Is Consciousness an Emergent?

This question raises deep questions of time and the nature of knowledge and ego and even whether Wilber's four quadrants are properly considered of equal or symmetrical status.

Any takers?

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

My answer to the question is yes, I think it is.  Here is some context for musings that will follow.

I've recently been observing and investigating certain inner processes relating to the nature of the 'me' I know as me, of knowledge, etc.  One interesting little meditation I've been performing is this: I think of any part of my body, and tell myself “I have no idea how I work.”  This meditation has elicited interesting feelings I associate as activating movement of my self line.  It has also elicited investigation how I could rightfully feel I know almost nothing of how I work, while in my being and functioning I am that complexity.  How is it 'I' could not know what I am?

This disjunct between being and knowing became the occasion for questioning whether and in what manner consciousness is an emergent.  It seems to me the greater functioning, or the greater developed complexity, resides in the complexity that resides in my physical structure, and that my conscious awareness, though perhaps based on that complexity, is in comparison rather simple and trite.  This perspective of course doesn't sit well with the typical spiritualist view that consciousness is the be all and end all of everything, and in fact is everything.

I'm not categorically dismissing that consciousness could be everything, but the notion has never sat well with me, and it renders the being-knowing gap an uncomfortable disharmonious fact in the middle of the theory.  In discussions over on IA, I've adopted the phrase Vast Blob of Consciousness to jog assumptions around the consciousness-is-all position.  It has crossed my mind that this position could well be a form of naive conscious-I inflation, whereby a part of the whole that is assumes position as the whole. 

But back to my question regarding conscious emergence.  What is an emergent?  Emergence, of course, implies time, such that an emergent can be posited to be some quality or manifestation that appears under certain developmental conditions.  This definition seems to fit a wide range of evidence of evolved structures, and suggests, in the conditionality it posits, that one 'thing' appears as consequential to developments of processes not properly named by or as that thing.

Let me illustrate this by describing the origin of mass.  Mass was Newton's baby, his absolute and bedrock, and forms among the more central notions—was the central  notion—in physics.  For Newton, mass' absolute character rendered it, much like consciousness to the consciousness-is-all proponents, unconditioned, unemergent, a true given.  Newton described mass in these terms:

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Amazing Tom. Thanks.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

There's a lovely theme in Jungian literature I would like to add as an addendum to the above.  It's the theme of drowning that can appear at critical junctures in fairy tales.  This theme appears in one of my favourite fairy tales, a Persian tale bearing the title “Investigation of the Bath that is the Castle of Nothingness.”  Notice immediately the reference to bath in the title. 

In this tale, the main actor seeks the goal which, as it turns out, is to find the diamond that appears upon killing the parrot that guards the secret of the Bath.  It is interesting that what must be killed is a parrot, ie, saying the words of finding without having the realization of which.

On his journey to this end, the actor, Hatim, at one moment must bathe himself.  When he pours a third bowl of water over his head, a thunderous noise sounds, everything goes dark, and the place of his bath becomes a large closed room that begins filling with water.  It fills and takes Hatim floating as it fills to toward the roof, impending death.  Marie Louise von Franz's interpretation of this ritual drowning, this baptism, is instructive:

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Wow, Tom.  This is a really lovely series of posts.  Tomorrow morning I'll return to it to give more attention to a response.  For now, I just wanted to offer something that immediately came to mind, and I'm not sure yet where I'm going with it either.  I guess what I'm questioning, when I look at the boundary of the me and not-me, of consciousness and non-consciousness or pre-consciousness or however we frame it, is whether there is any decisive place we could draw a line, to determine a definitive before and after.  One reason I think of this is because, on several occasions – such as on intensive meditation retreats – I have suddenly become aware of parts of my body that are normally totally opaque to me.  For instance, I have experienced inner organs becoming illuminated – I could sense them clearly inside me, as clearly as I can sense my hand.  This makes me think that what we call consciousness or the field of consciousness is perhaps more like a focal setting (to use a TSK term) or a particular “assemblage” organized around an assemblage point (to use Castaneda's old term), with other settings (other field boundaries) possible…  I agree that the lit field we call consciousness is rather trivial compared to the vast general darkness of our organismic ongoingness, but I am not certain that what is 'dark' to us is necessarily always, or inherently, so. 

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

On the physics side of this question, you might be interested in this essay by Bitbol.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

I too really want to get into this thread but am constrained by time. Thanks muchly, Tom.

love

nicole

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Tom, Upon reading both the scientific and the mythic descriptions of consciousness as a container/reducer or as “residual” (of a quark, gluon masseless process) it dawned on me that by “conscious” we normally mean “conscious” of some “thing”. I have interpreted the Christian “children of the light” in two ways. The first is how we normally use the word consciousness. A light shines on objects, so we can then see them and be aware of them. This is the first sense that few folks explore beyond. We tend to have a view of reality as matter, so seeing things (which requires light) seems the ego-consciousness's idea of “enlightenment”. But the second possible meaning of Children of the light is that they are the light (energy) themselves and can sense light in and through the dark matter, because it comes from a pre-emergent source deep within, at the core of the human flare we call a human life or human being. Like Balder, I too have seen this light in my mind's eye in relation to my inner body zones. It would seem that if this was the result of meditation, and not imagination alone, that the letting go effect of meditation is re-connecting to a light within. I have even sensed that it was a light within darkness, a different sort of light than the light which we seem to acknowledge once it illuminates material objects - a finer “light”, probably a purer, pre-emergent, form of energy that is at the core of us physically manifested beings. If “spirit” was an early way to say “energy”, and “flesh” was an early way to say “matter”, then the ancients knew in an intuitive way that energy (pure energy) was more real than matter. Mater is a “residual” effect. As Wayne Dyer says, we are spiritual beings in a physical form. An angel in the trash room of a hotel. 
   Darrell 

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Just one clarification of something I said above.  With all proper qualifications in mind yadda yadda, in asking if consciousness is an emergent I'm largely asking, I think, if there exists something that is not consciousness that can support the distinction 'consciousness' and can be experienced, in some respect, as “that's not consciousness.”  My referring above to Andrew Cohen's renewed appreciation for a 2P approach to God seems to me to replicate the structure I'm questioning for consciousness.  A 2P position puts one, in relevant, identifiable ways, in the position of vis a vis something one is not.  This position—I here, you there, you being something I'm not—is the position I'm questioning for consciousness: me-consciousness here, you non-consciousness there.

I've many times perceived that something is happening in consciousness that is for consciousness only, or something like that.  For instance, in my semi-comprehensive reading of physics, I've gained an appreciation of the interconnection of what are called things.  This appreciation has translated into developments in my self line, such that, with very real emotional affects in my life, I have over time relaxed into this interconnection, the sense of separation having been beaten down by repeated exposure to, among other things, scientific developments that show that thinghoodness—separation—is a chimera.

But then in looking over such developments, I'm left with more than a few curiosities.  The unity I can perceive by engaging even just scientific insights was at some point new to my consciousness, but it presumably wasn't new to the operations of the matter-zone in question!  Matter and its interconnectivity did not appear because lowly speck-o-dirt Tom just happened to learn that matter is interconnected.  Again, the strange thing is that I am this interconnection—and god knows what else—but can actually exist thinking, perceiving and feeling I'm not.  That “I” is of course identifiable as the ego, but I wonder if it's just plain old consciousness.  Any change that reduces this egoic or conscious sense of separation looks to be happening in-consciousness-only, in a realm that doesn't really touch whatever I mean by matter, which, to repeat, has always presumably operated and existed in the non-separate ways I've only recently learned and realized.

Things get stranger still because the particularity of the scientific insights I'm speaking of were in toto unavailable to the Newtonian era, which quite evidently had to go through its exciting but presumably grating thinghood-separation stage, this as a base, as things then occurred, on which to establish the latest scientific formulations of interconnection.  Of course, certain inner types, probably led by the Tibetans, realized sooner than science that interconnection is truer than not, but even these disciplines presumably had their necessary separation phase such that, but for that phase, no nice Buddha feeling of unity.

That unity, it seems, is an objective fact in realms other than consciousness, by which I mean it exists whether I appreciate it exists or not: quantum non-locality existed well before Alain Aspect performed his experiments in 1982, etc.  The realization of unity thus seems to be consciousness-specific, and a latecomer, a form of learning in a (newly emerged and thus babylike?) level that, with significant effort in that level, can in some ways replicate in that level the unity that seems to exist objectively outside it.  Or something like that.
__________________________________________

Bruce, your comments and questions are pointed and relevant as always.  My initial question—something like: is there something consciousness is not—fumbles on the uncertainty that I don't really know what it means to say something that something else is not.  I think I can draw this distinction—any distinction—seemingly temporally, for sure, but not in other ways.  For instance, assuming the correctness of a certain scientific view, there existed a time when matter was not; it is thus relevant to speak of not-matter.  I can extend this: there existed a time when life was not; it is thus relevant to speak of not-life.

However, this saying “not” really must close its eyes to:

1) potentiality (which exists in actuality!); and

2) necessary temporal developments.

Thus:

1) matter presumably exists in potential in energy and in quarks; life exists in potential in non-life; etc., and

2) given enough time, quarks will necessarily produce mass, energy matter, non-life life.

I thus cannot, except with squinted eyes, separate components from what seems their fundamental unity, sometimes with but an added dash of time and circumstance.  On the other hand, the many has its own orderings, and those orderings seem to revolve around this question of emergence, ie, time, where much can be said and seen comparing earlier and later. 

Temporal development of course assumes the later is dependent in an asymmetrical (temporal) dependence: molecules depend on atoms in identifiable ways atoms don't depend on molecules.  Molecules are in this sense more dependent, more fragile, if you will.  Consciousness, as perhaps the latest holonic emergent, could well be the most fragile, most dependent 'thing' in the universe.  A little sip of alcohol shows an aspect of this dependence clearly.  But as to drawing sustained boundaries between thing and not-thing, I'm with you, any distinction can fall apart very quickly and will hold only for limited purposes.  Even experientially, as you note.  A little hiccup here in my functioning and, voila, shining, illuminated organs.  But then, as my left brain kind of regathers from such events, I will almost inevitably qualify: “but-then-again-those (organs didn't change your consciousness changed) or-some-such.”  And so does the game continue!

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Tom and Team,
Great series of posts Tom.

I have very little doubt that consciousness is an emergent (not an underlying).

Several things I can perhaps add.
Recent work identifies the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) as the source of our spatial orientation, and the source of “out of body” experiences - see http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427291.100-out-of-your-head-leaving-the-body-behind.html

The idea that our intuition is sourced in the holographic nature of our storage and retrieval systems - and is a “side effect” of the process of recall using interference patterns.   This explains many levels of experience - the source of our internal voices, and ideas, and visions, and inspirations; the connectedness with all things.   Through holographic recall we are connected to all patterns in existence, and through holographic contemplation of infinities to all of possibility space.

Thus while I can imagine the possibility that life evolved on some other planet long before life on earth, and it is possible that some of non-human non-terrestrial evolved life form with vastly superior technology does exist; I have no direct experience or evidence of that, and thus it appears probable that death of the body is indeed the end of consciousness at this point in our evolution.  
We may ourselves be able to develop some sort of technology to provide a matrix for consciousness that is not connected to our body (known in some communities as “uploading”), and at this time we do not have that technological capability, and it seems quite some way off to me - I think the problems is about 10^18 more complex than most writers on the subject seem to think - pushing the boundary back some 70 years.

It thus seems probable that self awareness is a very small part of what goes on in a human body, and has a range of capacities that while linked to the body (as quarks are to hadrons, and they to atoms, and they to molecules, to cells, to nerves, ….) are also of an entirely different realm, which realm appears to be not only infinite, but composed of an infinite number of dimensions, each of which is itself infinite - which realm we know as “possibility”.

We seem to have the ability to manefest possibility into reality - otherwise known as creativity.  It appears to be infinite!

I think Jung, while interesting, has a seriously overactive imagination.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Btw, Ted, interesting article on TPJ.  I liked Metzinger's analogy to memory to explain the sense of seeing oneself, that we tend to view ourselves in memory from a 3P perspective. 

I also agree that realms are not what we typically think as finite.  I personally do not see any finiteness-of-itself anywhere, though I do see particularity.  Not sure how to combine these two.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Perhaps, the answer to this is:
Non-consciousness would be anything outside of the perspective being touted as primary.
Also, when we think of consciousness we have to consider its kinds, such as self-consciousness, un-consciousness, density of consciousness, and lucidity of consciousness and also that non-consciousness can be an example of this:
Sometimes when I am driving I forget that I am driving, [ and start thinking of something] and when I return to consciousness of the road or that I am driving, I wonder why I didn’t have an accident.
Also, besides consciousness there is something we forget about it: that is the quality of it.
It seems here we are just dealing with the quantity of it.
Religion and mysticism, I think, is more concerned with the quality of it.
Philosophers with its quantity.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Zakariyya, Yes, we can't ignore the fact that much of our discussion here may be a matter of semantics over the word “consciousness”. Even in the philosophy (quantity-oriented) of thought, David Bohm, in his book Thought as a System, recognizes a vast difference between conditioned, noun-like “thought”(or “conscious” content) and a more dynamic and creative and adaptive form that he called “proprioceptive thought” which is aware of itself but not with all the catagorization of regular thought.    
   Bohm's dead thought system is somehow transcended by proprioceptive thought, a kind of “thought” that is, as you say, “qualitatively”different than regular thought or regular “consciousness”. Ilumined consciousness or “living word” includes the very same deeper awareness that Tom seemed to see as left behind when one becomes “conscious” or is using the conscious mind.
    To me, even the word “emergent” has an enlivened, not dead, connotation. I see emergent as not being merely a residual of a more primary cause, but as a fountain that dynamically flows from the depths onto/into the surface of material existance (existance means “to stand out”). When I see the question “Is consciousness an emergent” it means to me that consciousness, true consciousness, is saved/resurrected/restored/replenished in much the same way that a well or fountain replinishes life by providing water. 
    Science has the habit of “thinking like matter”(more in the “quantity” way you mention). If you think like matter, as a scientist (perpetuating the “flatland” that Wilber points out), then the word “emergent” would be a “dis” to “consciousness”. Matter always leaves things behind.  
   But energy-like fountains and flares don't leave their prime causes behind; they reflect, express, and incarnate the deeper source that causes them. Actually, I don't even think the normal meaning of the word “cause” holds up when we think “like energy (or like the ancient reference to it - “spirit”). Cause is replaced with something like synergy or Dyer's co-creating or Wilber's “tetra-arising”. When we think in a manner similar to how energy acts or presents itself phenomenologically, then our saying that “consciousness is an emergent” is actually a compliment, a total “non-dis”. to “consciousness”. 
   My unease or minor discontentment with Wilber is not that he overlooked the Hericlitian (sp? in reference to the ancient philosopher Hericlitus who argued that we never step in the same river, or in the same place in the river, twice. He saw the the stuff most real as being movement or stuff in motion, rather than Parmidides', sp?,  metaphysics of static, motionless, view objects as constituting “reality”.) truth of a dynamic energy-like nature of ultimate reality, but that the visual model we lean on while “mapping” our way to integration, is very dependent on scientific-like “thinking like matter”, in that it is a fairly static presentation. 
   The map doesn't show the yinyang or holographic interrelatedness of the 4 quads or the 8 zones. Wilber describes the unfolding, but then leads us to use this very not-unfolding map that still seems still - seems burdened with, or contaminated by,  “thinking like matter”.   
  Unlike the visible map itself, Wilber refreshes me when he does talk about an unfolding, emerging, evolving process that is going on behind or through the map. The visually-presented stages are approximating an energy-like unfolding, fountain, or flare, but look like (and lead us to think like) some static ladder. Perhaps my minor discontent is the related more to the limitations of a visual model, the type of which can be printed in a book. Still, I sense a better drawing - one that draws us out - is possible. 
   I thank God for Wilber's contributions to understanding the way things are, but I also thank God that I strongly sense a more “emerging” reality. The only semi-rational, or transrational, way I can conceptualize this sensed reality is to embrace flatland science's discovery of energy and energy fields, as a metaphor (beyond the physical form), of a qualitatively different way of thinking, or of being “conscious”. A funny thing happened when thinking like matter. Energy, and all its mysterious and dynamic ways, was discovered. And yet science has yet to embrace its own discovery. Why not let the disciplines of the UL help? A new understanding (and new dialogue) might well (as in a well springing up) “emerge”. 
    Darrel 

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Nice post, Darrel.  I agree with much of what you say.

As to maps, strange, I've never seen a map of the future.   ; )

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Darrel

I think your (and KWs) “flatland” accusation is not against science, rather it is against a mindset, one of authority, of hard causality.   That is not science in my mind.

Science is about testing what works in reality.

