emergence (that is set in motion much like the idea of the BB) can continue. As an aside, your post made me think of a psychological basis of the soul, where in this article he uses the concept of 'a play' in its place (this also ties to Kant's real notion of the synthetic a priori):

Chaos and order is the big subject of the universe – the creation of order out of chaos and the eventual return to randomness. This applies to the evolution of inanimate matter as well as all life forms including us. It should not be surprising that the operations of the brain itself encompass these processes. I certainly agree that “the brain’s main function is to protect us, like an umbrella, from chaos.” I propose that the brain not only operates via a balanced relationship between order and chaos on the micro level, but it operates in the same way on the macro level as well, fractal that the brain is.

It is consciousness that protects us from the chaos of our random environment. It gives coherence to actions and meaning by imposing its learned order as it incorporates chaos from the environment. The limbic-cortex creates a play in the theater of the brain. The ‘play’ is a synthetic representational world that consists of a cast of characters, personas, who relate together by feeling, scenarios, plots, set designs, and landscape. (See “The Secrets of Consciousness, the limbic-cortex is organized as a drama in the Brain.”). The ‘play’ constitutes the ‘order’ of consciousness. It gets established in the limbic-cortex over the first three years of life as the child fields his emotional environment and digests it through his genetic temperament. This results in an incredibly complex mapping throughout every aspect of his limbic cortex as a whole. Once established, the play operates as a top-down cortical process which imposes its already established order and form on experience.

We are constantly taking in new and uncharted experience at every waking moment. This is chaos. It is the interplay of chaos and order in the brain’s actual functioning that creates the stream of consciousness as mediated by the hippocampus. Cortical top down functioning allows us to manage chaos by imposing short-cut functionality and meaning to our moment to moment life. Consequently, we experience life through the synthetic and invisible prism of what we already believe. However, that is only half the story as to how the brain operates. If it were the whole story then new experience would be completely filtered and deterministic. Our lives would be Ground Hog Day. And of course it’s not.

It is through the brain’s ability to process chaos by being open to randomness itself, that we manage aliveness. The brain mediates new experience through the hippocampus and sends it into memory. It maps tracks of something new, on an ongoing basis, wiring new pathways all throughout the limbic cortex. This new experience is also filtered by the activated play, and is given meaning by the already established pathways, which extend and color the original play. This happens all day long. The unfixed and open capacity of the brain, filtered by the established order, as mediated by the hippocampus, generates a new, alive, and ongoing illusion of experience on an ongoing basis, a fusion of order and chaos.

New experience does not rewrite the established play. That remains intact via its established neuronal mappings and remains as ‘order’. However, when new experience is too powerful, limbically, it qualifies as trauma. Traumatic experience does rewrite the original play, and establishes a new one, grounded in sadism. The traumatic play then becomes the activated pathway of order and repeats and imposes itself on new experience. The antidote for a traumatic play is mourning. (See “Grief from a death of a loved one is part of life”. It is the biological process of the brain-body for healing recovery from loss”).

By operating in a balanced way between order and chaos, the brain integrates new information with its already stored order, present as the play. In doing so it generates an alive stream, albeit synthetic, in the waking trance.


Note he includes the limbic system where (meta-physical) feeling and emotion reside...enjoy!!
The quote you included is important in thinking how complex the daily processes of the nervous system is in achieving the order essential to life. I can remember thinking this when studying biology on my mental health nurse training. This order is often taken for granted.

The limbic system is important in pointing to the way in which emotions are a central part of life, as a foundation for consciousness. In this respect, consciousness is not simply in the head but distributed throughout the body. The whole fight and flight mechanisms are part of sentience, and are what make us similar to animals. It may be that the mind is often considered in relation to the brain, because thought is so essential to consciousness. The cerebral aspects of human consciousness may result in a tendency to miss the complexity of the role of the body in the process, especially in relation to the primacy of emotions.
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Re: Is consciousness an illusion?

