How does a disembodied soul/mind/consciousness operate?

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Count Lucanor
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Re: How does a disembodied soul/mind/consciousness operate?

Post by Count Lucanor »

Gertie wrote:. But... we don't have an underlying explanation/theory for the mind/body correlation, their relationship. And all the hypotheses we come up with are not only problematic, they're not amenable to our usual methodologies of scientific testing
Actually there's no such issue. The idea comes from the long time habit of dualism. Once you realize that experiential states are experiential states of bodies, and not independent substances on their own, the dichotomy ceases to exist. Then we can go on and say that we don't have a complete theory of how the body of a living organism acquires experiential states, or just the same, that we don't have a complete theory of the brain, but the problem is not presented in terms of a relationship between a body and a mind. The mind is the body.
Gertie wrote: Because our usual ways of describing what the brain does, as you say, is a physical description of electro-chemical activity, physical cause and effect and so on, which simply doesn't include this extra something which is phenomenological experiential states. Hence the need for further elaboration of that specific claim.
Again, there's no "extra something" running as an independent process of neural activity in the brain. If the brain is working, there will be experiential states. And it is the whole organism, not just the brain, that goes through experience.
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Re: How does a disembodied soul/mind/consciousness operate?

Post by Sy Borg »

BigBango wrote: April 11th, 2018, 1:39 pm
Greta wrote: April 8th, 2018, 10:23 pm I think of it as a fractal-style repetition of prior evolution of brains.

In the beginning there was a metabolism. Stuff came into the first organisms and it was used by them to provide the energy needed from dissipating. There was no nervous system or brain. So, these things would have been attracted and repelled from things based on chemical interactions (clearly illustrated here in nonliving chemicals https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dySwrhMQdX4). That is rather an issue if they are attracted to something that will destroy them or if they fail to be attracted to nearby resources. So, over time, with numerous mutations, senses emerged because the microbe colony that is mindlessly repulsed from a potential threat will probably outlast those without that self-protective mechanism.

The (simplified) levels of integration I see emerge in nature and perhaps human society are:
• Small groups - eg. dogs, lions, hyenas, primates
• Large groups - bird flocks, fish schools, insect swarms, kangaroo mobs
• Colonies - bats, rats, corals
• Eusocial colonies - ants, bees, humans (many dispute this - as they are permitted :)
• Colonial integration - sponges, pyrosomes
• Nerve net - jellyfish, comb jellies, starfish
• Nervous system.

Humans have effectively been building a nervous system for the Earth (amongst other things), which senses the Earth's environment in numerous and complex ways. These "senses" - telescopes, spacecraft, sonic and magnetism detectors, particles detectors, weather forecasting equipment, geology, and so forth - are becoming increasingly integrated through growing global connectivity.

However, given the current playing out of tragedies of the commons - our inability to overcome local competition to global benefit - it appears that an equivalent to a brain for the Earth has not yet been developed by humanity, which should surprise no one! To put on my Nostradamus hat, China appears to see itself as best equipped to become such a "brain" - a central hub of the world - with its command economy and capacity to quash divisions.

When considering fractal layers, I don't doubt that the ultrahot ultrapressurised stuff of the big bang shares some qualities with us, but it's pretty subtle because an awful lot of plasma has flowed under the bridge since that time! I would posit the one remaining similarity between today's entities and the infant universe are the atomic nuclei. In context with what exists today, quarks would seem to be one of the more similar entities in existence to the ultra hot and high density stuff of the early universe.
Let me extend some of your ideas on the growth of the vitalism of our planet that pushes it toward qualifying as an entity in its own right (Gaia Earth).

Nikollai Kardashev categorized civilizations as Type I, Type II or III based on the power source that it could leverage to its advantage. Type I uses the power of the whole planet, Type II uses that of a star and Type III that of an entire galaxy. To quote Michio Kaku's interpretation of this classification from his popular book "Hyperspace":
Kaku has been banging on about the Kardashev scale seemingly forever (not to be confused with the Kardashian Scale, which also measures alien beings).

In time a galaxy may eventually connect to a point where its intelligent civilisations integrate to effectively become one functional unit with a shared aim (Type IV or V?). At that point I expect that that galaxy could do whatever it liked to any other galaxy it could access, and perhaps the combined galactic power would spread out rather than give other galaxies a chance to become peers (or a threat)?