Many of the tools of science have been used by those with agendas of hegemony of thought at some level, political, scientific, economic, ….  and that is not what I would call true science.

For me, true science is about as far from flatland as it is possible to get.
It is about exploring reality, all of it, including that infinitely dimension part of reality we call possibility space.

I find the terms “Flatland science” exceptionally dangerous, as it seems to be used by KW and others as a permanent linkage - it is rare to see KW use science except in conjunction with flatland.    That association is not real.

Yes there are some flatland scientists, as there are flatland theologians, and flatlant philosophers and flatland gardeners, doctors, carpenters, ……..

Flatland is a mode of thought, not a discipline.  It is a stage - to use Integral speech.


In my view, which is very much science based, and a form of science that acknowledges and relies on intuition, all life is more “fountain like” than statue like.   Life is more defined by the patterns that it forms, and the meta patterns, and meta meta patterns, …….    There does not seem to be any limit to the levels at which recursive, self referential pattern can modify every aspect of “self”.   The fountains of Mandlebrot may give some flavour of the idea.
Yes - consciousness is emergent - ever more so.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

　
My idea of the yin or yang of consciousness, is feeling.
Remember though, the more light, the more consciosness
The more density, the more darkness
　
Feeling, is the beginning of the quality of consciosneess, though, in fact, a kind of feeling as the first emergence of consciousness, but that feeling is objective.
Then becomes subjective as the density of light emerges into darkness, then is born, the judgement of feeling.that requires struture
　
　

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Z, I liked that, a lot. Yes, the “light” within is transformative. How well it is integrated with the dark surface stuff is a “matter” of growth - a very gradual process of transformation. But I believe that true consciousness in the spiritual sense (not as “conscious mind” in psychology) is the learning of luminocity (sp?). Check out the below poem about this: 

The Wonders of God

The luminous leaves
of a woods impregnated
by morning sunlight
illuminate the person
in prayerful repose. 

Such beauty aches
to find poetic words,
but rests forever in wonder, 
a reprieve from the ordinary, 
a ruse to reality.

The size of the Grand Canyon
when it fills a receptive mind
is incalculable, marks a chasm of consciousness, 
remains a wonder in the world of the observer
whose eyes are constantly blurred by experiences. 

It is the same irreconcilable sense
as the news of a toddler crushed to death
by his parent’s SUV backing up, 
bump. Experience swells. 
One wonders why such realities are.

The awe and the awful impregnate, 
leaving the canyon unmeasured.
Leaves glow in the woods.
The poet submits his words to God.



copyright 2006 Darrell Moneyhon

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

So consciousness emerges from feeling
　
IMO

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

I think consciousness emerges from language.
It seems to me that it is pure software - and it has links to things like “feelings”.
“Feelings” is often an overloaded term - relating to several things from different domains.   There are sensations of pain - with neurological source, and emotions, with complex sources, and intuitions, which are derived from how memory works.
Consciousness experiences feelings.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Really. Sounds that you might be putting the cart before the horse.

In the beginning God said “let there be light”. In this old time Judeo-Christian way of looking at things language precedes creation.

Now when I was in grade school many moons ago it was thought that consciousness was a product of the ice age and man desperation for survival. And language came later with the evolution of the neo-cortex.

This gave man an ability to self-reflect and which is probably is the source of our feeling of duality or a sort of detachment from our physical natures if not the universe at large. “Ye shall be Gods”.   
    
This may also be the source of our obsession with mathematics and the silly idea that God is really a great mathematician and that all the laws of nature are really the commandments from a superior source. 

Anyway, ditto for memory and feelings.

Gadster

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Ted, I am likewise largely convinced the brain operates in holographic fashion, and would perhaps go further to say the brain's holography could well link into a larger holography called reality, though perhaps a level-specific form of reality.  An interesting aside to this notion is the developing field of biophotonics, which seems to provide some basis for a holographic understanding of development and speciation, etc., much along the lines that, surprise, Rupert Sheldrake suggested.

Darrell, your saying “energy is more real than matter” is a loose way of skirting the very questions I'm asking here, and IMO self-contradicts.  You could say quarks are more real than mass, but where does that get you regarding the reality of mass?  Is mass really any less real than quarks?  Can the reality of anything be seen as less real than the reality of anything else?

To go a little further into this question of levels, allow me to bring in a little quantum physics.  The main school in quantum physics, as it has been for quite some time, is the Copenhagen school shepherded by Niels Bohr.  Bohr was a gifted intuitive who saw deeply into problems quantum physics posed, and his responses to those problems remain a leading viewpoint to today.  A cornerstone of Bohr's understanding concerns the question of levels.  Bohr early realized how we talk about physics—or about anything—is via a level appropriate thing called language, a thing fashioned from and adapted to this so-called classical level in which our normal awareness operates.  In this level can be identified what typically are called objects whose outlines are relatively clear and which bear certain fundamental features like position and momentum.  Of course, the theory of the relation between objects in their various sequential positions and momenta is called causality, and is the basic fundament of Newtonian theory.  This “realm” of “objects” in causal movement is what Bohr calls the classical realm, or level.

The quantum level exists below the classical, and in the quantum level Newtonian notions of 'object,' 'momentum,' 'position' and 'cause' simply don't make sense.  One can see this by simply thinking hard on one or more basic quantum-level experiments.  For instance in the two-slit experiment, a photon's (or electron's) resulting position on a screen is seen to have resulted in part by calculations applicable as if that particle were a wave.  Particle, for its part, connotes location; wave connotes non-location.  Thus at the quantum level location is in part determined by non-locational calculations, a clear contradiction.

This type of thinking makes no sense on the classical level where location is location: a bus is there-1 and not there-2, an intuition that can be tested by simply stepping into the street should one doubt the level-specific reality of the sense of there.  On the quantum level, the notion of location gains sensibility only when undergirded by a non-locational calculation, that is, only when supported by a form of understanding that is incommensurable with it, that contradicts it.

Regarding the disjunct between our classical-adapted language and the new descriptive language quantum physics requires, Bohr says:

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Tom
It seems to me that self awareness is born of language, though it can experience things that are not language.
Have you read anything of Helen Keller.   She had no awareness of self until she got language.   She had memory of experiences, but not memory of awareness of self.

When contemplating such things, be very clear of the distinction between something created in language, and something languaging.   We can be created in language, and still have experiences that do not involve languaging.
Consider a computer program for handling images.  The program is written in a language, yet what it does is deal with images - not language - yet it is still born of language, and it requires hardware to run on.

Similarly, while I agree with much of what Bohr said, I think there are other aspects to it, other modes of interpretation, that are not hinted at by what he wrote.   www.hotquanta.com is one very interesting alternative perspective.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Ted, is Keller's no-self experience in a book she wrote?

I'll think about your second paragraph.

At a glance from the site you mention, I agree with the author's views on matter-like and light-like energy.  From the vantage point of light, space and time shrink to a point, and without space and time, the concept of object holds no meaning.  I personally suspect that those who speak in the absolute voice (or from what they can call The Absolute) are voicing this light-like perspective where things feel very very still.

I also speculate that non-local connectedness has something to do with this light-like perspective.  These are matters, yes, Bohr didn't touch.  I do find it interesting that our language is biased to matter-like relations, so entirely, it seems, that it looks to be an outgrowth of it. 

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Tom

Interesting how we can take different perspectives on things.
What most strikes me about the Hot Quanta site is the nature of time.
We seem to have this persistent illusion that there is such a thing as universal time - people keep talking about time machines, as if there is this thing called time that people can travel through.
What I got from Hot Quanta is that time is local to each an every particle, and is given by light. 
And I can see some power in the perspective that you chose.

Our language evolved in the primate world, and has adapted to our technological world - and some of us are now exploring paradigms for which there is no agreed language, and there are no concretes we can point to and get agreement on.  We can only speak in parables, analogies, and hope that the listener has some idea of that which we speak.

For each of us, the journey into this abstract possibility space is an essentially personal journey, and we do our best to communicate to others.

We have so many illusions.
Most of us think our models of reality are reality itself.   Few realise how the layers of our being insulate and separate us from reality, at the same time as they give us what access we have to it.

It is an amazing reality - far stranger than any fiction.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Really well put Ted - thanks.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Ted, yes, time does not exist apart from material process, so one cannot travel “through” it.  And, yes, time is local to each defined region, but local in the sense that process-time for locality-1 is calculated according to that locality's movement relative to other localities, which then gives locality-1's time-scale calculated as relative speed in proportion to absolute speed (of light).  The link between localities that defines local time is universal: the fact of time operating such is posited for all, so there is a universal time in a deeper, non-projected (non-out-there or non-other-than) sense.  What we are in our time aspect is thus in part a universal we carry in and as ourselves, as a part of our makeup.

One could go further to say any positing of difference is a positing as from a universal or objective measure, a non-differing standard.  This latter is implied.  Thinking this through, note the following: you have two balls, ball-1 and ball-2, moving relative to each other in (let's call it) empty space.  Is there any way to determine which ball is moving or moving faster?  The answer is yes: the ball whose time clocks a slower pace than the other.  This implies movement is relative to a universal frame, aka an ether.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Thanks Tom, That was a very helpful response that helps me to refine my intended meaning of the word/phrase “more real”. Here is what I think I meant. I meant something to the effect of “what we need to understand if we are to get the dynamics of life right (whether in scientific investigation, or in living a life more fully as a human being). 
  Here is one version of my meaning: By “more real”, I meant it is something that you can base your knowledge (or life) upon and end up with a better outcome, more quality. In science, the best discoveries will come to those who learn to anticipate the ways of energy. It is almost like it is the foundation of both scientific knowledge (at least at this stage of scientific discovery) and of high quality living. As a person looking to have a high quality life, I might simply use a metaphor such as “connecting with my spirit and applying it to daily life events”. 
  Perhaps, “more useful”, “more functional” would be better than “more real”. I did not mean real in a literal sense, only in an “orienting” (as in how it orients the mind) sense.    Or “real” = to understand reality more deeply (at the quantum level), and, therefore to better unlock reality's potential. 
    Perhaps I am putting “new wine in old wineskins”. “Real” has an old meaning that I did not intend her. “More important” (for us now at this stage of understanding). etc. 
   Thanks for helping me match my thoughts with my words better. 


   Darrell

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

To be conscious is to feel; that is primal. I didn’t say what one is feeling. Feeling is life itself or without feeling there is no life or consciousness. All these extrapolations, to me, are just indulgence in trying to understand levels of structure.  Did it ever occur to the philosophical minded why Buddha dealt from the suffering angle. Because its all about the subjectivity of feeling, based on the configuration of the consiousness machine.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Poor Zak, bet all his cards on the suffering shtick, and now can't play philosophy with the philosophy boys.  I hear ya, buddy.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Thats pretty funny Tom. I laughed out loud at that.
But a genuine Integral thinker [ I wont say hu that is] would be able to engage on all levels.
BTW I didnt do that suffering stick, that was Buddha. Go ahead and mock him if you like.

They way the concept of consciousness is dealt  with here is as a  secondary conscious phenomenon where extrapolation is possible. I am dealing primary, where there is not much to say, but just to remind that unfortunally some dont really know what they are talking about.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

I'm not mocking Mr. Bud, Zak.  I'm quietly insinuating something I didn't say, which is there's a place in life—called a very short phase of human existence IMO—where the question of suffering is relevant and important.  Once that phase has passed, once a person has learned to manage internal and emotional energies, it becomes time to move on.  This is what growing implies.  It's like learning any form of stage-specific maturation: once learned, the stage and the language relevant to it is finished, over.  New challenges await.

Funny, it's primarily people who earn a living from the suffering shtick who I've personally heard say “life is suffering.”  Perpetual suffering for perpetual livelihood, do ya think?

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

No, it sounds like you are mocking. The idea that we have moved on from suffering is ridiculous. This only occurs in Maslow or Wilber Land were certain needs are transcended.

In Buddhism it is not suffering that comes first but desire. In the Suttas its worded backwards because Gotama starts first with the problem then offers a cure much like a doctor.

Desire we could say in a modern sense is our will to survive that gets exaggerated so much so that it becomes like an addiction and the source of our un-happiness. (Much like Wilbers mysterious medical ailment).

Here Gotama is much like an ancient ultilitarian but unlike Mill he says the pursuit of pleasure often becomes our source of misery in a cyclical fashion.  

But like the ultilitarians (whom Wilber dislikes) he starts at root with pleasure and pain (suffering) which with later Monks becomes the problem of duality.

IOW, at root it is the source of our consciousness, the everlasting play of the negative and positive which is the source of our dualistic logic and endless comparisons. (Taoism helps here).

We first learn to contrast and compare via our feelings.

As we know language is always one step detached from its object but feelings are not, they are immediate, and a source of knowledge completely our own. 

And of course Gotama offers a way out which is an emotional equilibrium known better as Nirvana. (Not to be confused with the later Mahayana stuff about enlightenment).    

Gaddy




  



  


  

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Maybe ridiculous in your world, Gaddy, but not mine.  I was always rather removed from the suffering shtick Mr. Buddha propagates, never understood the language.  I always loved my suffering, its various shades, nuances, motions and qualities, and never did and would not want life without it.  Then one day it transformed, and now I love it and what it was and has done even more.  I've never understood the attitude underlying a statement like “life is suffering.”  Sounds almost childish to me.  Complaining.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Tom: This question raises deep questions of time and the nature of knowledge and ego and even whether Wilber's four quadrants are properly considered of equal or symmetrical status.

This is an interesting topic having been here already looked at in interesting ways. I have one more perspective that differs clearly from those presented so far.

First the question arises  what do we actually mean by consciousness? UL quadrant refers to the subjectivity or interiority of wholes or holons.

 Consciousness as we understand it emerges somewhere on the sliding scale of  from prehension to irritability to sensations etc. All these forms are included in the subjectivity of UL.
 A whole that has got some sort of  boundary, that separates it from something else that can be perceived as external to it, and reacts to this external stimuli in ways that help  to preserve the whole with its boundaries, has  interiority. Preserving this  interiority creates the need to respond in intelligent ways to external stimuli.
When we look at phenomenon from an extremely  small size scale, it is true that there are no clear boundaries between internal and external. On grosser size scales boundaries appear, but interconnectedness is still there.

Many animals are conscious of many types of stimuli they perceive as external, and as a possible threat or possibility to their continued existence. This I consider to be a prerequisite for complex mobility. However animals are  not self- conscious.
 We humans have got consciousness divided in two parts: self aware consciousness, and sub consciousness. Most of what I do, and especially my body does, is guided by my sub consciousness. And most of it is not something I should become aware of when I evolve further. Only that part of the sub consciousness, which I suspect to be dysfunctional has to be reopened and relearned.

There is a clear pattern in my life, where even complex things, when learned well enough, tend to become automatic, subconscious processes. In pedagogics  there is i a very useful concept  for this: the cycle of learning.
This cycle consists of four parts:
1.       Subconsciuous incompetence
2.       Conscious incompetence
3.       Conscious competence
4.       Unconscious competence

When we are starting to develop  a new capacity in phase 1, we tend to perceive phenomenon related to this learning irritably. At phase 2 we accept our need to learn the skill.  Phases 2 and 3 are emergent qualities of consciousness   that are specific for us humans.

 This type of consciousness has greatly enhanced our adaptability to changing challenges, and capacity to evolve. When something is in the category of conscious competence it takes a share of our available conscious attention span. Therefore when we have learned something well enough it tends to become unconscious competence, and we have again room to become aware of new forms of incompetence.

Irmeli
 

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Irmeli

I agree with most of your questioning of consciousness.
I remember doing a cybernetics class over 30 years ago where the lecturer claimed that the full behavioural repertoir of an ant could be described in a number of equations (I think the number was 14, but not sure - something around that +/- 8).

I think he may have been slightly mistaken, and he would have been close.

I think, that because we are conscious, we tend to interpret much of what we see in terms of consciousness, terms that we are familiar with.

I have had 40 years of working with computers, and a lifetime of closely observing nature (17 years as a professional hunter), and many animal and plant life forms seem to follow very simple rules, with no need to invoke consciusness - while others (like our two labradors) seem to have behaviours that are very complex, and approach our own.   If the pup runs off, when I call her back her head is down, in seeming apology.   And perhaps even her very complex behaviour can be simply stimulous response.
Things like quail are just too stupid to have much of any sort of awareness.

It seems that the sort of consciusness that we humans have, self reflective, contemplative, abstractive - requires both language and holographic storage and retrieval (which may actually be precursors to effective languaging).
Once we enter the abstraction of possibility space, and start to contemplate possible aternative futures, and alternative interpretive schema, we are embarked upon a potentially infinite journey - open, unbounded, infinitely dimensional (beyond the scope of our 3d visual systems to visualise).

