Is consciousness fundamental?

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Quotidian
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Re: Is consciousness fundamental?

Post by Quotidian »

I would not say 'mental concept of consciousness'. Consciousness comes before any kind of concept - you can't entertain a concept, unless you're conscious to begin with. But, aside from that quibble, I agree with the point above, even though it sounds backwards from a materialist point of view.
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Vijaydevani
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Re: Is consciousness fundamental?

Post by Vijaydevani »

Quotidian wrote:I would not say 'mental concept of consciousness'. Consciousness comes before any kind of concept - you can't entertain a concept, unless you're conscious to begin with. But, aside from that quibble, I agree with the point above, even though it sounds backwards from a materialist point of view.
If that were true, then humans would not be alone in their ability to think and to know that they think.
A little knowledge is a religious thing.
Belinda
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Re: Is consciousness fundamental?

Post by Belinda »

Quotidian wrote:I would not say 'mental concept of consciousness'. Consciousness comes before any kind of concept - you can't entertain a concept, unless you're conscious to begin with. But, aside from that quibble, I agree with the point above, even though it sounds backwards from a materialist point of view.
Quotidian, that's why I habitually write "brain-mind" (not originally my own term). Because brain and mind are two aspects of the same thing, that is, the brain-mind.

Vijaydevani wrote regarding the above from Quotidian:
If that were true, then humans would not be alone in their ability to think and to know that they think.
A useful observation. We usually believe, and for good empirical reasons, that other animals' abilities to conceptualise come nowhere near that which humans have.
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Rr6
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Re: Is consciousness fundamental?

Post by Rr6 »

Your "sign" is a line-of-relationship ex EMRadiation or gravity or any direct sensorial experience. You missed that.

Moon effects water on Earth. Water on Earth effects moon and Earth as whole effects moon.

Moon Observer/observe <-gravity-> water/Earth observed/Observer

Resultant of gravity is 1} tides and 2} moons orbit of Earth.

O<-( )->O

or as,

(O<-->O)

or as

(O<-( )->O)

or as,

O<-oooooooooooooooooooo->O

Depending on what size, and qualifying shapes/pattern we assign gravity or that actually applies to gravity.

In this scenario above, the observed/observers are the primary set of two-ness/otherness, and do not see gravity, and in some cases do not recognized gravity or anything else's existence.

O<-line-of-relationship->O

Your "sign' is a line-of-relationship, or a set of two or more lines of relationship. Bill Gaedes calls it an Electro-Magnetic rope/thread. However, I think Bill stuff goes back to Walter Russels ideas from the early 1900's.

http://www.youstupidrelativist.com/index3.html

https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Rope ... 2821987848

r6

JamesOfSeattle wrote:
Rr6 wrote:"sign"? As is in a Stop sign?
Line-of-relationship makes sense, "sign" does not. imho.
Sign as in indicator of something else. A stop sign is a subtype of sign, but the interpretation is very complicated. A sign requiring simpler interpretation would be smoke, fire being the object. You can get even simpler.
It's not that Observed -> Observer is wrong, it's just that you're leaving out some key parts in the middle. That's what Hoffman and Tononi do.

*
"U"niverse > UniVerse > universe > I-verse < you-verse < we-verse < them-verse
Fooloso4
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Re: Is consciousness fundamental?

Post by Fooloso4 »

Vijaydevani:

I have a problem with the statement that consciousness creates brain activity. Any definition of consciousness can only be a result of brain activity and not the other way round.
Hoffman’s claim, if I understand it correctly, is that consciousness is not caused by material states but is prior to and the cause of the physical world. Conscious agents are not limited to entities with brains. That consciousness is fundamental appears to be a panpsychic claim.
If that were true, then humans would not be alone in their ability to think and to know that they think.
He is not claiming that thinking is fundamental but that consciousness is. It seems to me that it is quite clear that we are not alone in our ability to think, but any entity to which I attribute the ability to think is an entity that has brain activity.
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Re: Is consciousness fundamental?