I also wonder if such beings could be largely immaterial themselves - possibly a wireless cloud of sorts that cannot be physically harmed at all. Disembodies souls via technology?
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Re: How does a disembodied soul/mind/consciousness operate?

Post by Gertie »

Count Lucanor wrote: April 11th, 2018, 2:19 pm
Gertie wrote:. But... we don't have an underlying explanation/theory for the mind/body correlation, their relationship. And all the hypotheses we come up with are not only problematic, they're not amenable to our usual methodologies of scientific testing
Actually there's no such issue. The idea comes from the long time habit of dualism. Once you realize that experiential states are experiential states of bodies, and not independent substances on their own, the dichotomy ceases to exist. Then we can go on and say that we don't have a complete theory of how the body of a living organism acquires experiential states, or just the same, that we don't have a complete theory of the brain, but the problem is not presented in terms of a relationship between a body and a mind. The mind is the body.
Gertie wrote: Because our usual ways of describing what the brain does, as you say, is a physical description of electro-chemical activity, physical cause and effect and so on, which simply doesn't include this extra something which is phenomenological experiential states. Hence the need for further elaboration of that specific claim.
Again, there's no "extra something" running as an independent process of neural activity in the brain. If the brain is working, there will be experiential states. And it is the whole organism, not just the brain, that goes through experience.
It's common to handwave away alternative explanations to your preferred choice, see the problems with them rather than with your own. Hence the need to dig deeper than ''you realize that experiential states are experiential states of bodies, and not independent substances on their own'' which isn't an argument or explanation, it's simply noting mind/body correlation and re-stating your claim. Without testability there needs to be some compelling reason to accept any particular hypothesis, which addresses its own weaknesses.

And the 'extra something' of experiential states isn't accounted for in materialist explanations, that's the point. And hence requires a theoretical model of how the world works beyond what we currently have, a theory which encompasses both the material (body) and experiential (mind). We don't have that theory, we only have lots of competing hypotheses, hence making claims about the nature of mind/body relationship requires argumentation more compelling than alternative claims. Which is where the problem lies in Philosophy of Mind, how do we test one claim against another.
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Re: How does a disembodied soul/mind/consciousness operate?

Post by BigBango »

Greta wrote: April 11th, 2018, 5:15 pm
BigBango wrote: April 11th, 2018, 1:39 pm

Let me extend some of your ideas on the growth of the vitalism of our planet that pushes it toward qualifying as an entity in its own right (Gaia Earth).

Nikollai Kardashev categorized civilizations as Type I, Type II or III based on the power source that it could leverage to its advantage. Type I uses the power of the whole planet, Type II uses that of a star and Type III that of an entire galaxy. To quote Michio Kaku's interpretation of this classification from his popular book "Hyperspace":
Kaku has been banging on about the Kardashev scale seemingly forever (not to be confused with the Kardashian Scale, which also measures alien beings).

In time a galaxy may eventually connect to a point where its intelligent civilisations integrate to effectively become one functional unit with a shared aim (Type IV or V?). At that point I expect that that galaxy could do whatever it liked to any other galaxy it could access, and perhaps the combined galactic power would spread out rather than give other galaxies a chance to become peers (or a threat)?

I also wonder if such beings could be largely immaterial themselves - possibly a wireless cloud of sorts that cannot be physically harmed at all. Disembodies souls via technology?
Let's not forget the role of meaning in these speculations about advanced galaxies. Meaning has to do with what is valued. There has been much written about how the USA is not properly a melting pot, as is commonly said. Immigrants collect in china towns and various cultures collect together in neighborhoods where they can continue to enjoy and pass on their cultural values. Thus meaning tends to resist change. Planetary systems or galaxies likewise may merge but will tend to preserve their individual identities. We could look at it as the baggage civilizations carry that is not to be negotiated away.

Why, you might ask, am I walking lockstep with you {Greta} on this path toward the maturation of our pan-vitalism extrapolation. It is because in my theory the civilizations that have evolved in the pre Big Bang/Big Crunch universe must have been like those Type IV/V civilizations. The difference to the post big bang world is that their galactic black hole centers undergo a transform into our physical matter. Most likely three galactic centers (quarks) per neutron/proton. The advanced pre big bang civilizations then return after the plasma cools to seek out the cheaper energy sources that are available in the form of our atoms, their old black holes galactic centers.