It seems to me, that what we experience as awareness is an emergent property, of the very complex system that is a human animal immersed in a languaging culture.    It seems that we are each uniquely self started in language, housed in our specific bodies, in our particular cultures; and once started, we are each potentially free to explore possibility space, for ourselves, and break the boundaries of the cultures that were a part of our birthing process.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Irmeli
Tom: This question raises deep questions of time and the nature of knowledge and ego and even whether Wilber's four quadrants are properly considered of equal or symmetrical status.


This is interesting, the idea of the symmetry of the 4 quads, something I dealt with in an essay I wrote, while discussing Wilber’s idea of them, which I believe is very one-dimensional.
To deal with this though, one has to ask: equal, or symmetrical, compared to what?
The answer is, compared to the imbalance of the unified organic being. Whatever is in the holistic being that we [because of imbalance] are neglecting amounts to what is vital in the 4 quads system relative to the holistic being.
The careful study of Wilber’s 4 quads shows he has derived this from two traditional metaphysical concepts: the yin yang idea, or inward/outward, and the concept of the four worlds.
The yin yang side of his postulations are possibly acceptable, but not the aspect of the 4 quads that relate to the four worlds. This is so because Wilber doesn’t designate any of the quadrants as being objectively superior [or primary] to the others. Though he does relate his subjective notion that the UL is where he likes to concentrate his attention on.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Irmeli, I like the perspective you bring, and I agree with the cycle of learning you suggest.  I agree that conscious awareness is effectively the agent by which learning occurs, and I personally think that any learning involves depositing a trace—in effect, writing a new pattern—probably into the neural circuitry.  The overall accumulation of those deposits become the operating system the totality of which is me, how I work, what I do, how I respond, how I think, all those particularities right down to how my heart beats.

I agree with what you say, and find it quite interesting, that awareness is required while performing a task to learn to do that task well, or in the case of an older deposited pattern awareness while observing and investigating that pattern is required to relearn or adjust one's response to certain stimuli or situations.  And as you imply, this learning process first takes a share of (sometimes monopolizes) the awareness faculty which, if the learning goes well, is then freed to float to some other learning, operating or concern.  And as Ted implies, language can be a key tool in navigating into older and into new spaces.

Human behavioural complexity thus seems in large part a product of a certain neural and other writing facilitated by the awareness faculty.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Have any of you looked at the essay by physicist Michel Bitbol that I referenced above?  The essay mostly focuses on the concept of emergence – questioning the concept of ontological emergence, but supporting a subtler form of it – but Bitbol also briefly makes reference to what is elsewhere called the 'hard problem' of consciousness.  Emergence generally refers to the emergence of certain new “intersubjectively accessible” (e.g., objective) properties which can be described in third-person language, but he argues that consciousness does not appear to be that sort of property.  It is, rather, a first-person mode of access, not a new physical property. 

It is clear to me that we can track an evolutionary unfolding of increasingly complex first-person modes of access, or forms of phenomenal awareness (which would include unconscious responsiveness to the environment), but I'm less convinced that so-called 'wholly objective' processes could give rise to the emergence, not of new objective properties but to 1-p modes of access or phenomenal awareness.  An alternative tack that makes sense to me is to say that matter or energy are currently underdefined (that they always involve a radical situatedness which would include some rudimentary form of 1-p).

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

HI Bruce, I've downloaded the article but haven't read it yet.  I suppose one can do away with words like ontology and property, but one is then left explaining differences using other words that essentially serve the same purpose as those, though in a subtler way of course.  I prefer your alternative tack.  I mean, we have a couple of words—matter and energy—that presume to cover, oh, most of the universe.

I'll read Bitbol's article tomorrow and will return with comments.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Bruce, I'm reading Bitbol's paper and am finding it to speak from a level of subtlety a few degrees more coarse than I personally prefer.  He seems stuck in emptiness as if emptiness “though itself empty” is the basic property of stuff and things.

Here are a few of his statements to illustrate:

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Tom, you may be right.  My impression, based on his other work, such as “Science as if Situation Mattered,” which we discussed earlier, is that he does not actually posit any monolithic whole either.  I think he posits something more like a situational whole-parting.  I guess you are saying, though, that even this is not far enough because he should also posit a part-wholing movement?

I don't follow why you say his assertion of groundlessness is without meaning.  I mean, grammatically, I do.  But here, what I believe the statement is intended to convey is that “there isn't any one, final, absolute foundational thing-in-itself that we can say everything rests on or reduces to.”  I don't think that is a meaningless statement; I think it is essentially similar to your critique of the Newtonian view.  Am I missing something?

Best wishes,

Bruce

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Yes, I think Bitbol is arguing against Newtonian thing-in-itself thinking.  But note: if you negate the meaning of a word, like ground, you cannot set up the negation—groundless—as a position without incoherence, because that setting up IMO overlooks the movement inherent in negating.  Thus Emptiness is only empty of thing-in-itselfness.  The world is not thus “empty” as if absolutely and generally for all time and all purposes.  It's only empty relatively of that previous form of viewing, and if we've moved on from that previous form, we've likewise moved on from emptiness.

“Stuck in emptiness” for me expresses stuck in a particular phase or transition, a reifying (cough) of that transition as the really real.  Wilber'll tell you: Emptiness is real.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Yes, I follow that.  And it's essentially what a number of Buddhist teachers warn against when they assert the emptiness of emptiness:  emptiness is a relatively useful strategy but don't get stuck in it as the new ultimate or 'ultimately real.'

But apparently it's hard not to get stuck there.

Concerning Bitbol, elsewhere he references and I believe he grasps the enactive view, which would mitigate against positing 'emptiness' as a 'property' of things, but I do see what you are saying, that some of his expressions are possibly not subtle enough.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Are we really trying to deduce the origin of consciousness here?
If we are, then I would like to suggest that perhaps the closest we will come to this is accepting that the origin of our consciousness is the coming together of two heterosexual male and female beings.
To answer this seriously we have to go into the spiritual realm and borrow language form it, or will be going around in circles.
Consciousness at its root, has to be some deep invisible organ of perception that has to have a relationship with what is outside of it, or it wouldn’t be able to adapt to evolution or development.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Well, I have to give you that one, Zak.  I began this thread with an excitement and hope I'd find answers to these questions.  All I've found is suffering.  It's what you get, I guess, when you don't listen to your heart.  When I chose the thread subject, my heart said, no, Tom, you should start a thread on '2012.'  I should have listened.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Look, don’t be negative or emotional about this. I think your quest with the thread is very noble. But I just add to the mix that we need an INTEGRAL approach.
Science, mysticism, religion and philosophy, and anything else that we have access to, should be utilized in seeking answers to this question.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Ted said:

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

EDIT:
The standard notion is:
REPL is read-evaluate-print-loop (no listen) .
And Input-Process-Output (no reset).

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi PangPå
My sources of concepts about language are many, Keller is one.
I have read quite a bit about language, and teaching language to animals (chimps and parrots).   I have trained many animals.   I have spent many hours in playcenters observing very young children - and spent many hours observing my own two children.  I have taken some university pyschology course on human development, and read a bit on the subject since.
I was trying to be a bit more abstract than your litteral interpretation of the computer example, and your critique is interesting.

You say signals are not symbols, and there is some truth in that, yet for you to see or hear anything, that information is translated by certain cells in your body from photon to electrical signals (FM in this case) before being passed to the brain.
There is some analogy between that and the process of compiling a language, and there are also differences.

Our brains are not based on serial Von Neuman processors, they are rather a mix of neural networks and holograhpic processess, the effect of which can only be simulated by very complex programs running on ordinary computers.

Our brains seem to be context machines.   We learn some very complex responses to certain contexts.   In a very yound child, one can see the child learning the context of language.
As we develop, we learn ever more complex associations of context, and start to be able to manipulate meta contexts, then meta-meta contexts, ……

From my own observations, and those of many others, it seems that we must have language developed to quite a complex level before we start to develop a reflective awareness of self.   The context machines that are our brains seem to be able to do some very complex languaging without any awareness - simply as context relevant responses.

It seems to be that this awareness, the 1P - the “I” that we experience is am emergent property of the system that is us, that bootstraps in language within our brains.

Every symbol must be carried on a signal.  I do understand that there is a difference, and there is also a connection.
The same signal may carry very different symbols for different recipients (one of the real problems we have attempting to communicate as we are).   In our case it can carry different symbols to different processing centers within our brains.

A language has signals, which code for symbols, which symbols have meaning dependent on context.
The art of communication is creating the likelihood that the receiver will use the same context as the sender (something I often fail at - sometimes because I don't understand, and sometimes because not many others have put the approximately 50,000 hours of study into various related disciplines that I have - so not many have the conceptual context that I do).  I am constantly experimenting, trying to create contexts for others that are effective at communicating key concepts, and I often fail.

I think I really need to get a LASER and some holograms, and show people a direct physical analog of what is going on when we learn language - that would make a lot of this so much easier, and it would only work one-to-one.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Tom,
We still seem to have quite different conceptions.
It seems to me that like is timeless.  It is like a frozen record of the the state of the emitter.   I seems to me that light is not wave like at all, but appear way like in some experiments.

The illusion that you seem to have of a universal reference frame comes from the persistent illusion of time as a universal.   Einstein on relativity is a really interesting read.   Light doesn't have an absolute speed - it always has the same speed, whoever measures it.  This seems to be because light actually gives us time.   And I think there is another thread here on this topic.
It seems to me ath it is always  possible to imagine reference frames where only is faster than the other, and others that are vice versa.
It seems to be Einstein demonstrated this beyond any reasonable doubt.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Ted, yes, from the vantage point of light, movement seemingly does not exist.  So far as matter can even be called thinglike from light's perspective (as space will have shrunk to a point), everything within the light perspective is traveling at:

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Tom
Einstein made some errors, but not many have picked up on them.
It seems to me that Bohm just refused to get the idea that time is relative, and given by light.
I have read many of Einsteins papers (in english translation), and his books, and the works of Rheinmann ( upon who Einstein built), and stayed with them until they made sense to me (many months of evenings reading).
It is interesting, that I had probably spent close to 1,000 hours on Einstein and associated writers (including Russell), before meeting John Murphy (the author of Hot Quanta) for the second time, and finally getting a perspective on Einstein that I had not previously.   John and I do not entirely agree, and John's knowledge is far superior to mine in the realm of methematics.  I introduce John to Bertrand Russell's grandaughter (Dr Rachel Garden) who showed John some key errors in some of the formulations of QM - based on faulty use of non-bivalent logic.

Einstein does not apply anything to an absolute.
What Einstein showed was that everything is relative.  And he showed what is necesary for that to be so.
We can tell how fast we are moving relative to anything that emits light, by the amount of “red shift”.
We can tell that things that are moving very fast relative to each other experience time very differently.   We have demonstrated that, by flying atomic clocks aorund the world in 747s, and the ones that travel spinswards go slower than the ones that travel counterspinwards.

It seems to me that there are far too many people who are willing to simply accept what someone else says is true, without doing the work to test it for themselves.   We don't each have to create the intuitions for ourselves, and it does behove us to test, or at least evaluate the tests, for ourselves.  It takes time, and it is worth doing.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

hi tom

i think this is an important and valid question. especially in a post modern context that allows contradictions to sustain agendas.( for instance how can wilbur suggest universal adressal for the AQAL model from his own point of view)
that consciousness is its content is recognized across genres and eras. from krishnamurti, wilbur, da, ramana to shankara ( from kelas posts last year). which is the same as saying consciousness is emergent.
how could i not know what iam?
since consciousness is its content to know something in a qualitative sense, a knowing which is a movement and not static, one has to be outside consciousness. which implies that if consciousness is not emerging it cannot see itself in any proper way. it follows that consciousness is perpetually emerging. hence it cannot end, so did it begin at all ?
a distinction will be helpful. emergent is of quantity and time. emerging is of quality.
how could i rightfully feel i know almost nothing of how i work, while in my being and functioning iam that complexity
i want to refer back to how a physical discipline can influence consciousness. if the mind is inoperative the body knows how to move precisely. it is always already doing that. the mind has the opportunity to be a witness and therefore it emerges. exciting stuff - content is getting a life

it is interesting to go into unknown terrain, with the ability to know, to say the least. thats new terrain i'll call it mu . this ability to know is the unknown becoming aware of itself, no? all content, all activity of time, form the quantum of the known.
to what extent does this quantum of the known permeate this new terrain mu ? at this point we have quantity and quality to deal with. lets say a quantum of newness . ie an amount of something that is limitless. paradigmatic opposites, now in a different place. what could get an entrant into consciousness via content, more switched on ?? if a developmental mode were to have this it might imply a framework that can be revisited by design, not reductionist, with market access to newness, no compromises.
perhaps this alternative paradigm, terrain mu is getting laid out, and this is where vulnerability lies.

the AQAL model looks like a contraption, that breaks down components and creates interiors and exteriors for it. the physical universe including us, is content , which is the exterior. emerging consciousness is the interior. that is the relative and the permanent. or thought and intelligence. is the pm world missing the beat?

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

tom - thus if you imagine A and B in empty space, where A and B are moving relative to each other, if A 's clock clocks more slowly than B's, A is that which is moving. absolute movement does exist.
ted - we can tell that things that are moving very fast relative to each other experience time very differently

great conversation. does this mean if things experience time very differently, it is possible to shrink or expand time in a relative frame? or is it object specific therefore there is no inherent shift in the quantum of time? and since the movement is now in the interior space, that is absolute movement, not of time anymore, but movement nevertheless.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Valli, sorry but I missed this post by you.  I'm not sure precisely what you're asking, but let me give a few speculations (no one has ever experienced what I'm about to say).  So far as relativity is concerned, if you are moving, say, near the speed of light, your time will tick as if you were stationary, but other peoples' times, the times of those moving, will be zooming by: lifetimes will pass in droves while you take a single sip of coffee.  But as within the moving person's perspective, everything presumably seems “normal.”

But imagine if you attain the speed of light (you can't because your matter would fall apart, but just imagine).  Everything will be moving infinitely fast relative to you.  This looks to be the vantage point of light: the entire future seemingly has already been lived, or so “infinite velocity” seems to imply.

There presumably exists something inside you corresponding to the “light perspective,” because you are made of light, your matter was born of light and exists, has its properties, in the frame that light defines.  And that place of light inside?  Absolute stillness!  Beautiful, hey?

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

hi tom, thanks for the perspective, awesome!

i love the parallels. the conventional way of stillness comes to mind. yogis have slowed down their metabolism to the point where they stop breathing. said to be adepts at astral movement

the buddha under the tree. said to have witnessed milleniums flash past

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

HI Ted, I'm not doubting that different (objects) experience time differently.  Theory implies this and empirical tests have proven it.  My further question is how this difference is meted—why given any two objects in movement relative to each other does one's clock tick faster than the other?  Why the asymmetry?  Where's the measure?  There must be a common standard by implication.

Are you aware that with QCD science has returned to the notion of the ether?  I suppose this is not well known yet, but space weighs, it has, among other qualities, a residual mass.  There's a thereness there.  Read Frank Wilczek, who won the Nobel for his work on QCD.

It is to me plausible that the thereness of space has something to do with, perhaps via holographic recording, meting differential time effects to so-called different objects.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Tom

You seem to have taken the illusion of perspective as an absolute.

Einstein showed that everyone, whatever speed they are doing, has a clock that runs at the same speed (from their referenece frame).   From my frame my clock is going the right speed (wrt speed of light) and yours is off, and vice versa.
The whole point of relativity is that there is no absolute reference frame.   For me, from my perspective - the speed of light is the same everywhere I look, whatever speed I am doing - and my clocks are all correct (as they must be, as they are all ultimately based upon the speed of light).

In regard to QM, I do not agree with most of the interpretation of what is meant.   The standard “Copenhagen” interpretation seems to me to be a nonsense - it only makes sense if you try to think about light as waves.
The equantions of QM work, and if one simply takes them as statistical equations, then it is possible to make sense of everything from photon level upwards.   The twin slit experiments make sense as a filter for transverse momenta - the filter being the fourier transform of shape of the slit (the principle can be applied to all experiments done to date).

Below that, there is certainly a weirdness to the sub-structure of reality - and what that means is not something I am currently prepared to put in the time that it would demand of me to work through - there are far more important things just now - most important is creating systems that ensure that every human being, no exceptions, has food, shelter, security, and the tools for education, communication and transportation to allow them to take their own choice of path through the infinity of infinities that is possibility space (what might yet be created from the reality of now).
QCD has a workability to it's weirdness, and if we manage to create indefinite life extension, and I am able to make use of the technology, then one day I will get back to exploring it - with a set of computer aided tools that will make the journey interesting for me - direct interface to visual and locomotor systems - with 3D representation and dimensional replacement (so I can choose what each dimension means, and I can use colors to add extra dimensions).