Post by Vijaydevani »

Fooloso4 wrote:
Vijaydevani:

I have a problem with the statement that consciousness creates brain activity. Any definition of consciousness can only be a result of brain activity and not the other way round.
Hoffman’s claim, if I understand it correctly, is that consciousness is not caused by material states but is prior to and the cause of the physical world. Conscious agents are not limited to entities with brains. That consciousness is fundamental appears to be a panpsychic claim.
I got that. But in such a case, consciousness would have to be a pretty complex and powerful phenomenon even if we consider the breadth to which humans use it. By comparison, consciousness seems to have a dumbed down version in other animals. I would imagine that if consciousness pre-existed, then there definitely would be other species with at least the same ability to use consciousness as we do or rather consciousness would impose its power and complexity in less sophisticated brains.
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Re: Is consciousness fundamental?

Post by Fooloso4 »

Vijaydevani:

But in such a case, consciousness would have to be a pretty complex and powerful phenomenon even if we consider the breadth to which humans use it.
I have only read the links to Hoffman’s work posted here. What I do not know is whether he conceives of consciousness as bottom up or top down. If bottom up then complexity and power is emergent and results from the interactions of conscious agents that on their own have little complexity of power. The top down model seems more problematic – it requires the existence of a consciousness that is far more complex and powerful than human consciousness that existed prior to the existence of any physical entity: AKA God. But even the bottom up model seems to entail the existence of consciousness prior to the existence of conscious agents, or at least physical conscious agents.
I would imagine that if consciousness pre-existed, then there definitely would be other species with at least the same ability to use consciousness as we do …
I do not see anything that precludes this. There may be no other species on earth that has this ability but the universe is much bigger than our little sandbox.
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Re: Is consciousness fundamental?

Post by Vijaydevani »

Fooloso4 wrote:
I would imagine that if consciousness pre-existed, then there definitely would be other species with at least the same ability to use consciousness as we do …
I do not see anything that precludes this. There may be no other species on earth that has this ability but the universe is much bigger than our little sandbox.
No, I think you misunderstood me. If consciousness pre-existed, then it would be a powerful and intelligent force and would have the capacity to overcome brain ability, wouldn't it?
A little knowledge is a religious thing.
Belinda
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Re: Is consciousness fundamental?

Post by Belinda »

Vijaydevani wrote:
No, I think you misunderstood me. If consciousness pre-existed, then it would be a powerful and intelligent force and would have the capacity to overcome brain ability, wouldn't it?
Whatever this ghostly thing is that you hypothesise and refer to as "consciousness" it isn't consciousness which is usually defined as one of several brain states.
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Felix
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Re: Is consciousness fundamental?

Post by Felix »

Fooloso4 said: Hoffman’s claim, if I understand it correctly, is that consciousness is not caused by material states but is prior to and the cause of the physical world.
He didn't say that consciousness causes the physical world, only that they are interdependent. Preexistence does not imply causation.

Perhaps by "conscious agents" Hoffman means self-conscious entities. Consciousness does precede self-consciousness in the evolutionary process. It preexists in an undeveloped or unevolved state, just as the oak tree preexists in the acorn. If consciousness is eternal, it is always there, but only apparent in it's temporal expressions.
"We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are." - Anaïs Nin
Vijaydevani
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Re: Is consciousness fundamental?

Post by Vijaydevani »

Belinda wrote:Vijaydevani wrote:
No, I think you misunderstood me. If consciousness pre-existed, then it would be a powerful and intelligent force and would have the capacity to overcome brain ability, wouldn't it?
Whatever this ghostly thing is that you hypothesise and refer to as "consciousness" it isn't consciousness which is usually defined as one of several brain states.
Belinda, I am not hypothesizing anything. This is the consciousness claimed in the OP by Hoffman which I have a problem with.
A little knowledge is a religious thing.
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Re: Is consciousness fundamental?