Post by The Beast »

the transcendent principle of right and wrong may be cataloged as illusory as it is not the immanent principle of the pure understanding. Where would be the cognitive illusion if not in the use of sophistical syllogisms and transforming the immanent principle in a transcendental idea to or not deny soul, consciousness, right and wrong…reality?
Consciousness may be illusory in the application of the transcendent principle of right and wrong. So, in a good analysis of the illusion in the form of transcendental criticism it may conclude the illusion and label its evolution or better judgement in a paraphrasing of right and wrong. However, there may be overlap in what is sensible or not. It may be emotional, that is: the transcendental criticism may be chemically dependent and in need of a better schema. There is historical empirical data to say that in humans there is an intuition in need of transcendental criticism and the analysis yields evolving sophistical syllogisms. In conclusion, I may use a sophisticated syllogism to assign an intuition to humans of something that is present in the forms of reality.
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Re: Is consciousness an illusion?

Post by 3017Metaphysician »

The Beast wrote: May 31st, 2022, 9:07 am the transcendent principle of right and wrong may be cataloged as illusory as it is not the immanent principle of the pure understanding. Where would be the cognitive illusion if not in the use of sophistical syllogisms and transforming the immanent principle in a transcendental idea to or not deny soul, consciousness, right and wrong…reality?
Consciousness may be illusory in the application of the transcendent principle of right and wrong. So, in a good analysis of the illusion in the form of transcendental criticism it may conclude the illusion and label its evolution or better judgement in a paraphrasing of right and wrong. However, there may be overlap in what is sensible or not. It may be emotional, that is: the transcendental criticism may be chemically dependent and in need of a better schema. There is historical empirical data to say that in humans there is an intuition in need of transcendental criticism and the analysis yields evolving sophistical syllogisms. In conclusion, I may use a sophisticated syllogism to assign an intuition to humans of something that is present in the forms of reality.
TB!

One way to parse the differences between metaphysics/emotion/the Will (raw emotion) and the intellect (logic) could be:

St. Thomas, the Intellectualist, had argued that the intellect in man is prior to the will because the intellect determines the will, since we can desire only what we know. Scotus, the Voluntarist, replied that the will determines what ideas the intellect turns to, and thus in the end determines what the intellect comes to know.

- Voluntarism: in the modern metaphysical sense is a theory which explains the universe as emanating ultimately from some form of will. In a broader psychological sense, the term is applied to any theory which gives prominence to will (in opposition to intellect ). In this latter sense, but not in the former, the philosophy of Augustine, Anselm, William of Occam, and Scotus may be styled Voluntarism.

- Voluntarism is the theory that God or the ultimate nature of reality is to be conceived as some form of will (or conation). This theory is contrasted to intellectualism, which gives primacy to God's reason.


-According to intellectualism, choices of the will result from that which the intellect recognizes as good; the will itself is determined. For voluntarism, by contrast, it is the will which determines which objects are good, and the will itself is indetermined. Concerning the nature of heaven, intellectualists followed Aristotle's lead by seeing the final state of happiness as a state of contemplation. Voluntarism, by contrast, maintains that final happiness is an activity, specifically that of love.

-19th century voluntarism has its origin in Kant, particularly his doctrine of the "primacy of the practical over the pure reason." Intellectually, humans are incapable of knowing ultimate reality, but this need not and must not interfere with the duty of acting as though the spiritual character of this reality were certain.


Do you consider the will taking primacy over the intellect, or the opposite? Or is it a little of both? For example, does the will to seek happiness (which in itself is a metaphysical thing-in-itself) coming from our consciousness, ultimately, take primacy over all other cognition/things? If so, the metaphysical phenomena of Being is pretty powerful...perhaps taking primacy in causing all human behavior (or most behavior beyond instinct).
“Concerning matter, we have been all wrong. What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter.” "Spooky Action at a Distance"
― Albert Einstein
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Re: Is consciousness an illusion?

Post by 3017Metaphysician »

JackDaydream wrote: May 30th, 2022, 8:56 am
3017Metaphysician wrote: May 27th, 2022, 10:58 am
JackDaydream wrote: May 27th, 2022, 9:53 am
3017Metaphysician wrote: May 27th, 2022, 8:32 am


TB!