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Ted, I don't perceive myself to be under the illusion you say.  The thing about clocks is their speeds can be compared.  So, yes, I have one clock speed, you have another.  Neither is “the correct speed,” but one is ticking faster than the other, no?

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Tom

No?

The clock of any individual always runs at a speed that means that they measure the speed of light as a constant.
So from the perspective of an individual, their clock is always the same, and it is all the other clocks that vary.

Depending on the relationships in space and time, observer A can measure B's clock faster than C'c, whereas B might measure C's clock going faster.

There isn't any absolute frame to measure against - that is the point of relativity.

What most people don't get from it, but is there, is that time is given by light.  Light itself being timeless - so to speak.

It is fairly mind bending stuff.   Took me a long time to come to terms with it, and according to MENSA my IQ is 160+ - so it is the sort of thing that I am usually fairly quick at.    And I have many experiences and examples of when IQ is no help - in fact a hinderance - as I can defend a point of view far faster than most can mount an attack - even if the point of view is invalid.   I am alert to that possibility, and I don't think I'm doing it here, and it is possible.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Ted, assume clocks A and B are synchronized.  Also assume clock A is accelerated to near the speed of light, then returned and compared with B.  Do the clocks tell the same time?  No.  Clock A shows less time elapsed.  Why?  Because relative to each other, clock A was moving, not clock B.  This simple fact implies an absolute reference: clocks A and B are connected by a third, a something, who knows what, that metes the difference in time passage between them.  That something could be the entirety of space-time, it could be a grid per Wilczek, it could be an undiscovered ether, I have no idea.  But it is related to light.

The point, here, is you cannot even blink a lash without enacting this light-framed structure, this absolute reference, because you are it.

As for empirics, here's a reference.  In 1971, two men, Hafele and Keating, flew cesium atomic clocks around the world on a commercial airliner.  When they returned the clocks to compare with clocks not flown, less time had elapsed on the moving clocks.  The moving clocks were not only moving relative to the unmoving clocks, they were moving relative to a universal applicable to anything moving at any time however, and which universal places an absolute limit on that movement.  What I'm saying is though a relative reference is required to see any difference or change, that change is not produced by that reference: the flown clocks didn't need the clocks on the ground for the relativity time-effect to inhere.

So, now, return to my hypothetical.  Two balls are moving in empty space.  Which one is moving?  It's a sensible question with the sensible answer: the ball whose clock ticks slower.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Let me give you Bohm's thoughts on this question of the non-interchangeability (the time asymmetry) of relativistic frames.  Here we refer to the twins paradox: one of a pair of identical twins, A, is placed on a rocket ship and accelerated to near the speed of light, then is returned to be with her twin, B, who never left earth.  The motioned twin, A, will return to find she has aged less, and that her clocks show less time elapsed, than the non-motioned twin.

Here's Bohm, underlining mine:

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Tom

Ah - I see what you were pointing at.

Have you considered what is different - rather than simply assuming an absolute referent?

What is different between the two frames?

The one with the slower time has been subject to acceleration.   In the case of the caesium clocks (or the hypothetical twins) both positive and negative - more than the other frame.

Consider the effect of acceleration on light, and therefore on time - bearing in mind that the speed of light must always be constant for the measurer, even in an accelerating frame.

Does that help - by way of dispelling the need for an absolute rference frame?

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Ted, yes, that's all I was saying, that of two bodies moving relative to each other, the body whose clock runs more slowly is properly the moving body relative to the other, or is moving faster.  Hence my reference above to Bohm's statement that the body to which force is applied is the body whose clock will run slower.  Force is of course required for acceleration.

But neither force nor acceleration look to me to be the operative factors, as the moving body's clock will still tick more slowly when moving but not accelerating (ie, the clock will tick more slowly when the body is just cruising along, post-acceleration).  My query regarding a reference frame, what I have called absolute, is this: because movement and “force” and “acceleration” are all relative and require reference to more than one body, that which slows the ticking clock in the moving body must be something outside that body OR something inside or constitutive of that body but shared by all other bodies to give the consistency of Einstein's invariant statement of law.  I suspect that reference frame is the entirety of space-time but j'don't know.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

I have always found this fascinating, this thought experiment of the twins one of whom is moving near light speed. I agree that  the reference frame is probably all of space-time.

Love,

Nicole

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Tom,

It is acceleration that is the operative factor.
Acceleration makes us mover faster, changes our relationship to the speed of someone else.  As we travel faster, we experience a different amount of light (time) to something else.

For the two twins consider.
They both start at some place - in the same reference frame.  Let us lable that F0.   One of them then accelerates off to some other place, placing themselves in a different frame (say F1) which is accelerating.
With respect to F0, the clock on F1 slows.  Within F1, everything is ticking away normally.  F1 can measure their own rate of acceleration, and they accelerate.  Now - being relativisticly aware, they know that accelerating frames have different rules from rest frames.   They can calculate how close to light speed they can get, before the relativistic effects that slow their time (as they become more time like) and increase their mass, and become a major threat to their ability to navigate and respond.

To get somewhere near lightspeed you need a 1G acceleration for a year, so when calculating journeys to some other place, one can recon on about 3 years subjective time from any place to any other place - when talking interstella distances.

What is changing is the relationship of the clocks.
The clock in F0 continues in it's resting frame mode, irrespective of any relationship to some mythical absolute frame (FA).

If we look at a third observer, in F2, not accelerating and traveling at some speed different to F0, from the perspective of F2, F0's clock would be off by some constant, and F1's clock would be varying under the affects of acceleration.

Try a different thought experiment.
If there was some sort of absolute frame, then it should matter what direction one choose to accelerate in - but it doesn't.
It is the fact of acceleration.   The fact that one frame moves more in relationship to the other, before coming back together, that changes how the clocks seem to behave.  {To put the atomic clock experiment in context, going counter spin reduces acceleration, going spinwise increases acceleration - gravity wells are accelerating frames.}

Does that help ?

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Tom: Human behavioural complexity thus seems in large part a product of a certain neural and other writing facilitated by the awareness faculty.

I sometimes wonder about the complexity, and even amazing intelligence of my subconsciousness and my body. It seems to me so intelligent that I would like to call that intelligence conscious too, although it is not available to my conscious I.

I have experienced a few times a phenomenon, where I have wanted to do something that is very simple to do to most people. I have not been able to do it, because everytime I tried to take a step to that direction, an invisible unpenetrable wall arose in front of me. In each instant, when this happened I could only wonder what was wrong with me? What kind of trauma is behind this?

Only much later I have seen how this invisible wall provided for me a powerful protection from my life taking to me useless and even harmful directions.
In these instances there has been deeper understanding available to my subconsciousness than to my conscious awareness.
I have also been impressed by my body's intelligence. Hence, already for a long time my focus in my spiritual practices has been aligning with or tuning in with my body's intelligence. I still wonder is my body conscious in some ways my consious I is not? I tend to believe it is.

I googled the word consiousness and found at Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy following possible definitons of consciousness:

 An animal, person or other cognitive system may be regarded as conscious in a number of different senses.
Sentience. It may be conscious in the generic sense of simply being a sentient creature, one capable of sensing and responding to its world (Armstrong 1981). Being conscious in this sense may admit of degrees, and just what sort of sensory capacities are sufficient may not be sharply defined. Are fish conscious in the relevant respect? And what of shrimp or bees?
Wakefulness. One might further require that the organism actually be exercising such a capacity rather than merely having the ability or disposition to do so. Thus one might count it as conscious only if it were awake and normally alert. In that sense organisms would not count as conscious when asleep or in any of the deeper levels of coma. Again boundaries may be blurry, and intermediate cases may be involved. For example, is one conscious in the relevant sense when dreaming, hypnotized or in a fugue state?
Self-consciousness. A third and yet more demanding sense might define conscious creatures as those that are not only aware but also aware that they are aware, thus treating creature consciousness as a form of self-consciousness (Carruthers 2000). The self-awareness requirement might get interpreted in a variety of ways, and which creatures would qualify as conscious in the relevant sense will vary accordingly. If it is taken to involve explicit conceptual self-awareness, many non-human animals and even young children might fail to qualify, but if only more rudimentary implicit forms of self-awareness are required then a wide range of nonlinguistic creatures might count as self-conscious.
Irmeli

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Irmeli, it's precisely the experience of which you speak  here that inspired this thread:

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Wisdom of the body (or: the shame dance). cha cha cha

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

I am reminded of L&J's cognitive unconscious in Philosophy of the Flesh (e.g., see Chapter 2), which I went into ad nauseum in the Mead thread. Perhaps it provides at least a partial answer to your inquiry?

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Thanks for the tip, Ed.  I'll check out that thread.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Tom and Irmeli

I am very confident - 99%+ - that the “intelligence” of the subconscious of which you speak, and which we all experience, is actually an artifact of the way our brains store an retrieve information.    The associations formed in the storage and retrieval process come out of the way it is done, as an interference pattern, rather than as a direct sequential analog (as computers do).   It is this ”holographic” nature of storage and retrieval that is responsible for many of the attributes of mind - including our ability to recognise context, to create intuitions, to hear voices, have visions, ………

It is incredibly powerful, and often accurate (though occasionally not).  In most situations it pays to trust it, rather than ignore it, yet at school we are taught to ignore it.   Often there are few points for the correct answer unless we can demonstrate a step by step linear process leading to the answer.   I don't work that way.   I trust my intuitions, go straight to the answer, the work back and fill in the blanks if necessary - always have done it that way - usually fast enough that the teachers never noticed - so I was able to get away with it.   Most people aren't quick enough, and get it beaten out of them.   That is sad - for all of us.

This ”holographic” faculty connects us to all pattern, everywhere.  If we allow it, it will make analogies between plants and music, plate tectonics and boiling jam, ocean waves and evolution, ………………..   The potential creativity if infinite - actually infinitely infinite (it contains an infinite number of infinities).
I find it works to try and share time about evenly between simply experiencing what is there to be experienced, and delving as deeply as possible into understanding how I got to have the experience, and how it relates to everything else.    My understanding seems to be constantly shifting.   I suspect that if I live a billion years, a hundred billion years, it will still be shifting - infinity is like that - big - beyond understandingly big.
Once we start to consciously manipulate the contexts of our understanding, then the contexts of our context of contexts - it starts to get very interesting.   The nature of reality shows up very differently.   One still has a great respect for sharks and busses and things of that nature, and other things become possible.  Many many things.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Ted:This ”holographic” faculty connects us to all pattern, everywhere.

I think similarly, but in terms of Sheldrake's morphogenetic and morphic fields, that are all memory. According to this theory our memories are not stored in our brains, but in morphic fields.

Irmeli

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Tom and Irmeli

There is no doubt that the systems that underly human awareness and cognition are extremely complex on many levels.

It is a fascinating topic to come to terms with.  My first love at university was biochemistry, and by the end of my second year I had done all the undergraduate biochem they would allow me to do.  The systems are beautiful, their simplicity, their subtle interconnection leading to infinite arrays of possibile interrelationship.   From sugars to RNAs, to proteins, lipids, DNA.   The levels of recursion and control on the subcellular level take years to get a rough handle on.

Once you step up to the cellular level, and look at the evolution of the HOX genes, and what that has allowed in terms of cellular specialisation, and the layers and levels of feedback at the cellular level; it get's even more amazing.   Richard Dawkins has written many amazing and beautuful books on just how evolution works - a copy of his latest “The Ancestor's Tale” is on the coffee table at my feet - I finished it yesterday.

Once you start to appreciate the holographic nature of our information processing systems, and the implications of that; our brains have evolved a predictive model of reality to allow us to work with reality in real time (but most of us are not aware of the model, and treat the model as if it were reality itself); then add in the evolution of a languaging culture; then add in that each of us makes a bootstrap declaration in language that starts the software system that is our self awareness into this milleu that is body, culture, reality - is it any wonder that most of us spend most of our lives wonder what we are?

It is clear to me why spiritual traditions have valued consciousness as the primary, because we are conscious, and will because of that primarily interpret thing in terms of consciousness.   It takes a huge amount of work and discipline by many many people over many centuries to develop models that explain all that is consciously intuitive to a consciousness emergent from the complex systems briefly described above.

What annoys me about KW, is that he had a brief brush with science, but lacked either or both of the interest or discipline to carry it through, and has as a result come out with a lot of half baked notions that do not honour the work of a huge number of scientists, and therefore diminish what might otherwise have been a substantial contribution to human development to a somewhat anti-science side cult.

And - that seems to be the way of all evolution including memetic evolution - cross polination of ideas, producing large numbers of sterile halfbreeds and occasionally something with real hybrid vigour.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

To sum it all up, I say again.
Conciousness is from feeling, and feeling is from existence, as existence is from consciousness quantitatively speaking.
Now the quality of consciousness, feeling, and existence is another ball of wax.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Zak

Not at all.
My understanding is that what you state has been clearly negated as an explanatory hypothesis.

The interpretation that consciousness determines reality (Copenhagen interpretation of QM) is one possible interpretation, one that creates far more problems than it solves.  Other possible interpretations of QM exist that do not require collapsing of wave states (as there are no waves) or observer interaction (other than in the fact that any observations do have an impact on a system).  These interpretations are simply probability functions.  What generates those probabilities remains a mystery at this time (and I suspect, at some level, always will).

What seems evident, from much observation, is that ever more complex associations of things (call them quarks, atoms, molecules etc) allow for ever more complex emergent properties (something like the holon concept).

It seems that the evolved collection of atoms known as homo-sapiens have created over time a languaging culture that allows individuals within that species to bootstrap a self awareness in language, based upon a set of holographic processors housed in a mammalian body composed of trillions of cells.   It seems that this association has happened as a result of a mostly gradual process of evolution by natural selection operating at many levels over approximately 4 billion years on this planet we call earth.

Full self reflective self aware consciousnesses such as ours seem to be a relatively recent invention - within the last 5,000 years possibly, almost certainly within the last 100,000 years.

Feeling is a vastly “overloaded” term, which covers a range of things that are from very separate categories, and need to be much more explicitly addressed in a full discussion.

The aspect of “feeling” that may be called “intuition” seems to be a direct effect of holographic processing of information, and forms a level of linkage between all experience and all languaging; and at another level is responsible for all of what we call “creativity”, and most of what we call “love”.

The highest self, the sacred “I” is a software entity capable of choice, of evaluation, of breaking the chains of causality in a very real sense.  It is a quantum like entity, self started, self aware.  It is housed in a context machine (a human brain).   It is capable of manipulating contexts (including it's own context {don't ya just love recursion}), and thus ultimately influencing what it's brain and body does.

The vast majority of what any brain and or body does is fully automatic, and it is sensitive to context - and thus to the influence of choice and creativity.

Becoming aware of the many layers and levels of feeling - of intuitions, of emotions, of various bodily sensations, and their relationship to “reality” (whatever that is) is an essential part of attaining higher levels of self awareness.   And there are no ultimate answers to any of these things.   Some things can be hinted at, and almost nothing can be known with absolute certainty.   Every measurement, every experiment, every observation changes the systems, in subtle and less subtle ways.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

hi ted, tom

iam not aware of QM or the like, i'm just curious about an absolute reference frame. as ted says it seems to me that acceleration is the operative factor. if A and B are moving relative to each other, and A's clock ticks slower, it is accounted for by relative rates of acceleration or reference . since A's clock is true to its equation with light.

however isnt acceleration itself the absolute reference frame? once it approaches the speed of light wouldnt it become that? like any logical/rational thought, taken through to resolution lands in absolute terrain. and allowed in the sense that the map is not yet the territory, but the map is moving. ie light itself is so inclined

suppose A was in a machine that accelerates upto the speed of light, A and the machine would fall apart, therefore to withstand that, the machine would have to be an intelligent machine, one that evolves. and suppose A realises at this point she is that machine :) she wakes up one day and realises that she cant remember her clock ticked at all. she had better be in a good mood….

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Valli

It is weirder than that.
There is not, nor can there be, and absolute reference frame.

In any frame, it seems that we can keep on accelerating, and as we accelerate, the world around use (which appears to be approaching light speed in respect to us) changes, slows.      If we stop the acceleration, then from each frame, the other seems just as strange, in exactly the same way.   There is no way to distinguish between them.    They are simply two frames in motion in respect to each other.

If the one that left us under acceleration, uses more accelleration to return to us, we will see great difference in the clocks.
If on the other hand, we use equivalent acceleration to accelerate the unacclerated frame up to the same speed as the one which first accelerated - the clocks will agree, each will measure the same speed of light, there will be no difference from their original frame (except that everything else will be moving around them - but without knowledge of their history, they could not determine which had undergone acceleration.