The size of these micro civilizations I have calculated to be, as a nominal estimate, slightly larger than a Planc volume. Cells are the result of their combined effort to engineer the chemistry of planets into their own homes where they can easily extract the energy they need to preserve their meaning/identity baggage and proliferate their kind in the form of multi-celled organisms.

The reason I offer this theory in this thread is that it is a theory of what existential states might be, apart from the physical concentration of our experience by the brain/nervous system. The things we experience with our constructed senses resonate throughout our "soul" by means of the connections that exist between all the micro galactic civilizations that reside in our cells. That resonance is how we feel about our experience.
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Re: How does a disembodied soul/mind/consciousness operate?

Post by Count Lucanor »

Gertie wrote: It's common to handwave away alternative explanations to your preferred choice, see the problems with them rather than with your own. Hence the need to dig deeper than "you realize that experiential states are experiential states of bodies, and not independent substances on their own" which isn't an argument or explanation, it's simply noting mind/body correlation and re-stating your claim.
What alternative explanation? Asserting the existence of a mind-body dichotomy and then arguing about a necessary correlation that needs to be accounted for is not an explanation, nor an argument either. Evidently, such notion arises from a dualistic conception of the universe, which would need to be supported theoretically and empirically, something that does result problematic. A monistic conception, on the other hand, is way less problematic. At the level of description of experiential states, this translates as processes in the organic materials of which the agent's bodies are built of. We directly experience the world and are aware of ourselves as organisms with bodies. Everyday we test in all orders of life the immediate relationship between our bodies and the environment, and our state of awareness as occurring in bodily agents.
Gertie wrote: And the 'extra something' of experiential states isn't accounted for in materialist explanations, that's the point.
The point is: what extra something?
Gertie wrote: And hence requires a theoretical model of how the world works beyond what we currently have, a theory which encompasses both the material (body) and experiential (mind).
Again, it's a false dichotomy, where what is called the mind is supposed to be an entity that is the sole owner of the self, while the body is just an accessory container. That theoretical model is not sustainable in any grounds. In reality, experience is just the experience of a body, which includes the acts of perception, representation and memory. We certainly don't have all the pieces of the model, but we certainly know that the model (the only model that we have and makes sense) is a materialistic model, and the missing pieces will have the same materialistic nature.
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Re: How does a disembodied soul/mind/consciousness operate?

Post by Namelesss »

Pardon the intrusion, but I couldn't just let this bald assertion pass;
Count Lucanor wrote: April 12th, 2018, 9:56 pm We certainly don't have all the pieces of the model, but we certainly know that the model (the only model that we have and makes sense) is a materialistic model, and the missing pieces will have the same materialistic nature.
... without offering a bit of good reading;

The End of Materialism
http://www.newdualism.org/papers/G.D.Ma ... ialism.htm

or

Why Neural Correlates Of Consciousness Are Fine, But Not Enough
Rüdiger Vaas
http://cogprints.org/5810/1/Vaas-NCC.pdf

or, for fun;

Further evidence against materialism

First hint of 'life after death' in biggest ever scientific study

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science ... study.html

It seems that there is a growing community who might not agree with you about your 'materialism' as the be-all and end-all of anything.
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Re: How does a disembodied soul/mind/consciousness operate?

Post by Justintruth »

Wayne92587 wrote: April 11th, 2018, 2:37 am Justintruth;

What would 9/7 be?


By usual interpretation of the symbols it is a rational number.

9/7=1.28571428571429 according to excel.

My understanding for it to be irrational it has to be non-repeating and non terminating. 9/7 is terminating. 1/3 is repeating.
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Re: How does a disembodied soul/mind/consciousness operate?

Post by Duckrabbit »

Two roads have diverged on this thread (well, three if you count the discussion on rational numbers). I'll take up the one most recently trod by Count Lucinator and Gertie as it most closely addresses the issues I was wrestling with in my original posting.