Consider this scenario. SOULS or NO SOULS

Suppose you are on a boat in the ocean with someone you love most dearly. Suppose your loved one become extremely ill and is about to die during the trip and the captain gives you a choice as to which country or island the boat would stop at and place the body there for care or perhaps to die. There are two countries nearby : A and B.

In country A the people believe that there are souls that survive the death of the body and go on in some form living in another place or dimension forever. In country B the people there do not believe in an afterlife. There is no survival of death for human beings.

Now do you believe that bringing your loved one to country A or B would make any difference as to whether or not there are souls and your loved one would survive the death of the body?

Do you think that whether or not anyone has a soul depends on what people around them believe? Do you think that people in one country have souls but people in another country do not have souls?

If you accept multiple realities it would make a difference where a person was when they die as to whether or not they have a soul. If you do not think that it makes a difference you do not really accept multiple realities as being possible. Further, you should reflect on your thinking and drop the idea of there being multiple realities and instead think that there is but one reality that we may not know all about with clarity and certainty , but only one. There are different perceptions of and experiences of and views of the one reality but there is only one reality. We may not know what the reality is but it can not be both that there are souls and that there are no souls at the same time.


Do you think the soul operates similar to how quantum tunneling works? Perhaps some other questions might serve as some kind of enlightenment.

1. Is there just one reality 'out there'?
2. How can we unify this reality as a physical observation of only one reality?
3. How can we unify this reality as a meta-physical observation of only one reality?
4. As discussed earlier (Paul Davies video) if the mind is fundamental in the universe, are both its physical and metaphysical features quantitative and qualitative?
5. If we are hopelessly trapped in an illusionary reality, how can we expect to know what is truth? Is it [all] relative (like Einsteinian Relativity based upon the observers position or like Heisenberg/Wheelers PAP requiring an observer for its supposed existence)?
6. Does the concept of relativity, from a humanistic or existential view, make us unique in the world of observation and self-awareness, particularly when you include the qualities of feeling and choice?
7. It seems as though the dynamics of Being make change a constant (consciousness quality-Qualia-is dynamic not static or inert), as such, could a normal life of being and doing mean, some-thing? And is that meaning (whatever sentient-metaphysical-qualities one chooses to designate) and purpose, have universal or cosmological significance viz. conscious existence?
One aspect of the issue of the existence of 'the soul' is the way in which it was seen as the underlying basis, as psyche, underlying both the psyche and body. I think that this is consistent with Jung and the idea of the collective unconscious. It is parallel to Schopenhauer's idea of will.

The idea of the soul does also relate to the concept of the daimon, which goes back to Plato. A similar idea exists in some Eastern and esoteric traditions, including the writer, Paul Brunton, who speaks of the oversoul. Both the concept of the daimon and the oversoul suggest that the individual psyche is related to the larger psyche, which some may speak of as the Godhead. It may that this is where the individual's ultimate purpose can be found, especially in one's spiritual quest.

Of course, such a viewpoint is challengable because it can be regarded as being too bound up with a sense of purpose or divine plan, which may be the way humans find meaning. It can be asked how much is objective and how much is about subjective construction. However, in some ways the idea of the oversoul or daimon does make sense as the idea of blueprint in the psyche, just like the idea of DNA being the basis for the underlying structure of the body, as a memory inherent in the production of cell duplication throughout life.

The idea of the soul, or daimon, is disputed so much in relation to materialism. Going back to discussion previously, it can be problematic to have an either/or approach to materialism or idealism, because they both capture truths. Mind and body are like the two sides of the coin. The real challenge of the idea of the soul though, is that it gives rise to the possibility that life is not mere randomness, but about tuning in to patterns or larger pathways. It is like the microcosm being a reflection of the macrocosm. It probably also relates to Plotinus's idea of 'the One'.
Interesting... .

The soul could be viewed or interpreted as the cosmological "blueprint" or software that contains the qualitative (Qualia) effects of consciousness. Similarly, though complete Chaos and Order are extreme criterion to parse, mere randomness can happen not only to effect Darwinism, but also provide for the analogy of choice/free-will and determinism, which arguably both can co-exist. Accordingly, one can think of randomness like one's own steam of consciousness and how random thoughts just pop-up (like when you're driving your car on a long trip) all for us to freely select and choose from. Our way of Being in that sense is indeed free.