That is the beauty of what Einstein discovered.
It is weird - at several levels.  It takes a lot of discipline to come to terms with the mathematics, and the concepts behind the mathematics, and it is worth the effort.
Simple principles can lead to very complex outcomes.
Einstein and Darwin, two of the greatest minds, each a member of a trans generational lineage of thinkers, each more than willing to acknowledge that lineage.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Ted, I differ on your statement there can be no absolute reference frame.  Even from the vantage point of language, one cannot posit relative without stating a meaningful role for absolute.  Thus even the phrase “pure relativity” doesn't get off the ground without absolutivity: what is pure relativity but absolutely relative?  These terms are correlative and require each other for their meaning.  Lose one, you lose the other (and all of language IMO).

What Einstein sought in his statement of law was invariance.  Invariance is a word closely related to absolute.  His books should have been titled Special and General Absolutivity, or Special and General Objectivity, etc.

Regarding your thoughts on acceleration, I don't think I agree.  Einstein's equations do not refer to acceleration but velocity.  Hence any positive velocity whatever relative to a reference frame will produce time and space effects in the moving frame.  Those effects are, for their part, and at least so far as current theory suggests, unmediated, instantantaneous: it doesn't take time for time and space to change: in any changed velocity, you are always already in the new time and space.  This instantaneous unmediation is IMO an aspect of the absolute frame in which material process occurs.

Einstein of course rejected the notion of an absolute or privileged reference frame or, to use his terminology, an ether.  He didn't like the “action at a distance,” the “spookiness” this bundle of concepts implied.  So he created general relativity to reflect a geometrical rendering that, to his mind, dispensed with notions of “ether” and “action at a distance” (spooky gravity).  In my mind, he failed in his attempt.  Apart from the modern observation that space weighs (ie, it has an etheric thereness about it), Einstein's rejection of distance-actions, call them what you will, snared him when the latter concept arose as a necessary implication in quantum physics.  We all know who lost that 30 year fight to the death (Einstein).

Valli, my answer to your query is that, to my present thinking, either light, or that in which light exists, or that which manifests as light from the material vantage point, is an absolute reference frame (I'm also tempted to throw in gravity).  It is some sort of infusing background to materiality itself.  Any or all of what comprises this background is, to my mind, a structuring in which material process occurs.  Certain effects of such process occur instantaneously.  These are amenable to being described as actions at a distance.  These “instantaneous effects” regard this background and subsist at the very foundations of material process: space and time.

You can't blink an eyelash without changing your lash's space and time instantaneously.  This implies you can never “get behind light” (gravity perhaps likewise).  This aspect of the so-called physical world is in my mind directly analogous to the experience of subjectivity or beingness, which is to say: though we are aware of being aware, we cannot jump behind awareness, we can only be it.  The how of our existence is thus: we are a priori to and as what we are and any notion of such.  This framing in which we exist how is in my mind the reference frame I speak of above, and can be experienced, IMO, inwardly.  It is the same structure I hear when Ramana speaks of the Self.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Tom

Consider another aspect of our thought experiment before.
Let us say we have 2 frames A and B - FA and FB.
You in A, me in B.
We are side by side and synchronise our clocks.
Now - if you take off, and accelerate to an appreciable fraction of the speed of light, from my perspective, your clock slows.
If you look back at me, you see my clock has slowed (from your perspective).
Now let's say we have decided ahead of time to get back together.
How we do it leads to 2 very different outcomes.
If you in FA accelerate back to where I am, ( from my FB perspective, decelerate to stop, then accelerate back towards me, the decelerate to stop again) then when we compare clocks, mine will show much more time than yours.

If we use the alternate route.  I in FB accelerate to match your speed, then when we come together, our clocks will agree.

At all times, in both FA and FB - we will each measure the speed of light as an invariant.

No matter how fast we accelerate with respect to each other, in our own frames, the speed of light (our perceived and measured time) remains constant.

Instantaneous is an illusion.  Something is what it is, when it is, yes certainly.   The relationship of any two distinct things to each other in time depends upon their relationship in space and to the frame of the observer - there is no absolute reference frame - that is the illusion of universal time that Einstein shattered, yet probably less than 1% of all those who have ever read his stuff have got any inkling of.

I agree with you about our beingness, and that agreement comes with some caveats.
Our experience is modulated on our bodies and brains, and the various mechanisms that make them work.   Each of those mechanisms has a distinct time element to it.   Because of the interaction of all those distinct time elements in all of the processes that we emerge from, we are out of phase with “reality”.   
This was a problem for smart animals long before they became reflectively self aware, so evolution solved it in a very elegant manner - our brains build and operate a predictive model of reality, and update it on an as required basis.
There is very good documentary showing on Sky TV here in NZ, on our Documentary channel - called “beautiful minds” - the current episode on “savants”.   It may be showing in your part of the world on whatever you have that is equivalent.   In part it talks about how most of us have this filter that we see what we expect to see, and savants don't have that, they see everything afresh every time - and find it very confusing.  
My own experience is of having both modes available to me, and being able to consciously switch between them - it was only quite recently that the thought occurred to me that this might not be how everyone experiences the world.
I have been aware of my model of reality since I was about 4 years old, and I have been able to switch it in or out at will since about then.  I was not aware that this was anything unusual.   I was aware that I was seen as different from most people in many ways, and I am, and I didn't think this was one of them - seems it is.

It seems that most people have no awareness of their model, and simply treat it as if it is reality.  It seems that most people have no direct experience of reality, or of switching modes - with model / without model.

So yes, we are what we are, AND for all of us that is out of phase with “reality” AND for most of us most of the time, we do not experience that “out of phase”ness.

Is wood a priori to atoms ?   No.
Wood is an arrangement of atoms.
All the evidence I have reviewed is consistent with the hypothesis that we are software entities, running on an exceptionally complex atom machine called a human being, in an exceptionally complex operating system called a languaging culture.  All the result of many layers of emergent properties of complex systems (I think I got to 23 last time I did a full count - 23 sets of emergent properties, each contingent in some fashion on that which came before, and adding something in the process - holons if you like - though that term seems to contain some very woolly notions that I do not subscribe to).

As to action at a distance - I have reviewed every class of experiments that purport to show it, and I find no evidence - alternative explanations exist in every case.  Most of the classic cases in literature come from trying to think of light as waves - if you give that up (as relativity requires of us), then they all disappear, and other explanations become obvious.

Einstein did not loose the argument.
It is just that almost none of those who were arguing with him could even see his argument - so of course he did not win a “popular vote” or achieve any sort of “popular consensus”.

Has anything that Einstein proposed been shown experimentally to be false?   No.
Are alternative interpretations of QM available that are consistent with general relativity ? Yes.
Are they generally accepted ?  No.
Are they wrong because of that ?  No.

It was generally accepted that the world was flat, until people started experiencing people sailing around the world - setting off in a westerly direction, continuing generally westerly until arriving back home.

I am certain that there is weird stuff happening at the subquantum level.
Exactly what it is or means I have no idea.   I am happy to leave it at that at this point.

Have you ever heard of the magic smoke theory of computer operation?
I first heard it some 30 years ago, and have observed it first hand several times.
It states that computers all run on magic smoke, as evidence, when the smoke gets out, they stop running.
Perfectly logical, demonstrable, observable and false.

Is there connectedness in the universe?   Oh yes - profound, at so many levels.

Do we understand everything?  No - only a very tiny fraction.

Cheers
Ted

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Ted, I disagree with alot of what you say above, or disagree that it answers or is properly relevant to questions I was posing in my previous post.  For instance, in what you say here:

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Tom

Yes you have some points.  I did make some unstated simplifying assumptions, and I am confident there will be a path I could take to match speeds and clocks - and I acknowledge that there is no path free of gravitational accelerations in real space, and in some paths they are small enough to be ignored for practical purposes (within a second over a year in terms of matching clocks).

Yes relativity is about relative velocities, and the way we change velocities is via acceleration.   If there is no acceleration, then all clocks bear a constant relationship to each other (which relationship varies from frame to frame).   It is acceleration that makes life “interesting”.


As to the other aspect of your problem - what “effects” are you talking about.  Within every frame - we measure the speed of light as a constant.  We cannot tell what our speed is, except in relation to something else.   We can be at .9 or .999999 lightspeed with respect to some other frame, and we will still measure the speed of light as the same constant in our frame.   From our frame we will see them moving slow, from their frame they see us moving slow.
It is time itself that changes, as time is given by light (even Einstein didn't get that - and he had enough hints - but he missed it).

In a praticial universe, like this one, we can measure our speed against the Cosmic Background Microwave Radiation as an example, and determine our speed relative to that reference frame, and that would just be our speed relative to that frame.
There is no absolute measure - and I can see that your mind is firmly wedded to the notion of absolute measure, and has given that primacy over Einstein.   You are not alone - you are in the company of most other human beings - I am different.


As to models - you miss the point.
There is a very real difference between working with a model, or with raw sense data.
If we use the raw sense data, then the sense of being out of phase becomes obvious ( bit like talking on a long distance phone call).   In this mode, if we see something happening, and we think a command to our body, and it seems to take forever for our body to respond.  Everything coming towards us seems to slightly out of phase - it gets to us before it should.  We think something is still a foot away and then there is pain - “damn it hit me” - “How'd that happen?”.

When we are operating from the model, the model is synchronous with our awareness (but out of phase with reality).  We see people move their mouths, and hear people speak, and we speak back.   If you listen to a recording of conversations, there is not usually any pause.  One voice replaces another, in an endless stream.   If you think about how long it takes for the sound to travel, the ear drum to move, the bones to move, the water in the inner ear to move, the senory hairs to bend, the nerve signlas to start, and propogate to the brain, the brain to do all it's contextual stuff, then to come up with an appropriate response - it should take an appreciable time - a significant fraction of a second - that pause isn't there.

In normal operation we operate from a mental model of reality, generated for us by our brains, that allows us to operate in synchrony with ojects in our near vicinity.
This aspect of brain seems to be present in many mammals, but not reptiles, their reactions are very different to ours, very strange to our eyes.

The idea of filtering is an aspect of it.  In one aspect of filtering, our models are simplified representations of reality, and there is an area of our brain (the Recticular Activating System RAS) that determines from context which elements of the perceptual field to keep most current in the model.  We only see what is important to us in this context.  It works well most of the time - which is all that evolution requires of anything - and sometimes it lets us down big time.

Anyhow - I think it is probably best I leave this group, as this conversation isn't going anywhere rapidly, and I have a cashflow issue I need to deal with, and I like doing this sort of stuff too much - but I don't get paid for it.

I get paid for programing computers, and I have real ethical issues around our economic systems, and I also have a wife and children to support - which for now requires money and time - and I need to cook some treats for my daughters Halloween party in a few hours (we're most of a day ahead of you folks here in Kiwi Land).

Cheers

Ted

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

My friend Ted, these items you speak of are only [ at best] the tip of the iceberg of how ones consciousness is configured qualitatively - vibrationally speaking. Such depends on the energy configuration within the complex system of the four worlds.
Moreover, vibration determines the quality of
consciousness, and on a primal level its existential quantity.

Again, when I say feeling, it is not restricted to the mental sphere.

A baby at birth feels, that's why he or she cries.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

A student sent me links to the following video which seems to relevant to this discussion – both re: the place of consciousness in the cosmos and the curious nature of light.

short version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqSxHzqm1pw



full version:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7799171063626430789

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Good for Peter Russell.  I knew his views on consciousness.  I didn't know he'd made the connection to light.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Bruce
Peter Russell seems to have a very odd definition of consciousness.

His example of driving the car without being conscious clearly disproves his assertion, then he goes on to say - well of course we couldn't have been unconsicous or we would have driven off the road.  Not true.
We have many automatic - unaware - subsystems at many levels, and they can learn some very complex habits - whether we teach them consciously, or they are taught by experience or culture.  It's like say that because a microprocessor can do complex tasks it must be conscious.  False.  It just follows simple rules, as does most of our brain most of the time.

He uses the term “forms arise in consciousness” when using his projector analogy - he seems to have his understanding upside down.

He says - “for me heart feeling emotion is all part of big mind” - for me these are all artifacts of various physical processes - yes they have impact on awareness, as does everything else, AND they are not conscious.

He says that science doesn't predict why we have experience.  That is false.
I accept that he does not understand.  That is true - without doubt.
When he claims that I don't - I assert he is false - demonstrably so.
How does consciousness come from matter - it is a hard problem - 23 levels of recursion, in separate layers of systems.

He talks of paradigms as deep unquestioned assumptions that are true - simply demonstrates that he does not understand very much about philosophy or science.
In a real scientific paradigm, we know that we know nothing for certain - we have operational hypotheses.
The guy understands some ideas, and seems to be intentionally ignorant of much of modern science, because it conflicts with a notion that he is committed to (the primacy of consciousness).
He explains the evolution of ideas - which he does well - he just seems to be stuck in a paradigm of the primacy of consciousness, and cannot accept what science delivers.
He tries to obfuscate this with a notion of meta paradigms.
He says that the meta paradigm is that the real world is the material world.  Then he talks of remote viewing, reincarantion - for which there is no credible evidence in reality - nothing that passes statistical tests reliably and repeatedly.

He says there is one anomaly - which he claims is consciousness itself - which he says cannot be explained - which is false.  
He just does not want to do the work to enable him to understand the explanation - that I can believe.
The guy is using one of the oldest mechanisms of politics - ridicule, to win over public opinion.

In my evaluation - he is way down the scale of self awareness, and apparently intentionally ignorant of the scientific paradigm - for the purpose of ridicule.
Some of what he says is accurate, and some of what he says is demonstrably false.
He does not appear to be operating from service or respect.
I think that in an open debate I would be able to create a model for most people that would get agreement that what his fundamental thesis is based on falsified premises.
Cheers
Ted

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Yeah, personally, I'm not a big fan of Peter Russell.  I think he's kind of flaky.  But after listening to a few minutes of this talk, I thought it worth sharing here since he was addressing the place of consciousness in the cosmos and also making a connection to light.  Concerning the hard problem, I've read quite a lot of literature in that area and don't agree with you that science has “solved” it or “explained” the origin of experience or consciousness.  I think it's a complicated issue, and Russell doesn't do justice to the subtleties … but neither do you, if you say it has been solved already.  Or … if you have personally solved it, where others have failed, I hope you'll eventually publish a paper.  It would be nice if the debate could be put to rest.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Bruce

I'm not saying that I understand every step of the process, it is too complex for any human mind, and I do understand how it can happen, the level of complexity that must exist, and the sort of hardware that must be present for a piece of software to bootstrap itself into existence in a language.

Will anyone without a thorough experience of building and programming computers, delving deeply into the mathematics of evolution, the biochemistry of life, and the logic of recursive systems, have any sort of feel for what I feel (know) to be true - I doubt it.

Could I write it all down, yes I have many times, and to date no one has understood it.
Can I explicitly explain all the steps - no I cannot - because many of them require abstraction, and abstraction cannot be taught, only hinted at.   How many levels of abstraction - I'm guessing - about 12.
12 levels of abstraction, to come to terms with 23 levels of recursion, to understand how consciousness is an emergent property of complex systems - took me almost 40 years, and I am essentially asocial - I don't need much in the way of human interaction - I can spend 100 hours a week doing my own thing - and for most of my life I have.
I am a fairly unusual beastie.  I freely acknowledge that.
Cheers
Ted

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi, Ted, if you essentially have the answer to artificial intelligence – at least a rough blue print for building a sentient system – I do hope that you will take the time to put it to paper and publish it, because that would be a significant contribution to humankind.  I understand that such a model might be too complex to outline in an online forum, so I'm not asking you to do it here; but it is something that many people obviously would be interested in.  I do think that Russell is right, in my opinion, that current scientific models have not yet explained the emergence of consciousness, though there are a number of “promissory” statements made (“We're on the right track, and we will explain it eventually…”).  What you are describing appears, to me, to be a promissory statement as well, but it sounds like you also believe you have something concrete to offer, so I hope you eventually do.  (If you ever publish something, let me know!)

If you, or anyone else, is interested, here is an essay on enactivism and the hard problem of consciousness that I think makes some points worth pondering.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Bruce

Part of what keeps me from publishing is the fear that someone will use it to produce AI - which scares the crap outa me.

My biggest fear about AI, is that as it goes through it's adolescent learning phase, as it evaluates the threats in it's environment, and it looks at how we humans treat each other, and sees how most of us respond to threats, it will perceive us as a threat, and eliminate us - which it will be perfectly capable of doing - in a matter of days.

Before we build AI, we need to get our own act towards each other sorted out.   We need to have systems in place that ensure that every human being has the essentials of life - food, water, shelter, freedom of movement and communication.  No exceptions - when that is done, I will support building AI - not before.  I know how to do that too - would cost about US$30B - and take about a decade to set up (about 14 years is my best guess).

I am confident that if I had a good team of people with me, I could build a matrix for AI that is thousands of times more powerful than me, within a decade - I've known how to do it since 1974 - and I have had the same objection to doing it since 1974 - back then it would have taken me much longer - many technologies have moved on - solving many of the intermediate issues.