I'll start by addressing this in terms of the soul as I think there are fewer subtleties in the viewpoint that that the soul is the actual person which lives on after the death of the body and goes to heaven or hell or lingers in purgatory or merely floats around watching the world or conversing with God or with other formerly embodied souls or what have you. No one can say how these souls perceive, communicate, think, or emote as these are all fumctions we know about because they are all things done by - or by means of - a physical body (what's a non-physical body? Is it like a not-wet liquid? A married bachelor? I know, with God (quoting Jesus) and theoretical physics, all things are possible, apparently even logical contradictions). We only know what perceiving is because we know from our own case and that of others that that's what bodily organs do. We know what seeing is because we have eyes, what smelling is because we have noses, and so on. We know what memories are because we can reflect on our sense perceptions. With these and with our bodily organ of the brain we can think. So we don't have any idea how a soul which is not a body could do these things. And I would maintain it is right to question if it even makes sense to say that something that is not a body with these organs could do these things. I might go all the way out and call it a logical impossibility. Can a fist be made without a hand? How different is it to say that a soul can perceive?

We also don't know what a soul looks like. Does it necessarily look like the body it used to coexist with? I doubt those who believe in souls would assent to such a necessity. So we don't know how a soul would behave, what sort of space it would inhabit, or even what it would look like. So why do we assert its existence? I know that for millennia various religions have pretty much staked their very being on these assertions and probably billions of people have believed it (although I would maintain we don't really know what such a belief would consist in except that it relieves the apparent nihilism of knowing that one actually dies when one actually dies). So, yes, it is radical to suppose otherwise. But are we really supposing anything to suppose otherwise? or is it only a logical deduction?

I could announce that I have, or there exists, something called a shlagomeritz. I can't tell you what it is, what it looks like, where you could find it, what it does - but I know that it exists! What would be the point? Would you say, "It may be true, but the question of its existence must remain undecided"? Would you not rather say that my assertion is pointless and utterly non-consequential, even for me whose assertion it is? If I know nothing about it I cannot be said to know anything. It's nonsense. But many who doubt the existence of souls will still say that perhaps they exist somewhere at the quantum level or in a parallel universe or some such place where eventually science will discover it. But even scientists would have no idea what to look for. So they're not going to find it! Just like they are not going to find my shlagomeritz.

It does get subtler when we begin discussing alternative "entities" like the mind or subjectivity itself. And I don't want to drag this on for now. But I would suggest that this is not a fundamentally different conversation than that dealing with souls. I think Count Lucinator and I are pretty much on the same page. But I don't think that saying that the mind does not, as such, exist, necessarily implies a dogmatic materialism. All forms of dogmatism pretty much rule out the give and take of conversation. I hope to explore this further and hope the conversation keeps going.
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Re: How does a disembodied soul/mind/consciousness operate?

Post by BigBango »

Hi Duckrabbit. I was attracted to this thread because I sensed in you a rare ability to frame these issues, as they have been expressed often in philosophical discussions, while, at the same time, not bashing the dualists too harshly. At the same time, you seemed to be willing to keep an open ear with only a tinge of admitted sarcasm hovering over your portrayal.

I have made several posts, in this thread, that don't fit neatly into either the materialist camp or the dual substance camp. Only Greta seems to have the sci-fi imagination needed to at least embrace parts of what I am proposing. In this post I would like to challenge your ears to at least entertain, with some added comprehension, some new ideas.
Duckrabbit wrote: April 13th, 2018, 9:18 pm Two roads have diverged on this thread (well, three if you count the discussion on rational numbers). I'll take up the one most recently trod by Count Lucinator and Gertie as it most closely addresses the issues I was wrestling with in my original posting.
By my count it's four.
Duckrabbit wrote: April 13th, 2018, 9:18 pm
I'll start by addressing this in terms of the soul as I think there are fewer subtleties in the viewpoint that that the soul is the actual person which lives on after the death of the body and goes to heaven or hell or lingers in purgatory or merely floats around watching the world or conversing with God or with other formerly embodied souls or what have you. No one can say how these souls perceive, communicate, think, or emote as these are all fumctions we know about because they are all things done by - or by means of - a physical body (what's a non-physical body? Is it like a not-wet liquid? A married bachelor? I know, with God (quoting Jesus) and theoretical physics, all things are possible, apparently even logical contradictions). We only know what perceiving is because we know from our own case and that of others that that's what bodily organs do. We know what seeing is because we have eyes, what smelling is because we have noses, and so on. We know what memories are because we can reflect on our sense perceptions. With these and with our bodily organ of the brain we can think. So we don't have any idea how a soul which is not a body could do these things. And I would maintain it is right to question if it even makes sense to say that something that is not a body with these organs could do these things. I might go all the way out and call it a logical impossibility. Can a fist be made without a hand? How different is it to say that a soul can perceive?
In the view of the dualists the soul is understood to be immaterial because we cannot directly detect its materiality. In my view, I hypothesize the existence of a more subtle physicality that only resembles our physicality in a fractal sense.