Interesting that there a 'psychology' to it all (like I think where you were going with the concept of soul) to where there is a fixed 'play' or Kantian a priori thing-in-itself that directs one's will (Schopenhauer) toward becoming (versus something that is static or inert), so that propagation or genetically coded emergence (that is set in motion much like the idea of the BB) can continue. As an aside, your post made me think of a psychological basis of the soul, where in this article he uses the concept of 'a play' in its place (this also ties to Kant's real notion of the synthetic a priori):

Chaos and order is the big subject of the universe – the creation of order out of chaos and the eventual return to randomness. This applies to the evolution of inanimate matter as well as all life forms including us. It should not be surprising that the operations of the brain itself encompass these processes. I certainly agree that “the brain’s main function is to protect us, like an umbrella, from chaos.” I propose that the brain not only operates via a balanced relationship between order and chaos on the micro level, but it operates in the same way on the macro level as well, fractal that the brain is.

It is consciousness that protects us from the chaos of our random environment. It gives coherence to actions and meaning by imposing its learned order as it incorporates chaos from the environment. The limbic-cortex creates a play in the theater of the brain. The ‘play’ is a synthetic representational world that consists of a cast of characters, personas, who relate together by feeling, scenarios, plots, set designs, and landscape. (See “The Secrets of Consciousness, the limbic-cortex is organized as a drama in the Brain.”). The ‘play’ constitutes the ‘order’ of consciousness. It gets established in the limbic-cortex over the first three years of life as the child fields his emotional environment and digests it through his genetic temperament. This results in an incredibly complex mapping throughout every aspect of his limbic cortex as a whole. Once established, the play operates as a top-down cortical process which imposes its already established order and form on experience.

We are constantly taking in new and uncharted experience at every waking moment. This is chaos. It is the interplay of chaos and order in the brain’s actual functioning that creates the stream of consciousness as mediated by the hippocampus. Cortical top down functioning allows us to manage chaos by imposing short-cut functionality and meaning to our moment to moment life. Consequently, we experience life through the synthetic and invisible prism of what we already believe. However, that is only half the story as to how the brain operates. If it were the whole story then new experience would be completely filtered and deterministic. Our lives would be Ground Hog Day. And of course it’s not.

It is through the brain’s ability to process chaos by being open to randomness itself, that we manage aliveness. The brain mediates new experience through the hippocampus and sends it into memory. It maps tracks of something new, on an ongoing basis, wiring new pathways all throughout the limbic cortex. This new experience is also filtered by the activated play, and is given meaning by the already established pathways, which extend and color the original play. This happens all day long. The unfixed and open capacity of the brain, filtered by the established order, as mediated by the hippocampus, generates a new, alive, and ongoing illusion of experience on an ongoing basis, a fusion of order and chaos.

New experience does not rewrite the established play. That remains intact via its established neuronal mappings and remains as ‘order’. However, when new experience is too powerful, limbically, it qualifies as trauma. Traumatic experience does rewrite the original play, and establishes a new one, grounded in sadism. The traumatic play then becomes the activated pathway of order and repeats and imposes itself on new experience. The antidote for a traumatic play is mourning. (See “Grief from a death of a loved one is part of life”. It is the biological process of the brain-body for healing recovery from loss”).

By operating in a balanced way between order and chaos, the brain integrates new information with its already stored order, present as the play. In doing so it generates an alive stream, albeit synthetic, in the waking trance.


Note he includes the limbic system where (meta-physical) feeling and emotion reside...enjoy!!
The quote you included is important in thinking how complex the daily processes of the nervous system is in achieving the order essential to life. I can remember thinking this when studying biology on my mental health nurse training. This order is often taken for granted.

The limbic system is important in pointing to the way in which emotions are a central part of life, as a foundation for consciousness. In this respect, consciousness is not simply in the head but distributed throughout the body. The whole fight and flight mechanisms are part of sentience, and are what make us similar to animals. It may be that the mind is often considered in relation to the brain, because thought is so essential to consciousness. The cerebral aspects of human consciousness may result in a tendency to miss the complexity of the role of the body in the process, especially in relation to the primacy of emotions.
Jack!