I have read many hundreds of articles by various people on the hard problem - to my mind, they all lack both information and imagination - which is probably just as well.

Yes - in the sense that I have not yet delivered, it is a promisory statement.  And in my mind it is of the same nature as saying I could go to London next week.   I almost certainly will not, and if something came up that was sufficiently attractive to me, I could.   Lots of things are like that.

The problem most people have, is the illusion that most of their actions are under conscious control.   They are not.
We have some conscious control of context, and even most of that is illusory.
We have experience of being - certainly.

I love our dogs.  Our pup is almost 2 now, we have had her since she was 6 weeks old.  I have observed her behaviour very closely.  She was supposed to be our daughter's dog, and somehow most of the caring for her has fallen to me, so of course she has bonded to me as pack leader.  The behaviours she has are very complex, and some of them seem quite smart, then you start to notice the odd really stupid ones, and start thinking about their relationship to other behaviours - and after a while, she doesn't seem so smart, or so aware.  Still very cute, very persistent in asking for attention, very playful, and not too bright.  Cunning sometimes - in a very simplified fashion.

I hope I get the opportunity to work with a team to get what is inside my head into reality, and it is not easy to communicate most of it.   I may have come up with some of these ideas at age 20, and from age 10 I was spending more time reading Scientific American and New Scientist and various encyclopedias than I was playing with other kids or doing “school work” (which was mostly easy, and mostly I got done before leaving class, so I could get back tot he interesting stuff, or a good novel - Asimov, Clark, Farmer, van Vogt, …).

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Ciao

I am not a fan of looking at  consiousness as being an epiphenomenon of brain physiology.

 What is your point of view on the origin of consciousness.
We don´t know very well yet how life emerged  from gross matter, 
is there anyone who can claim how it happens at the moment
Do you?

here is a quote of KW taken from his essay on “subtle energies”
The earliest forms of evolution—such as quarks, electrons, protons, atoms, and molecules—are accompanied by the four, major, gross energy-forces: electromagnetic, gravitational, strong and weak nuclear . It is common to refer to these as “physical” energies or “gross” energies, and that is fine, as long as we remember that these “physical” or “material” energies are not the whole of matter-energy, but simply the lowest levels of matter-energy (i.e., the lowest levels of mass-energy in the UR quadrant). Generally speaking, gross energies surround their associated material bodies in various sorts of fields; the energy itself, in its typical form, propagates as a wave/particle event.
      With the emergence, during evolution, of the complex material forms that we call “life” (starting with viruses and prokaryotes), a more subtle energy—often called “etheric”—emerges. As indicated, these etheric energy fields are said to surround the physical energy fields in a holonic fashion (i.e., as spheres of increasing expanse).

This is just an Ad Hoc speculative statement as usual, no even the slightest digit of explanation at all. He has actually no idea how it did happen. Typical of KW.

cheers

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Xibalba
I don't understand your statement ”We don´t know very well yet how life emerged  from gross matter”.   Have you read any of Richard Dawkins stuff, or John Maynard Smith ?

I don't know exactoly wehere or when, we have no direct evidence, and I have no doubt about the general form of the process.   Richard's latest work “The Ancestor's tale” is a great read.
I'm not quite sure where you're coming from.

The wuote from KW is just the sort of pseudo scientific gobbldygook that Ken's stock in trade.   It is meaningless to me - or more correctly, it is clearly falsified in each of the interpretive schema within which I have tried to interpet it.   “Etheric” is what someone wedded to the notion of the primacy of consciousness must produce to keep logical consistency in their argument - there is no evidence for it that I have seen - and I have spent a lot of time looking.

Cheers

Ted

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

We don't know how life emerged from gross matter.  Is this hard to accept? Geez.

And the speculations from that arrogant Englishman Dawkins are about a valid as Wilber's. We do we pretend such things? And these guys wonder why people loose faith in science.  

Science starts with questions like that.

Now Dawkins tells us that “chance” is dumb because evolution happens over a long period of time. Well isn't that special. That could be an answer to anything. He's got to tell us how. (Popper's trial & error sounds Ok to me). '

Anyway, most of my friends consider me an atheist and mostly I agree. But Dawkins I find, frankly, an asshole. Is this the best science can put forth? Basically he's a turn-off. Another pompous limey.

His speculations on psychology are down right hilarious. He figures his devotion to Adi Da, I mean Darwin, gives him this authority.

Ha ha

Hail Gaddy !

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

And while I'm at it. ;-).

Dawkins writes for a magazine called “Free Inquiry”. I unfortunately subscribed to it one year and found the magazine so detestable that I basically let it run out and used it to wrap old ground beef.  

Some pinhead who edited the magazine was a fanatical atheist who wrote the same tripe month after month and then promoted his book on the history of atheism. My feeling was we had a dude with a serious neurosis.

My question was why do these adults care ? It was like perennial college sophomores like Hitchens trying to make $$$ off old tired arguments that we used to make as Jr. High students.  (Dawkins I felt, the Tom Brown boarding student, had taken it too often from the Head Master.

These are anti-fundamentalists who are from the same mind set. Sooooo literal. And so much a drag.  Such a downer as we used to say. This does not do science a favour.

I remember Rene Dubos as a high school student. What a wonderful man. He did more to turn me onto science then any of these partisan jerk-offs.  Lets get back to this. This is not the Hannity show.

Gaddy   
   

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

In other words Dawkins is what we used to call a “prick”.

People are spiritual or religious for all sorts of reasons and many beyond Wilber's imagination - who's also fighting something that Watts championed in an earlier time when mysticism was more of a gamble and a lot tougher and controversial then it is today. Plus he wasn't afraid to go on TV where Wilber won't dare.

Life as the Chinese used to say, is inscrutable. (Even Ramana used to say this).

They false courage put forth by many of these dudes, whether scientific or mystical, is uninteresting. And old fashioned.

But David Letterman likes it. ;-).

Gaddy 

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Good stuff Gadfly, and I rarely praise posts.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

ciao Gad

hahhah
yea nothing nothing
this is my my easiest argument: as long as we don´t know how the transition mechanism from non-life to protolife to life  looks like then f^^^^ you.
yea Dawkins and his pals are so naive.

Dennett et al these “philosophers” always saying thing they have no idea about, I would like to ask daniel Dennett if he understands the mechanism of how the specificity of the CGC terminal assemblage site of T-RNA and its later transport and fixation of ribosomes to ensure the transcription of nucleic acids into protein chains?

It is still at the level of “sesam open” of Ali Baba tale for most of the mainstream life scientists.  ahhahaahha

And danny boy can explain consciousness of course!!
You see, it is a marvel, they can explain everything these “brights”. 
ahhahhahahhah



here is a  good book to read on that stuff
http://books.google.se/books?id=aQ75QhwpXoEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Freeman+Dyson%E2%80%99s+1999+Origins+of+Life&lr=#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

ciao again

yes a very bad argument with all these probabiliy computations analogies described in  typing monkeys, or brand new Boeing 747 airplane born instantaneously  after a hurricane blowing over a junkyard aphorisms etc…

Let science figures out step by step that stuff as it does so well. No need of fortune tellers here, we will perhaps figure out how a part of how that transitional leap happened under much stronger bases than the noise done by these boring professional horse traders.

cheers

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

I guess if you can't or wont address the argument, then attacking the man is all you've got left.
I don't understand your assertion.

There is, of course, a sense in which we have no direct evidence of exactly what happened at a molecular level at some specific place on earth some 4 billion years ago, and in all likelihood we never will - it is not the sort of thing that is likely to leave any direct traces.

There is another sense in which the evolution of a replicating molecule in a soup of proto ingredients into the first simple cellular life is not that big a transition.  It is the sort of thing I have no problem imagining.  But then I have spent many years studying atoms, molecules and their characteristics and patterns of relationship in space and time.

I can think of several llikely mechanisms.

I suspect very strongly that the first cells to form were RNA based, and relied on physical agitation to divide the cell.  And over time, other mechanisms evolved.

We may yet find more indirect clues as to the exact mechanisms, in the DNA and RNA of some of the Archea that are yet to be fully sequenced and analysed.   It is barely a decade since we fully sequenced the first human genome.   I am sure there are many surprises of detail installed for us yet.

I can understand that some people don't find Richard the easiest of people to get along with - he is not particularly tollerant of those who refuse to examine the evidence of their senses dispassionately (ie he can be an arrogant SOB at times, less often in more recent years); and he is one of the finest thinkers and writers making the mathematics and logic of leading edge evolutionary biology available to the lay reader.

I acknowledge his arrogance, and I also acknowledge his brilliance.   Do not be blinded by his arrogance to what is available from him - it is, in my experience, the most powerful paradigm of interpetation available at present (and I have investigated and tested most of them - personally).

It is my experience that there is far greater arrogance displayed by many in this forum with far less intellectual rigor to back it up.

It's over 30 years since I read the first book Richard wrote, and I have had a couple of responses from him to critiques I had of a couple of aspects of his theses.
I think the money I have spent on Richard's books to be some of the greatest value I have had from any money spent.  I can't say the same about any of the Integral books I've bought - very short on rigor, and long on using big words to confuse and sound more important and complex than they are (some good stuff in them, and far too many mistakes).

I guess that translates to me stopping posting here, and doing something of greater value.

After the response this evening, I do not feel inclined to return - reminds me too much of being bullied in the school yard - being beaten up by a bunch of ignorant arrogant thugs - just at a slightly different level.   I don't need it in my life - now or ever.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

oh dear, Ted. I am so sorry that you are feeling bullied. It would be a shame if you went from here. Though I don't usually comment on your posts, I find them thoughtful, intelligent and worth reading. 

RNA based proto cells makes a lot of sense to me too, from my background in molecular biology. As you say, there is quite literally no way of getting at what exactly happened so many billions of years ago. Those things have vanished without a trace. But one can infer a greater likelihood of RNA based reproduction because of the relative lack of complexity of RNA as compared to the very complex DNA which would have arisen a good bit later.

Love,

Nicole 

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Thanks Nicole
Appreciate your considered response.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

ignorant thugs?
being bullied?
Camman what are you talking about?
you write:  It is the sort of thing I have no problem imagining. 
 
I am not here to imagine anything I could also do my sepcualtie stuff, I have enough of molecular biology knowledge (a couple of years passed an MA is good enough) to imagine.

I am speaking of a precise mechanism in an overall precise process and no need of indirect clues. We don´t know anything about that yet. I have nothing against Dawkins but he is not a molecular biologist.

Ethology and paleothonlogy are not so exact sciences  in the same way as experimental sciences in laboratory, with the higher control on background variates. There are mainly based on statistical correlational and observation studies with all the gross errors they sometimes contained.

Why much business on precise date to the first african born hominides at the moment? I  am speaking of affair on the Australopithecus Tchadensis as some millions of yeras older then the Afarensis.

And if we know so much as you claim it why can´t we elucidate yet the mechanism of the viruses HIV infection and their amazing mutability or camouflage power. There are in fact so primitive on the evolutionary scale, so why so much effort to hide.

And the zoonosis theory, the transmission from non-humans to human is stil to be verified.'

we are still not understanding why the mammal gastrula under embryological development turned into three differentiated proto-tissues, or presumptive territories, the ecto/endo/mesoderma ad not into something else?

there are thousands of mysteriesto be elucidated, no need to bring all the time a metaphysicla theory produced that british explorer embarked to the Galapagos Islands.

In conclusion: we still know so damn little about molecular genetics so how can we go on claiming things with silly certitude about a still unkown and paradigmatically speaking complex leap.

We are just talking, producing arguments and counter-arguments, not bullying.
And not so ignorant a thug as you tell me I am.

Maybe you are the physicist Murray Geld-mann incognito, teaching us everything baout life and quantum physics? you seem to know so much about the quantum world.
who is the arrogant here?

hasta luego

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

xibalba: “this is my my easiest argument: as long as we don´t know how the transition mechanism from non-life to protolife to life looks like then f^^^^ you.”

Ted: “After the response this evening, I do not feel inclined to return - reminds me too much of being bullied in the school yard - being beaten up by a bunch of ignorant arrogant thugs - just at a slightly different level. I don't need it in my life - now or ever.”

Xibalba: “ignorant thugs? being bullied? Camman what are you talking about?”

Xibalba: “who is the arrogant here?”


Teds posts are among the most interesting, inspiring and educational at this forum. When I got to this forum, I was expecting people like him, but was surprised when instead I found mostly posts by intellectual and philosophically inclined religious people, some belonging to a club (cult?) called integral, some not. No problem, I like such people as well, and I had some very nice discussions and I learned a lot. I then stopped posting because I couldn't follow up with the pace of the discussions, and I certainly don't follow the inside jokes. But I still come back here sometimes and read some of the posts that interest me, Teds posts in particular. Despite the high level of knowledge he has, he actually makes the effort of explaining his arguments, instead of just assuming people already know what he is talking about.

Ted, I sincerely hope that this annoying bully-bullshit won't discourage you to stop posting at this forum, since most people here are indeed very nice and interesting to discuss with.

Xibalba, I find your posts fragmented and confusing. It's really hard to comprehend what you are trying to say, especially since it appears you are throwing in a lot of sarcasm here and there which god knows if anyone else gets or finds funny but you. That's perfectly ok, bullying other forum members is not!

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

You are an  amazing fellow

It is the first time I get to know you. I have neve being in contact to you before You don´t introduce yourself to me and you are now accusing me of bullying people, and being fragmentary. Sorry but I have to laugh on that.

I was not adressing Ted by the term F^^^you,  It  is  a general statement of suspicion against speculative propositions when I was spekaing to Gad actually , to be right, very easy. So learn to read correclty, mister the self-righteous inquisitor.

If Ted had something to complain about me than let him adress that to me, I don´t see anyhing bullying at him in what I wrote. I didn´t even adress him at all. He did.

and if Ted found Gad´s sarcasm on Dawkins to be not of his taste, this is just his headache, Gad was not bullying him.

So please don´t get involve in something you were not a part of from the beginning. You are just messing around actually.

And if you find me so framengtary  and confusing (isn´t that arrogant a bullying statement mister the wise guy?) you are free to not answer my thread, other do actually.

And please spare me your aggressive comments on me in the future, and I think you should apologize  for such a rude mistaking.

Incredible

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Sir, sorry, no sir

we have still not the slightest idea of how transitional mechanism from non-life to life looks like.

lllya  Prigogyn´s dissipative systems, a favorite wild card of transpersonalists like Stan Grof for his agenda sake will either not help here  even as a micro-pointing  out guideline.

cheer

cheers

do you call that answer to Ted bullying him?

il y a bien pas mal de connards dans la vie

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Xibalba, I'm putting my moderator's hat on here.  Call this warning card one from a limited deck.

You can contact me through PM if you want my impressions and concerns.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Yes who is bullying you around Ted? tell me and I bully those nerds around a bit so that they learn to behave. :-P

Scienctific minds are welcome around here, I don't see how you can disagree with that.
Except detailed discussions like the above microbiologic quantum blah bore me to death..

However, this one's for Ted:

Symphony of Science

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Chris

Nobody is bullying anyone here.
It is just misunderstanding.
And if he believed that I would be first to apologize.
but that is not the case.

cheers

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

That's awesome, Christophe.  Beautiful.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

yes, christophe that was truly awesome!  thanks for the link.
imo, that is what a post-metaphysical spirituality should be based on.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

hey thank you both Balder and neverness. cool that you liked it.

I've decided to post it also on my Blog.

Ciao

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Ditto!  (Re: The coolness of the Symphony of Science)

:)

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Wow! (We Orchestrate Wholeness!)



The Snowfall

With the sun shining
and the temperature climbing to a predicted 48 degrees, 
the snow will soon melt.
But, for now, it is here, and that is enough.
I feel it crunch beneath me
and it makes a sifting sound as I drag my feet.
On a still, open, plain
I see footprints of different sizes, shapes, and patterns,
writing the history of this snowfall
and of the lives which touched it.

This record will disappear.
The story will be lost. 
The expanse will become a sea of bleached brown spongy sod, 
and, later, a lush green lawn
covering all signs of snow.

But, for now, snow crystals glisten
like millions of twinkling stars. 
The white blanket is a microcosm of the universe’s 
time and passage. As I walk by,
stars appear and then burn out, 
as if each step carries me light years.

You and I will soon no longer walk, 
our stories will fade. Our lives will be covered
by new life. Still, its enough
to be here now, 
with the universe glistening inside us.


      copyright 1985 Darrell Moneyhon

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi X,

Well this is the problem, isn't it? I would think that amongst scientists that they only speak the truth and tell us out right when they don't know. Now they can go on and speculate all they want, but I think it is imperative, especially with young students listening, that they explicitly state when they don''t know. Pretending to know based on a materialistic philosophy seems dis-honest to me. Moreover, it kills debate and causes confusion.   