In my view, the universe before the big crunch, that I propose preceded the big bang, was filled with galaxies that had very old civilizations orbiting their black hole centers. The biggest difference between those galaxies and ours was the relative age of the civilizations and the size.

If you look at our physicality and inspect the nature of the nuclei of our atoms we can observe a similarity of the three quarks in a neutron or proton to be similar to the black hole centers of our galaxies, only very much smaller. I am saying that what if each of those three quarks of every nuclei were black hole centers of pre Big Crunch galaxies. I propose that many (trillions) of those pre -BB galaxies had advanced civilizations that fled the Crunch and did not come back until the plasma cooled into atoms. They came back to harvest the energy available in the newly forming familiar galaxies of our world. Taking our solar system as an average size system, the ratio the mass of it to the mass of our black hole center is the same as the ratio of the size of a pre BB civilization to our quarks. That calculates out to give us the size of a pre BB civilization. It is nominally slightly larger than a Planc' volume. Not easily detectable but physically there with advanced technology to harvest the energy now available to it and to interact with our macro physicality.

There are additional ways to bolster our confidence in these highly speculative propositions. I would argue that by "fractal induction" we could give credulity to many characteristics between us and our physical souls. I could go into the ways in which we could now explicate how our chemistry became biology through the aspirations and technical prowess of those civilizations that are within us. I could get into the specifics of how they could "know" things that we experience with our macro senses and communicate those "experiential states" throughout their civilizations. But enough for one bloated post. I would appreciate your reaction and use it to see where I might have weaknesses and would try to see where my thesis could be improved. But if you want to just blow it off as sci fi fantasy that's ok too.
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Re: How does a disembodied soul/mind/consciousness operate?

Post by Tamminen »

Duckrabbit wrote: April 13th, 2018, 9:18 pm It does get subtler when we begin discussing alternative "entities" like the mind or subjectivity itself.
It seems that there is no meaningful way of speaking about bodiless minds or souls or subjectivity without a material basis. But as soon as we speak about a basis, seeking a basis for something, we have already presupposed the being of that something for which we seek a basis. What is that something?

There is the cosmic evolution, starting from singularity and building more and more complex structures, and there is the biological evolution building living organisms, and one of those organisms happens to be my body. And it is my body. I cannot eliminate the 'I' from this description. Materialism and physicalism try to do this: they argue that there are only material organisms which have that peculiar property we call consciousness or mind. Perhaps they also try to explain subjectivity itself by saying that it is also a property of matter, so that there remains no 'I' at all. But by doing so they eliminate themselves. The subject is always there already, explicitly or implicitly – and in modern science usually implicitly, because science is unreflective in its empiricism. That is why we need philosophy, in spite of the fact that some physicists hate it.

So the being of the mind presupposes the being of matter, but also the being of matter needs a basis: it presupposes subjectivity for its being. There is no such thing as the universe in itself with no one being conscious of it. That would be absurd and self-contradictory. Subjectivity and the material universe are interdependent, but subjectivity gives the world its meaning and is the reason for its being.

When speaking about 'subjectivity' or 'mind' we are always in danger of reifying something which should not be reified. But by ignoring those concepts altogether we get into trouble. It is a question of seeing the basic structure of our existence.
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Re: How does a disembodied soul/mind/consciousness operate?

Post by Wayne92587 »

My use of 9/7 to represent an irrational number was, of course, not proper.

I see a correlation between improper and irrational.

9/7 is an improper fraction because it can not be used as real number.

How does a disembodied soul/mind/consciousness/ operate?

Irrationally!

I see the rules on fractions as as mathematical explanation on how man, he and she, as a duality, must operated in order to be a proper, enlightened Human Being, a Supreme Being.

I wish I had not referred to 9/7 as being an Irrational number, However when it comes to the his and her proper operation, there can be no separation between Mind and Body, these two are of the same, a Singularity having a dual quality being given two distinctly different names as the one issues forth as two.

Body is used as a metaphor to give definition to the Flesh, the Material, Body, animal, mortal Man.

Mind, Consciousness, Soul, Woman being used as metaphors for the Immaterial, the Spiritual body.