Yes, sentience is very powerful not only from the vantage point of say, human love, but in physiology also. From the effects on metabolism, nervous system, heart health, and so on, emotions play a powerful role in sustaining overall health and well Being. Common examples include how fear affects heart rate and many other things... . The metaphysic's of emotion is quite a phenomenon relative to causation...
“Concerning matter, we have been all wrong. What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter.” "Spooky Action at a Distance"
― Albert Einstein
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Re: Is consciousness an illusion?

Post by The Beast »

In transcendental logic that which bounces off the dura mater is an object, and this is an idea. Immanent principles may have characteristics and hierarchies. What is it that we feel in the I hope?
It is that the hierarchies may be extendable, that is; present as chemistry in the structures producing the syllogisms.
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Re: Is consciousness an illusion?

Post by JackDaydream »

3017Metaphysician wrote: June 1st, 2022, 8:17 am
JackDaydream wrote: May 30th, 2022, 8:56 am
3017Metaphysician wrote: May 27th, 2022, 10:58 am
JackDaydream wrote: May 27th, 2022, 9:53 am

One aspect of the issue of the existence of 'the soul' is the way in which it was seen as the underlying basis, as psyche, underlying both the psyche and body. I think that this is consistent with Jung and the idea of the collective unconscious. It is parallel to Schopenhauer's idea of will.

The idea of the soul does also relate to the concept of the daimon, which goes back to Plato. A similar idea exists in some Eastern and esoteric traditions, including the writer, Paul Brunton, who speaks of the oversoul. Both the concept of the daimon and the oversoul suggest that the individual psyche is related to the larger psyche, which some may speak of as the Godhead. It may that this is where the individual's ultimate purpose can be found, especially in one's spiritual quest.

Of course, such a viewpoint is challengable because it can be regarded as being too bound up with a sense of purpose or divine plan, which may be the way humans find meaning. It can be asked how much is objective and how much is about subjective construction. However, in some ways the idea of the oversoul or daimon does make sense as the idea of blueprint in the psyche, just like the idea of DNA being the basis for the underlying structure of the body, as a memory inherent in the production of cell duplication throughout life.

The idea of the soul, or daimon, is disputed so much in relation to materialism. Going back to discussion previously, it can be problematic to have an either/or approach to materialism or idealism, because they both capture truths. Mind and body are like the two sides of the coin. The real challenge of the idea of the soul though, is that it gives rise to the possibility that life is not mere randomness, but about tuning in to patterns or larger pathways. It is like the microcosm being a reflection of the macrocosm. It probably also relates to Plotinus's idea of 'the One'.
Interesting... .

The soul could be viewed or interpreted as the cosmological "blueprint" or software that contains the qualitative (Qualia) effects of consciousness. Similarly, though complete Chaos and Order are extreme criterion to parse, mere randomness can happen not only to effect Darwinism, but also provide for the analogy of choice/free-will and determinism, which arguably both can co-exist. Accordingly, one can think of randomness like one's own steam of consciousness and how random thoughts just pop-up (like when you're driving your car on a long trip) all for us to freely select and choose from. Our way of Being in that sense is indeed free.

Interesting that there a 'psychology' to it all (like I think where you were going with the concept of soul) to where there is a fixed 'play' or Kantian a priori thing-in-itself that directs one's will (Schopenhauer) toward becoming (versus something that is static or inert), so that propagation or genetically coded emergence (that is set in motion much like the idea of the BB) can continue. As an aside, your post made me think of a psychological basis of the soul, where in this article he uses the concept of 'a play' in its place (this also ties to Kant's real notion of the synthetic a priori):

Chaos and order is the big subject of the universe – the creation of order out of chaos and the eventual return to randomness. This applies to the evolution of inanimate matter as well as all life forms including us. It should not be surprising that the operations of the brain itself encompass these processes. I certainly agree that “the brain’s main function is to protect us, like an umbrella, from chaos.” I propose that the brain not only operates via a balanced relationship between order and chaos on the micro level, but it operates in the same way on the macro level as well, fractal that the brain is.