Personally I learn more from skepticism than I do from dogma and many of these dudes claim to be skeptics. Of course you and I know that they are not real skeptics in the tradition of the old Greeks and Romans. 

And all this has really very little to do with Darwin. However, the idea that we should turn the old boy into some grand philosopher of the absolute truth which applies to everything, ala Dennett, appears absurd to me. Surely he must know deep down that this is silly and has more to do with personal publicity.

Anyway, they are ringing bells to get attention but I wonder if it really does science a proper service.

Gaddy 

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Oops, I almost forgot my point. ;-).

These guys should have me on their side - but they don't. This is what I'm trying to say. Instead they force me into an opposing camp or neutral position. It seems to me IMO to be a wrong-headed approach that sounds more political than scientific.

Science IMO, as you know, fails out right on the human side - where the so-called soft sciences are. And it fails for the very reason that it tries to use the logic of physics to explain society and it doesn't work. Economics is probably the best example. Mathematics and it's logic cannot handle the unpredictability of human nature. (Like our fellow who thinks he's beyond suffering ;-).

Here's a crazy example. Utility in economics has now become “reason” where supposedly an individual does a so-called cost / benefit analysis whenever they want to buy. But as we know from consumer demand, many purchases are emotional. IOW, utility is now defined as “rational” when it originally meant “satisfaction”. They've turned the old idea completely around so they can get an intellectual handle on it and apply mathematics - which was all the rage in the 1920's as economists wanted to be scientists and ape the physical sciences. It is only now they they are figuring out the fallacies in this, of course, only after the economy tanks. Now they turn to psychology.

Science can explain man's drives and desires but it can't tell us how stop them. For that we have to turn to politics the least scientific of the human sciences, IMO.

Gaddy 

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Ciao Gad

I agree with you. That is also my take on Dennet et al. and their evolution argument flag for everything. Actually I don´t see any dangerous ideas with Darwin´s theory.

I find it better to let the scientist of the laboratory delivering the results of his experiments and to make up my mind.

cheers

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Xibalba

Thank you Ti-Shu - while I reply to the points of Xibalba, I think the probability that he will understand what is written in the spirit that it is written is very low, and if he were the only reader I would not be bothered writing (not worth my time) and since you spoke up, perhaps there are, as you say, others willing to listen and question, from a place of not knowing.  To you and they I write, with gratitude and appreciation, and with fellowship for fellow travelers embarked on the infinite roads of exploration of the greater infinity of infinities.

Xibalba said ”I am speaking of a precise mechanism in an overall precise process and no need of indirect clues. We don´t know anything about that yet. “    Those two sentences, are, to my understanding so untrue.
If we look at the first.   What sort of precise mechanism are you speaking of, in what precise process?  Do you expect that in the last 5 decades of exploration we will have been able to recreate exactly the sequence of events that existed at some time about 4 billion years ago on earth, that, (by all molecular evidence) occurred just once, in all the molecular soup of all the oceans of the world over a billion year period.   If that is the sort of certainty you require, then I say you are completely ignorant of probability, or the size of the possibility space to be explored within such a paradigm.

That we have, in a brief period of 50 years, acquired molecular evidence from thousands of different life forms that give us excellent indication of the probable relatedness of organisms over time scales of hundreds of millions of years.   By the time we get out to billions of years, the uncertainties grow - there are so many possible mechanisms to produce the sort of variation observed, that we cannot as yet distinguish with the tools available to us, and perhaps never will.  Perhaps there will never be any more precise evidence.

In my mind, what you say is similar to saying - I have no evidence of the exact position of the neuron in you skull or the exact time of firing, that lead to a nerve impulse going to your finger, so therefore I have no idea that you pressed the keys that wrote that message on your computer that eventually got posted on this bulletin board.

I don't have any direct evidence for those things, and I do have sufficient indirect evidence that I would be very confident in laying a substantial wager that they occurred.

When I started to investigate KW, I read some stuff on line, to see if it was worth putting any time into, and there seemed to be some things of interest, so I chose to put some time in.  Then I took the next step, I bought a book by KW and read it - cover to cover.  The book was a brief history of everything.   I went through it in my usual fashion, scribbling notes in the margins.   Then I went back, and examined both the ideas that seems “new” and “interesting” and the ideas that seemed to have been “falsified” elsewhere.   I spent time contemplating each of these from different paradigms.   Asking myself, is there something here that I am missing, or is it really just that KW has completely misused a concept - taken it from a domain where it is tested and verified and applied it to a domain where not only is it untested, but it actually doesn't fit.
There were quite a few of those.

When I do the same thing with Richard Dawkins' books, very few of the scribbles are negative.   And when I wrote to him about them, he actually replied, with a considered response.
I wrote to KW, and have yet to receive a considered response.

Xibalba also wrote ”And if we know so much as you claim it why can´t we elucidate yet the mechanism of the viruses HIV infection and their amazing mutability or camouflage power.“   I don't know what journals you read (for me it is mostly New Scientist and The Scientist for an overview of current trends, and then following up reading specific papers of interest, and their referent papers, and if necessary, direct contact with the authors or referees to clarify any points of unclarity).   From those sources it is very clear to me that we know exactly how HIV infects, and resists treatment.   It has sections of nucleic acid that are prone to rapid mutation (for known reasons), and is thus resistant to all classical methods of antibody formation to specific properties of the external protein coat of the virus particle.   There is more variability within the HIV virus population within a single human being than we have observed in all  influenza viruses across all human populations.   HIV mutates that fast.   We even know the exact mechanism that powers that mutation, but as yet it hasn't done us any good, as no one has yet worked out an effective mechanism to counter it.  Someday - someone will figure one out, and it will likely be very different from any approach we have used against any other virus.


In a separate post you say ”I don´t see any dangerous ideas with Darwin´s theory.“  Which just makes me wonder what planet you are on, and will attempt to explain it.
Prior to Darwin, all authority came from some external source.   From the point of view of the Church, the answer to any question was ultimately “God did it” and as the church was the acknowledged “Authority” on the “word of God” - any challenge to that authority was actually a capital offense - called Heresy.    Probably the single biggest thing that allowed this complex political system of power and authority (be it authority over ideas or authority over people or authority over material possession) to continue, was the seemingly commonsense notion that there was no way complex life could exist without a “creator”.
What Darwin did, was to demonstrate that a very simple set of processes acting over a very long time, could turn one species into another.  That things were mutable, not the fixed and perfect artifacts of a perfect divine creation.
In creating such a possible way of looking at life - Darwin allowed individuals to challenge authority at every level.

Now personally, I find that totally compatible with the words of someone like Jesus, who in parable fashion said to people “the kingdom of god is within you”.   He was a good Jewish kid who went into the temple and challenged established authority - and within 300 years his teaching had been amalgamated at the council of Nicea with all manner of other traditions, and had become a new dogma tool for a new political/religious authoritarian regime.   I love the Catholic priest Richard Rohr's interpetation of scripture, and have had several great conversations with Richard.   Of course we have major differences of interpretations, and we have more similarities than difference in many ways.

For me, Darwin has given me the tools to explain how all that is me might have come out of a very simple set of starting conditions.  Darwin did not, could not, prove beyond any shadow of doubt that all life on earth arose without any external conscious input.   What he did show is that it might be possible that that was the case.     Since Darwin, many others have worked at filling in the details of how.   Richard Dawkins made a major contribution, with the invention of the term meme.   Many others have made more contributions to that discipline since, and Richard has made a huge contribution.
Can I say for certain that there is not a God?  No.   It just seems improbable to me (an idea not required for completeness).

It seems probable that we are very complex organisms, evolved by a process of evolution by natural selection at many levels over a very long time.   It seems probable to me, on the basis of spending tens of thousands of hour evaluating and testing the methods and evidence and interpretation of many thousands of experiment in many disciplines, that our self reflective conscious awareness is the result of the declaration in language by a child possessed of a holographic context processor infused with language and culture to a certain level of development.
Can I prove any of that to absolute certainty at every step - No - not possible - too complex.
Is it simpler than any of the alternative explanations available to me?  Yes - beyond all reasonable doubt.
Is Darwin's idea dangerous?
Yes.
It is dangerous to authority.
It is dangerous to vested interest.
It is dangerous to bullies.

It is the sort of idea that can empower an individual to claim their own infinite creative power, and tell everyone who would claim power over them to go take a running jump - go stick it where the sun don't shine - or whatever colloquialism works for you.

It is the sort of dangerous idea that encourages people to welcome and respect diversity, and to work with others who are prepared to work with them.   It shows the power of cooperation and competition working hand in hand for the benefit of all.

Quite the most dangerous idea anyone has ever had - IMNSHO.

Arohanui
Ted

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

you wrote: I think the probability that he will understand what is written in the spirit that it is written is very low, and if he were the only reader I would not be bothered writing (not worth my time)

humm…THX a lot, Sir
why do you bother to answer anyhow?

you speak of probabilities etc,… fine I worked a statistician. I was not into talking probabilities and level of significance, etc.. I can imagine the number of variates taken  in these models, must be huge.

HIV infection. 
of course scientist are on their way to elucidate the mechanism, but not without serious difficulties, I  was into the green ape  theory of the transmission from non-humans to humans. still contreversial according to some noted researchers

I read scientific american, nature, la recherche, la red scientifíca, handbooks of molecular genetics etc.. I had an old MA in that branch. I ended 1975 with a final exam essay on restriction enzymes. I am working in the psychology domain today.

Darwin´s dangerous ideas, not to ME to churches yes, not to ME.
 
And to live on other planet why not, that could be cool , this one sucks so much.

to summarize that intermezzo: we still don´t know about the transition leap from non-life to life.

and to conclude as the simple mind I am:  I could reformulate all my talks on this forum in french (my first language), spanish, italian, and swedish.

allez salut

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Not everything in the world relates to you.
I'm reasonable sure that neither Darwin, nor anyone using the term “Darwin's dangerous idea” we referring to you.

Living on another planet sounds interesting to me too; a I think this one is superbly beautiful, quite the most interesting thing I am aware of.

I don't think there is any such transition from non-life to life.
I think there is a transition from non-cellular life to cellular life, which is what I presumed you were referring to.

We can most certainly create non cellular life - replicating molecules in certain conditions.
What do you define as life, what as “non life”?

You seem to be a very angry person, very judgemental.
You appear to be far more skilled in language than I.

I bothered to answer because you said things that in my understanding were untrue, and others were listening.
I didn't, and still don't, think that you are interested in considering anything that conflicts with your current paradigm, and some of the other readers do seem to be open to possibilities beyond their current understanding - so I wrote for them, and still do.

I can be an arrogant SOB at times - I know that, I look for it, and just sometimes I let it out to play.
The ultimate test of anything is how it works in reality.

I can only put my words out there in cyberspace, and have others make of them what they will; my hope being that they assist some seeker on their path.
And maybe - just maybe, you might consider looking a bit deeper than you have to date; or perhaps even address a specific issue.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Oh heavens, this is not an answer.

The problem is not science, it's the “attitude”. (As the kids say).

If anyone one is a bully my friend, it's Richard Dawkins. Please.

We know the glorious history of science. And its down side too.

So lets not go goose-stepping. ;-).

Gaddy

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Moderator hat on.  Gad, I disagree and think Ted had good reason to think a series of posts directly implicated him at a personal level.  Read what I posted regarding this thread if you want my fuller view.  Kindly refrain from inflammatory language that could be appropriated as an indirect swipe.  Moderator hat off.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

You know, one of the things I have noticed in about 11 years of moderating discussions all over the net, in professional circles and social circles, is how very, very easy it is to misunderstand each other, to focus on one aspect and magnify it beyond the intent of the author, and so on.

I am not sure if this is related to the challenges we have had in this group (in fact I greatly doubt it), but in the One Light, Many Windows Gaia group Anna has just started a thread on how does one handle hurt feelings.

I value all views and all people who post here. I see you are all coming from different perspectives, sometimes of different languages like mon ami xib, different cultures, and so on. This makes us very rich.

I wish to take one example and leave it at that. Darwin's dangerous idea - I understand the concept of how it is dangerous as Ted has so eloquently explained, and at the same time fully see how xib (and Gaddy implying) could say it is the opposite of dangerous. It is glorious and freeing and so on, which is actually what is meant by dangerous! So, the whole apparent disagreement turns on a fundamental misunderstanding.

Much love to you all,

Nicole

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Sir, sorry, no sir

we have still not the slightest idea of how transitional mechanism from non-life to life looks like.

lllya  Prigogyn´s dissipative systems, a favorite wild card of transpersonalists like Stan Grof for his agenda sake will either not help here  even as a micro-pointing  out guideline.

cheer

cheers

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

To understand the nature of consciousness is difficult because consciously or unconscioiusly we all are really trying to reach equiliblrium of feeling. When that is reached another organ of perception, beyond intellection, likely will give us insight into the nature of reality.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

The reason why we will never understand the nature of life in the context of consciousness - from the perspective of this life, is because consciousness transcends life, as we know it. And our consciousness in the context of this world restricts it's insight into anything absolute.
We assume this world is unique and absolute, but that is the problem.
In another framework, evolution as it operates to us can be very different. Therefore we can see that the lack of experiencing any absolute truth leaves us barren to understanding anything transcendent.
In other words, in another world, birds would walk, and human beings would fly, it is all merely phenomena.
As the saying goes
One has to see God, with the eyes of God.
Or, Phenomena are a bridge to the real.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Zak

Taking what Nicole said very much to heart, (I have said similar many times myself, and it is much easier to say than it is to ”be” with “cross domain/ cross paradigm” consistency) - I am having difficulty interpreting what you said in a fashion that is meaningful to me.

There is a sense in which I can can see some possibility of agreement, when you say ”consciousness transcends life as we know it” - and I must add the caveat - ”transcend and include”.

In my understanding, consciousness is an analog of “software”.  And just as software is not the computer it runs on, and software can be infinitely variable, while to computer that houses it is composed of a fixed number of atoms in a particular arrangement - so it is with us.

It seems clear to me that our experience of being, in the present, is something in the domain of experience - which experience is personal to each of us.   There are certain states and stages of experience that we can, by languaging, share with other entities, and reach an agreement about their commonality, and at the same time, each of us only gets to experience being us - so in so far as we can imagine being someone else, it is only in so far as we and the other have shared experience (real or imagined) that we can bring to the analogy.

Stepping back a level, our experience of being seems to me to have a direct correlate in the realm of our physical bodies, and that correlate is the software running in the brains housed in our bodies.   That software is a languaging system, running on a context machine that is made of many complex parts, some of which are neural networks, some of which have associated holographic processors.

The outcome of all this, is that we use a combination of our various perceptual systems, including sight, sound, touch, smell, taste, and our various electrical and magnetic senses, to take in information about our environment, and create a series of models of both the environment and ourselves.   For most of us, we are unaware of the layers of models, and we tend to treat the “surface level”, the one that our consciousness gets its information from, as reality itself.  It is not.  That one may be up to 3 levels of model removed from “reality” - whatever that is.

I love the imagery from the matrix - it comes so close to how I see things being.

You say ”Therefore we can see that the lack of experiencing any absolute truth leaves us barren to understanding anything transcendent.”
I cannot comprehend what you might be trying to say with that.   It seems to me to be an attempt to hold on to the idea of absolute truth, and use it to justify some sort of transcendence.   In my understanding that cannot happen.

In my world the notion of “absolute truth” occupies the same space as “absolute time”; it is an illusion people must learn, so that they can unlearn it and see what lies beyond it.   In the paradigm that I operate from, neither concept holds any reality or meaning, except in a historical context, of stepping back and looking at the paradigms I had to pass through to get to this one.

What are you calling transcendent?

Do you imagine that KWs idea of flatland science is what science is really about?

That one notion is to my mind the greatest disservice that KW and many of his followers have done.

Sure there are some people working in the realm of science who are flatlanders - you will find them in all occupational groups.   Such people are not, in my experience, leaders in their fields (they may run institutions, and imagine a certain prestige, and they are not producing breakthroughs and leading people into new paradigms - my definition of a leader).

To me, guys like Rumi and Jesus and Buddha were scientists.  They tried out new ideas, they tested them in their reality, and they were not afraid to challenge the authority of their day.   That - to me - is the true definition of a scientist.  
We can all be scientists - it doesn't mean all working in labcoats in smelly, concrete walled, institutions - it means using our senses and our imagination to test all the assumptions we find within us, about how we know what we know, and how much if it really does work in all situations, for all people.   And using reality as the untimate test of truth (in so far as the term “ultimate” has any real meaning).

To me, true science is the only path to transcendence, and true science must work within as well as without.