The problem arises because the Soul, the Spiritual Body, Consciousness, has no substance, no material worth.

The first woman, Eve, Pandora, Medusa, and the many Goddesses of the Moon have been used as metaphors for the Spiritual body, consciousness, soul, spiritual body.

Man’s purpose in life is the evolution of the psychic, the duality of the mind and body becoming One-1
The problem with the use of metaphors is that the metaphor takes on the life of what it is used to describe.

This has taken eons, but the plight of Women has been caused by fact that woman has been used as metaphor to given definition to the soul, spiritual body, consciousness; woman having no substance, no material worth.

Eve as the first woman was a creation, was not born of material substance, was born of the air, is Flighty, ambiguous.

Diana Goddess of the Moon, di meaning two, lunacy, insanity, the Irrationality of women being the cause of the downfall not of Man but of Mankind, he and she.

The Conscious mind, if it is to be be rational must not lose touch with the Physical Body.

The Sun is the light unto the World, the World of Reality, as seen in the Light of Day.

Did you know that some women have the ability to turn Man into a Beast, a Pig, a Male Chauvinistic Pig.

My thoughts on the duality of Man, mind and body are based on Chapter One-1 of Tao Te Ching, and the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus; "As above so below, as below so above.
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Re: How does a disembodied soul/mind/consciousness operate?

Post by Justintruth »

Wayne92587 wrote: April 14th, 2018, 1:42 pm My use of 9/7 to represent an irrational number was, of course, not proper.

I see a correlation between improper and irrational.

9/7 is an improper fraction because it can not be used as real number.

How does a disembodied soul/mind/consciousness/ operate?

Irrationally!

I see the rules on fractions as as mathematical explanation on how man, he and she, as a duality, must operated in order to be a proper, enlightened Human Being, a Supreme Being.

I wish I had not referred to 9/7 as being an Irrational number, However when it comes to the his and her proper operation, there can be no separation between Mind and Body, these two are of the same, a Singularity having a dual quality being given two distinctly different names as the one issues forth as two.

Body is used as a metaphor to give definition to the Flesh, the Material, Body, animal, mortal Man.

Mind, Consciousness, Soul, Woman being used as metaphors for the Immaterial, the Spiritual body.

The problem arises because the Soul, the Spiritual Body, Consciousness, has no substance, no material worth.

The first woman, Eve, Pandora, Medusa, and the many Goddesses of the Moon have been used as metaphors for the Spiritual body, consciousness, soul, spiritual body.

Man’s purpose in life is the evolution of the psychic, the duality of the mind and body becoming One-1
The problem with the use of metaphors is that the metaphor takes on the life of what it is used to describe.

This has taken eons, but the plight of Women has been caused by fact that woman has been used as metaphor to given definition to the soul, spiritual body, consciousness; woman having no substance, no material worth.

Eve as the first woman was a creation, was not born of material substance, was born of the air, is Flighty, ambiguous.

Diana Goddess of the Moon, di meaning two, lunacy, insanity, the Irrationality of women being the cause of the downfall not of Man but of Mankind, he and she.

The Conscious mind, if it is to be be rational must not lose touch with the Physical Body.

The Sun is the light unto the World, the World of Reality, as seen in the Light of Day.

Did you know that some women have the ability to turn Man into a Beast, a Pig, a Male Chauvinistic Pig.

My thoughts on the duality of Man, mind and body are based on Chapter One-1 of Tao Te Ching, and the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus; "As above so below, as below so above.
I get all that but it is all metaphysical. Metaphysics that, “thrusts aside our interpretive tendencies” and attempts to experience being unmodified resulting in enlightened experiencing of only the ecstasy of the One.

But we also have this ability to do a nihilating withdrawal and separate seeing from what is seen and assign being to symmetries. The essential meanings occur and we have our imagination infecting our senses.

Then we follow that and through examination of the nature of what is seen (and heard etc) we determine the laws and facts of nature.

Among those facts are as an example the standard model of quantum mechanics and the rest of the physical sciences.

But you here is also our instinctive interpretation of faces and our own emotions. There is love attached.

The supermarket line ceases to be a good candidate for a national park while in fact everything available in a park just makes it easier to see and experience some of the exctasy in the form of beauty.

No doubt there are physical neurology for all of this and it involves our biology of sexuality in the end.