It is consciousness that protects us from the chaos of our random environment. It gives coherence to actions and meaning by imposing its learned order as it incorporates chaos from the environment. The limbic-cortex creates a play in the theater of the brain. The ‘play’ is a synthetic representational world that consists of a cast of characters, personas, who relate together by feeling, scenarios, plots, set designs, and landscape. (See “The Secrets of Consciousness, the limbic-cortex is organized as a drama in the Brain.”). The ‘play’ constitutes the ‘order’ of consciousness. It gets established in the limbic-cortex over the first three years of life as the child fields his emotional environment and digests it through his genetic temperament. This results in an incredibly complex mapping throughout every aspect of his limbic cortex as a whole. Once established, the play operates as a top-down cortical process which imposes its already established order and form on experience.

We are constantly taking in new and uncharted experience at every waking moment. This is chaos. It is the interplay of chaos and order in the brain’s actual functioning that creates the stream of consciousness as mediated by the hippocampus. Cortical top down functioning allows us to manage chaos by imposing short-cut functionality and meaning to our moment to moment life. Consequently, we experience life through the synthetic and invisible prism of what we already believe. However, that is only half the story as to how the brain operates. If it were the whole story then new experience would be completely filtered and deterministic. Our lives would be Ground Hog Day. And of course it’s not.

It is through the brain’s ability to process chaos by being open to randomness itself, that we manage aliveness. The brain mediates new experience through the hippocampus and sends it into memory. It maps tracks of something new, on an ongoing basis, wiring new pathways all throughout the limbic cortex. This new experience is also filtered by the activated play, and is given meaning by the already established pathways, which extend and color the original play. This happens all day long. The unfixed and open capacity of the brain, filtered by the established order, as mediated by the hippocampus, generates a new, alive, and ongoing illusion of experience on an ongoing basis, a fusion of order and chaos.

New experience does not rewrite the established play. That remains intact via its established neuronal mappings and remains as ‘order’. However, when new experience is too powerful, limbically, it qualifies as trauma. Traumatic experience does rewrite the original play, and establishes a new one, grounded in sadism. The traumatic play then becomes the activated pathway of order and repeats and imposes itself on new experience. The antidote for a traumatic play is mourning. (See “Grief from a death of a loved one is part of life”. It is the biological process of the brain-body for healing recovery from loss”).

By operating in a balanced way between order and chaos, the brain integrates new information with its already stored order, present as the play. In doing so it generates an alive stream, albeit synthetic, in the waking trance.


Note he includes the limbic system where (meta-physical) feeling and emotion reside...enjoy!!
The quote you included is important in thinking how complex the daily processes of the nervous system is in achieving the order essential to life. I can remember thinking this when studying biology on my mental health nurse training. This order is often taken for granted.

The limbic system is important in pointing to the way in which emotions are a central part of life, as a foundation for consciousness. In this respect, consciousness is not simply in the head but distributed throughout the body. The whole fight and flight mechanisms are part of sentience, and are what make us similar to animals. It may be that the mind is often considered in relation to the brain, because thought is so essential to consciousness. The cerebral aspects of human consciousness may result in a tendency to miss the complexity of the role of the body in the process, especially in relation to the primacy of emotions.
Jack!

Yes, sentience is very powerful not only from the vantage point of say, human love, but in physiology also. From the effects on metabolism, nervous system, heart health, and so on, emotions play a powerful role in sustaining overall health and well Being. Common examples include how fear affects heart rate and many other things... . The metaphysic's of emotion is quite a phenomenon relative to causation...
Hello!

The relationship between sentience and consciousness, as well as the unconscious is so important in understanding health and disease. When I was studying biology as as part of mental illness nurse training, it was understanding how this is involved in a systemic way that suddenly biology as a subject became interesting. One important aspect is the vagus nerve which is responsible for blood pressure and how this can be affected by stress. Also, the immune system is affected by emotions. It is like the biological aspect of will, in relation to how one thinks and feels about life. It has varying degrees of consciousness awareness because some people seem to get sick without that much awareness of their emotions while others seem to have more of the emotional angst related to experiences.