Post by Bohm2 »

Fooloso4 wrote:Hoffman’s claim, if I understand it correctly, is that consciousness is not caused by material states but is prior to and the cause of the physical world. Conscious agents are not limited to entities with brains. That consciousness is fundamental appears to be a panpsychic claim.
Yes regarding the first part but Hoffman's model is not panpsychist. He discusses the difference between panpsychism and his model in a number of the links previously provided. This short (~ 18 min video) ia also worth seeing:
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Rr6
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Re: Is consciousness fundamental?

Post by Rr6 »

http://ccosmology.blogspot.com/2014/02/ ... shift.html

~~~(~)~~~~(~)~~~...Gaedes Rope Hypothesis..see link above as conscious EMR agent

Gaedes gravity is resultant of EMRadiation tension...as I understand or misunderstand it.

(^v)(^v) (^v)(^v) (^v)(^v)...r6's tangent vectoral tori..very similar

(-><-)(-><-)(-><-)(-><-)...another way of expressing r6's concept....as consciousness agent.

To be clear with my r6 stuff, those geodesic arcs invert/invaginate >< at the peak of an abstract great circle on outer positive surface and inner negative surface of the of vectorial tori.

r6
Resultant of gravity is 1} tides and 2} moons orbit of Earth.
O<-( )->O
(O<-->O)

(O<-( )->O)

O<-oooooooooooooooooooo->O

O<-line-of-relationship->O
JamesOfSeattle wrote: (Nested quote removed.)

Sign as in indicator of something else. A stop sign is a subtype of sign, but the interpretation is very complicated. A sign requiring simpler interpretation would be smoke, fire being the object. You can get even simpler.
It's not that Observed -> Observer is wrong, it's just that you're leaving out some key parts in the middle. That's what Hoffman and Tononi do
*[/quote
]
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Fooloso4
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Re: Is consciousness fundamental?

Post by Fooloso4 »

Bohm2:

Hoffman's model is not panpsychist. He discusses the difference between panpsychism and his model in a number of the links previously provided.
You are right. Although I did not find a discussion of the difference I see that I misunderstood what he meant by the interaction of conscious agents. I am, however, still struggling with making sense of his notion of conscious realism.

I found the following interview helpful:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/2016042 ... t-reality/

He says:
The central lesson of quantum physics is clear: There are no public objects sitting out there in some preexisting space.

Quantum mechanics says that classical objects — including brains — don’t exist.

As a conscious realist, I am postulating conscious experiences as ontological primitives, the most basic ingredients of the world. I’m claiming that experiences are the real coin of the realm.

Objective reality is just conscious agents, just points of view.
But he also says:
[An organism may not] see any distinction between small and large [quantities of a resource] — it only sees red — even though such a distinction exists in reality.
What then does it mean that the distinction between small and large exists in reality if objective reality is just points of view? Of course small and large are relative to the relevant observer, and the ability to see a sufficient quantity of a resource as red may be sufficient for survival, but an adequate quantity of a resource, although species dependent, is not a perceptual but rather a biological determination. The resource exists independent of the ability of the organism to perceive it. If there is not enough of a resource essential to an organism’s survival available, it will die.

Is Hoffman doing something along the lines of Kant’s distinction between the noumenal and phenomenal world? Along these lines it is interesting to note that for Kant objectivity is universal subjectivity. The objective world is not the world as it is in itself but the world as it is for us.
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Felix
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Re: Is consciousness fundamental?

Post by Felix »

If we are incapable of knowing what reality is, we can only know our superficial sensory conceptions of it, than what are the "truth perceiving organisms" in his computer simulations? He talked about running computer simulations to compare the survival rate of "truth perceiving organisms" (those who "see reality as it is"), versus ecologically fit organisms (those who are well adapted to their environment).

Reality is a collective hallucination, is that the bottom line here?
"We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are." - Anaïs Nin
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