The key is that it is all accidental - it just happens to be that way. But that is a critical part of an experience of truth. The fact that we have one moon for example.

As well hey say in the east: At first I saw a tree and it was a tree, and then I saw a tree and it was the Tao, and then I saw a tree and it was a tree.

You don’t want to get stuck at step two. Natural science and the essential facts of our lives are very important. We cannot throw them away based on existential awareness. Any contradiction between them is just a paradox fueled by equivocation.
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Re: How does a disembodied soul/mind/consciousness operate?

Post by Count Lucanor »

Namelesss wrote: April 13th, 2018, 4:01 am Pardon the intrusion, but I couldn't just let this bald assertion pass;
Count Lucanor wrote: April 12th, 2018, 9:56 pm We certainly don't have all the pieces of the model, but we certainly know that the model (the only model that we have and makes sense) is a materialistic model, and the missing pieces will have the same materialistic nature.
... without offering a bit of good reading;

The End of Materialism
http://www.newdualism.org/papers/G.D.Ma ... ialism.htm

or

Why Neural Correlates Of Consciousness Are Fine, But Not Enough
Rüdiger Vaas
http://cogprints.org/5810/1/Vaas-NCC.pdf

or, for fun;

Further evidence against materialism

First hint of 'life after death' in biggest ever scientific study

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science ... study.html

Nah. There's nothing in there that could be given serious thought as "evidence against materialism". It's just the usual set of complains about what some folks don't like about materialism, but they never provide any systematic theory, substantiated with empirical evidence, about the alternative. They are just happy to find a lame excuse for escaping materialism and finding comfort in the magical kingdoms of idealism. It's the same with the deniers of evolution, all their efforts to remain skeptical is in direct proportion to their eagerness to embrace Noah's Ark story.
Namelesss wrote: April 13th, 2018, 4:01 am It seems that there is a growing community who might not agree with you about your 'materialism' as the be-all and end-all of anything.
Not really. It's the same old court of credulous believers in nonsense. They'll accompany humanity until the very end.
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
Gertie
Posts: 2181
Joined: January 7th, 2015, 7:09 am

Re: How does a disembodied soul/mind/consciousness operate?

Post by Gertie »

Count Lucanor wrote: April 12th, 2018, 9:56 pm
Gertie wrote: It's common to handwave away alternative explanations to your preferred choice, see the problems with them rather than with your own. Hence the need to dig deeper than "you realize that experiential states are experiential states of bodies, and not independent substances on their own" which isn't an argument or explanation, it's simply noting mind/body correlation and re-stating your claim.
What alternative explanation? Asserting the existence of a mind-body dichotomy and then arguing about a necessary correlation that needs to be accounted for is not an explanation, nor an argument either. Evidently, such notion arises from a dualistic conception of the universe, which would need to be supported theoretically and empirically, something that does result problematic. A monistic conception, on the other hand, is way less problematic. At the level of description of experiential states, this translates as processes in the organic materials of which the agent's bodies are built of. We directly experience the world and are aware of ourselves as organisms with bodies. Everyday we test in all orders of life the immediate relationship between our bodies and the environment, and our state of awareness as occurring in bodily agents.
Gertie wrote: And the 'extra something' of experiential states isn't accounted for in materialist explanations, that's the point.
The point is: what extra something?
Gertie wrote: And hence requires a theoretical model of how the world works beyond what we currently have, a theory which encompasses both the material (body) and experiential (mind).
Again, it's a false dichotomy, where what is called the mind is supposed to be an entity that is the sole owner of the self, while the body is just an accessory container. That theoretical model is not sustainable in any grounds. In reality, experience is just the experience of a body, which includes the acts of perception, representation and memory. We certainly don't have all the pieces of the model, but we certainly know that the model (the only model that we have and makes sense) is a materialistic model, and the missing pieces will have the same materialistic nature.
So could you lay out your argument for materialist monism?
Namelesss
Posts: 499
Joined: November 15th, 2017, 1:59 am

Re: How does a disembodied soul/mind/consciousness operate?

Post by Namelesss »

Count Lucanor wrote: April 14th, 2018, 8:13 pm Not really. It's the same old court of credulous believers in nonsense. They'll accompany humanity until the very end.
So, that is how you dismiss any alternative Perspectives that disagree with your egoically necessarily defended 'beliefs'?
Whatever works for you.
Flat-earthers say the exact same thing.
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