Of course, there are underlying genetic tendencies which come into play in both physical and mental health, but some of it is about learned thinking mechanisms as the cognitive behavioral psychologists recognize. The move towards the cognitive more than the behavioral understanding does go beyond the idea of consciousness as an illusion.

It may be that there is a clear biological aspect to will with varying degrees of consciousness. In animals, the absence of concepts and self consciousness make this so different from in human beings who may dwell or reflect on events. But it does seem likely that animals as sentient beings and all of nature may have an underlying will. This may involve a collective memory unconsciously as the biologist, Rupert Sheldrake, argues in his theory of morphic resonance. This aspect could be seen as some inherent part of will operating through all living forms, as a kind of consciousness within the unconscious. Human beings, through consciousness and reflection on experiences and emotions have more ability to work with the experience of emotions and understanding of will, but, on some level, it may be present in life in general, in connection with what Freud described as Eros and Thanatos, the life and death instincts.
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Re: Is consciousness an illusion?

Post by The Beast »

Jack said.
“It has varying degrees of consciousness awareness because some people seem to get sick without that much awareness of their emotions while others seem to have more of the emotional angst related to experiences.”
“the absence of concepts and self consciousness make this so different from in human beings who may dwell or reflect on events.”

There is natural barrier or tentorium cerebelli to separate the contents. The narrative of events could be influenced by the cognitive method and the method is the basis of the understanding. The reason for this representation is the manifold and the energy producing dimensions. Orbiting the manifold are baseline chemical disks that at any time project themselves into the personal space in an inherited method of mind. The qualitative and quantitative analysis is the standardized professional to for example determine the levels of attention. But what is it the Biologist is saying?
It is also true that consciousness evolves in the lifetime of experience installing new methodology to uncover and also change the experiential and the formative content.
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Re: Is consciousness an illusion?

Post by JackDaydream »

The Beast wrote: June 1st, 2022, 11:42 am Jack said.
“It has varying degrees of consciousness awareness because some people seem to get sick without that much awareness of their emotions while others seem to have more of the emotional angst related to experiences.”
“the absence of concepts and self consciousness make this so different from in human beings who may dwell or reflect on events.”

There is natural barrier or tentorium cerebelli to separate the contents. The narrative of events could be influenced by the cognitive method and the method is the basis of the understanding. The reason for this representation is the manifold and the energy producing dimensions. Orbiting the manifold are baseline chemical disks that at any time project themselves into the personal space in an inherited method of mind. The qualitative and quantitative analysis is the standardized professional to for example determine the levels of attention. But what is it the Biologist is saying?
It is also true that consciousness evolves in the lifetime of experience installing new methodology to uncover and also change the experiential and the formative content.
Part of the problem is putting together an accurate picture of individual development of consciousness. It would seem that narrative identity, as in the 'I', which Descartes describes is central to reflective identity. The development of language in the individual, like the development of humanity plays a part in this. The body is the dimension through which the feelings are based, but also emotional development involves the emotions, especially in relation to attachments to others. The importance of attachment is recognised by the child development psychologists, such as John Bowlby.

In this process, the physical is the starting point but it may be that other dimensions are involved and here is where the collective unconscious comes in. It may involve intersubjective understanding as well as individual insight. This may be realised in dreams or the waking realm of imagination. In this process the individual is constructing an inner picture, with associations and links between the various components of experience. It may like the building of a sophisticated architectural design. Some of it may be more conscious than other aspects. It may depend on the ability to reflect on awareness and emotions. Some people are probably more able to do this and it may depend on how people have learned to think, even going back to how one was aided to think and reflect in childhood and through life developments. It may be assisted by therapy, including cognitive behavioral techniques.

The process could be described as one of psychological mindedness or even mindful awareness. It may be about being attuned to the sensory aspects of experiences alongside feeling tones of the emotions, as well as rational ideas and intuitive imagination. In this way, it is about the task of being more aware as a conscious being, or narrator, constructing and editing the various strands from the stream of consciousness.
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Entanglement - Quantum and Otherwise
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Predictably Irrational

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