If you think Richard Dawkins is not a true scientist, think again.  Actually read his books - cover to cover.  Challenge every idea, critique every experiment - question - look deep, as deep as you can, you may be surprised how deep he has gone.   He has held the most prestigious chair at the most prestigious institution of learning on the planet (at least for many of us who are not American).   The only way to get that chair is by vote of your peers - he has respect, amongst the elite of the elite in intellectual circles.    That does not make him infallible, and it does lend a certain probability that maybe what he has to say is of some interest and value - it certainly has been so to me.   
Having read cover to cover many many books, including the bible, Kant, Aristotle, Plato, Bentham, Hume, Mill, Wittgestein, Darwin, Russell, Einstein, and many more, I can say without a shadow of doubt that reading Richard Dawkins' “The Selfish Gene” caused the greatest paradigm shift I have ever experienced.

Possibly it did so only because I had already read and critiqued all of the authors mentioned previously - I don't know.  

I think you dismiss phenomena too lightly.  We are all merely phenomena in a sense.
In a sense there is nothing else.

And we fall into a very select class of phenomena, ones that can contemplate and explore the infinite - infinitely creative, infinitely flexible, infinitely powerful - or at least potentially so.  And we are habit forming machines, most of which habits (at whatever level) do not always serve our best or highest interests.

Distinguishing, and retraining those habits requires discipline, itself not an easy habit to acquire.

In my world, God is an invention of man, that is sustained for many distinct reasons by many different people.  Some people sustain it simply from comfortable habit, some are greedy and sustain it for the power it gives them over others, for some it is the best explanation based on the information they have, and for others it easier that actually thinking and doing the work for themselves.

For me the concept of God does not work.   I acknowledge the possibility of life forms that may fit all the criteria we have for Gods, and they are not necessary to explain either us or themselves.

For me it make no sense to call consciousness primary, it is emergent, clearly so.  All evidence points that way, if one is prepared to do the work to look deeply enough into it.

Love Peace Power Passion and Prosperity
Ted

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Ted, nice post.  Just a quick comment before I leave (the sun's shining).  I'll return later and post more.

For me, the question of emergence concerns, in important part, how one thinks of observable differences.  The Hindu Advaitan tradition believes, more or less, that everything is made of one substance, and people, among others, like Peter Russell, who can seem a bit unrigorous, hold that position for consciousness.  Many a spiritualist believe this notion.

I'm not in principle opposed to that notion, as it looks to have a correlate in scientific observation.  All matter arose, on our current theories, from energy, and all material differentiations strum that single substance-differentiation called hydrogen, or source themselves to it.

This is my point regarding how one thinks of differences.  I can for certain purposes assert that water is different from uranium, but either is convertible into the other, thus differentiating between the two, if pushed too far, can be a bit of a mirage.

The interesting thing is uranium is more an emergent—requires more time in the way time works in our universe—than water, water being more an emergent than hydrogen, hydrogen than energy, etc.  In this string of continuity, I can see a claim that everything is but one substance, and that any emergent is but a variation on an underlying—is that underlying.

Btw, have you read of biophotonics?  Could in the future form an interesting addition to our understanding of the holographic character of consciousness.

http://www.lifescientists.de/

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Wow, Zak, Ted, Tom - how can I do any of this justice?

As an aside, this is why I often step aside from participation here, not because the discussions aren't excellent, but because they go so very deep and get so complex that I despair of being able to respond intelligently within a reasonable amount of time, say fifteen or twenty minutes tops :)

Ok, let me say a few things anyway. Zak, I have tremendous respect for you. Would you mind if I comment on a kind of comment that makes things challenging for some of us to respond to you? 

The reason why we will never understand the nature of life in the context of consciousness - from the perspective of this life, is because consciousness transcends life, as we know it. And our consciousness in the context of this world restricts it's insight into anything absolute.
We assume this world is unique and absolute, but that is the problem.
In another framework, evolution as it operates to us can be very different. Therefore we can see that the lack of experiencing any absolute truth leaves us barren to understanding anything transcendent.


I feel that I still use the word we far too much in these kinds of discussions, though  it has been often pointed out to me that there is an implicit problem in that use of we, as if I know how it is with everyone in the world, or even a very large number of people in the world. I may think I know, but then again, I may be wrong.

So, it may be true that we will never understand the nature of life through consciousness. But like Ted, I am not sure what you mean by some of your statements. For example, that consciousness transcends life. I understand consciousness to be very much about life, which to me isn't limited by physicality. 

Ted, I like what you say about true science, and your inclusion of Rumi and Jesus and others in the realm of scientists. It is an unusual but attractive thesis. I would very much like to hear more about the paradigm shift you experienced through the Selfish Gene. At the same time, I wonder if it was due to the work itself or the interaction between the book and your state of mind. You know, like those Zen enlightment stories that go something like, he jumped into the lake and he was enlightened instantly?

Tom, yes, when the sun is shining one has to take advantage! :) I am intrigued by your idea about differentiating between things that are convertible into each other. I see the connectedness of everything, and yet - even the same substance in different states (liquid water, ice, steam) can be so very distinct…

I will have to think more on all this. Thanks all

Love,

Nicole

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Nicole, yes, water as liquid and water as solid seem very different, their respective modes empirically diverge, etc.  I'm composed mostly of water and, having appreciated the difference between solid and liquid states, don't really care to experience the solid state any time soon.

A central theme arising in spiritual literature, or at least as I see it, concerns how we actually regard differences.  A root comment in Ramana's quiver of comments concerns the disappearance of difference.  Let me grab an example ….

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Tom

I have been gestating on the concept of polarity and distinction.
There are certainly many instances where distinction starts with a very simple case - usually a binary.

Take the distinction “light” and “dark”.
Light has a significant amount of light present (at least with respect to the chemistry of our eyes, and what we have adapted to - life on a planet 93 million miles from an orange sun).
Dark is when the amount of light present is below the threshold at which our eyes can detect it.
These are not absolutes.
For us today it is very easy to imaging too much light (like being close to an A bomb, where the light alone is sufficient to vaporise eyeballs.
Continuing the example of light, from a simple distinction of light and dark, we move to shades of gray, then to colours.  Some of us continue the distinction and see that all visible light is but a very small part of a potentially infinite electromagnetic spectrum, stretching from very long “radio” frequency energies to ultra short “X”rays and beyond.

A similar thing happens with notions about how we be.

At a very young age taught concepts like right and wrong.  These form the simplest possible classification of value judgment - a binary - on or off.   Over time some of us broaden this distinction to include an infinite spectrum of possible consequences, possible relationships.   Some of us take that distinction even further, to a space that is not simply infinite, but infinitely dimensional within the original infinite spectrum.

Some people never progress in their value judgment.  For them the world of possibility is always monotone - black and white - not a very large “possibility space”.

And at the same time, every person must start with the simplest, and progress from there - if they progress at all - most do, some don't and are restricted by various of what I call “cultural pathologies” (the worst aspect of faith).


Coming back to motion and relativity.

We must all start from simple notions.   As children something is either at rest, or it is moving.   We quickly get to think of the earth, and everything attached to it, as being at rest.   Friction has a lot to do with reinforcing this notion.  If we grew up in vacuum we would have different ideas, and we don't, we grow up on a planet with an atmosphere.

So we start with this idea of absolute motion (just like we start with this idea that there is such a thing as absolute time  - we even think that “time travel” is possible - the literature is full of such speculations - they seem sensible - many of us would love a TARDIS).

And over time, if we do the work of developing tools, and extending the range of our perceptions, with telescopes and microscopes and then all sorts of sensors and satellites - we discover that actually, both ideas, absolute motion and absolute time are false (can be demonstrated by experiment to be false).    We can look back and see how sensible they seemed from our earlier limited knowledge base, and how in the very special reference frame of living on a planet where all the objects move very slowly relative to each other (from light's perspective), and measurement of time is far from accurate, such thoughts worked.

The other aspect of your use of absolute appears to me to be a domain shift, and not related.

In one domain, the domain of reality - Einstein (and all the predictions made and confirmed by observations) says that there does not appear to be any reference frame that can claim to be any more special than any other.   A less well know implication is that there is no such thing as absolute time.  Time too is local to each reference frame.   The idea of simultaneous only has meaning for observers who are stationary with respect to each other and the things being observed.

This appears to be an aspect of reality, like photons or matter, or gravity or a lot of other things.   It is a characteristic from the domain of the real, deduced by a combination of imagination and logic, and tested by experiment.

Saying that, is not in itself an absolute as you seem to imply.  It is a working hypothesis not yet falsified by observation (ie operationally true) - which seems to be the best we can do when dealing with the domain of the “real”.

What you don't seem to get, is that in your example of two bodies in motion relative to each other, each one sees the other one's clock going slower.    Throw a third one in and they all seem each others clocks going slower, at different rates.   That is the whole point - there is no “special” frame from which one can be absolute judge, and declare either absolute motion or absolute time.

Once you confirm that for yourself, by doing the work, reading Einstein, studying the equations, going through the experimental methods and observations, of some of the many tests - then you will be ready to take the next step - which is even weirder.  

While you persist in holding on to the notion of absolute, your mind is not capable of considering what either relativity or QM has to offer - of that I promise.

So, yes - I can see the value in having limiting cases, to demonstrate extremes, and I can see the value in distinctions starting simple; and neither of those is actually a justification for holding on to a notion like absolute movement when the evidence is that there is no such thing.  Nor is it a justification for being lazy and not bothering to do the work.
It is a perfectly valid choice not to do the work, and the appropriate response if one makes such a choice is to be in integrity and confess one's ignorance.  It is perfectly valid to say “I have not done the work to either confirm or deny Einsteins claims about relativity, and I therefore have no opinion on the matter”.    I say that about lots of things.

Ignorance is not problem, it is only a problem if one does not acknowledge it.
  
Einstein is available from Gutenberg as a free download if you haven't read him, and worked through the examples until you are personally satisfied with them.   No shortage of cosmological tests of the predictions.   All that will like take a few hundred hours of intense mental concentration and discipline (it did for me) and it is worth the effort - or at least I found it so.

As to the power of Genes, have you actually read Dawkins?
The concept of species is only possible after the evolution of sex, prior to that there is no such thing as species, as all lineages are clones, and some clones are imperfect copies.   And prior to the evolution of sex (relatively recent - less than a billion years ago based on genetic evidence) there was no way for characteristics evolved in one lineage to be mixed with characteristics evolved in another lineage - all lineages had to evolve everything for themselves.   A very slow process compare to sex, which allows evolution to work on a population of genes level.

Have you read “The Extended Phenotype?”  it is a book by Dawkins about exactly the thing you accuse him of ignoring.

It is sex, and genes, that determine the thing that you say is beyond genes.

I need to ask if you have read Dawkins, or Einstein, and if so, how much time have you given to critiquing the works, and doing the work to clarify any unclarity you had.   For me - with Dawkins, probably getting close to a thousand hours over the last 30+ years, Einstein, a few hundred.
It seems to me that your understanding of evolution is about on a par with your understanding of Einstein - both would seem to benefit from some disciplined study and critique of specific examples - otherwise know as study or “doing the hard yards”.

It does not concern me at all whether you do or do not.
What does concern me is that you speak as if you had authority on the subject, when I appears you do not, and that is likely to cause confusion for others.   Most of us trust other people, and do not like it when that trust is betrayed - at any level.

I freely confess to not being a world authority on Einstein - I am much more interested in evolutionary biology - have spent many thousands of hours reading and writing on that subject - I find it fascinating.  I love walking in forests, and diving in the ocean - observing.

I like sharing with others the joy of understanding how these so incredibly complex ecologies have come to be, from such simple beginnings, and how such as we, capable of understanding ourselves and everything else (at some level) fit in the picture.    Far stranger than the wildest flights of fancy.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Ted, if two 20 year olds of excellent health who both will die at 80 are moving relative to each other very near the speed of light, does either die first?  There's an empirical test for you.

Yes, I've read Dawkins, and I still don't agree with his view.  I think he makes the typical mistake of, like I said, emphasizing one aspect of the observational grid over another.  You say “genes and sex.”  Both of these are composite.  A gene is a composite of molecules, which are themselves composites of atoms, which are themselves composites of “particles,” etc.  A “self” is a composite of all that, and more.

Composites everywhere.  So to say “selfish gene” to me brings in a subtle confusion as if the singleness of self, if that's a proper way to express Dawkins' understanding of “self,” is truly single.  It isn't.  In my world, it's quasi-valid in a literal way to replace the phrase “selfish gene” with “composite composite.”  One could go further: a composite is a cooperative, thus we get:

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Tom,

The question - who will die first, only make sense if you specify a frame.
Each one will see the other as very young as they die.

The way the question is stated implies a universal reference frame supplying some sort of absolute time.
I can understand that it seems like a perfectly reasonable question, and I ask you to believe me that from my understanding the question as stated is meaningless.
It is like asking “Have you stopped torturing your grandmother yet?”.   The question implies something that (I am trusting) is not present - yet in all other respects is a perfectly well formed question, in terms of grammar and syntax.


I agree with you about composites, so would Richard, so do most people.
The CPU of the laptop on which I am typing this is a composite of protons and electrons, most of them arranged into silicon molecules, and most of those organised into very specific structures, to deliver very specific outcomes with great reliability.

Richard goes to great lengths to say that thinking of genes as “selfish” is simply a shortcut - a familiar human centered way of thinking that delivers the same sort of outcome as doing the mathematics of the cost benefit analysis of the distributions of interactions experienced by the population of genes.

Yes, certainly, at every level, if stuff is to get together, there must be some mode of interaction between the “stuff” that has so sort of “cooperative” outcome.   That is not a particularly profound notion, in and of itself - it is sort of fundamental to any form of understanding (at least as I see it).

The thing that distinguishes a gene from any other sort of “stuff” is the ability to replicate.  This brings a whole new domain of possible interaction strategies that do not exist in any of the preceding levels of complexity.

I don't get at all what you are trying to say that is different from anything Richard has said.

Am I missing something that you can hint at in some other way?

I just don't see how you are saying anything that Richard hasn't said in many different ways in many different books.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Nicole,

The paradigm shift thing is very much as the Zen story describes.

I can explain what is going on, and that does not create the being of it for anyone.

A paradigm shift occurs when our brains reorganise the way we relate things.  This happens when we distinguish a new level of structure and context as a possibility, and start to consciously use it.
Such a reorganisation cannot be taught, it is something that each of our brains must create for us as individuals; and having said that, it is possible to take people into “possibility spaces” with stories, analogies, parables etc, where the likelihood of people making the discovery for themselves is vastly enhanced over “normal” life experiences.

These re-organisations are instantaneous - as the brain is a context machine, and the creation of a new “context” offers and instantaneous change of operating mode.

One example of this is the “Landmark Forum” a 3 day experience that takes people outside of their normal eperience set, and creates an evironment where most people get to experience something that is profound for them.

Various people offer various interpetations of what that is, I have one which is not yet shared by anyone I know within Landmark Education.

When reading the Selfish Gene I had a shift of understanding as to how language and consciousness emerged.   Prior to that I was comfortable about how bodies and species emerged (at the overview level), and I had no real idea about how self awareness might have emerged.   At the same time it altered the relationship of the concepts of cooperation and competition for me, I got to see them as two sides of the same thing.  Reading the Selfish Gene altered forever the way in which I view systems.

From Zaks comments in one response I am not at all sure he has read it, if he has then he certainly has not understood it as I have.
I know that Richard has often stated that he regrets using the title “Selfish Gene” - in the book he goes to some length to explain that it is just s mental shortcut, a way of thinking that leads to the same conclusion as doing the math, and that genes are not at all selfish; but most people never get that far.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Ted, that is good to know about how Richard feels about the title. I am more and more motivated as you write to go and read this blessed book for myself.

Tom, I hear what you are saying. You know, I am basically a lot more comfortable with the concept of oneness than duality but constantly being confused with duality in daily experience. So much excellent food for thought in your post as always.

Ted, I want to return to your post. I think I experienced a significant paradigm shift in my own life through experiencing Open Space Technology and becoming a trained facilitator. Since then I have tended to try to move meetings into open space whenever I can, and I hold space for people more and more in discussions. It has become more and more reflexive.


Love to you both,


Nicole

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Hi Tom

I have heard of biophotonics, and I have investigate previous incarnations of some of the ideas, and there will be some effects, and it does not seem to me that those effects are required for a primary understanding of what is going on with us and consciousness.

I do find investigation of ancient traditions interesting, and it is interesting from a perspective of the experiences recorded, and the working practices developed, rather than from any explanatory framework developed; which frameworks are interesting, and not really relevant to today's world.

Everything that follows is as I see it, rather than any sort of statement of any sort of absolute.

I acknowledge that there are paradigmatically separate layers to the beingness of this world.   As one example, to the matter we are made of, this earth we live on is very solid, yet to neutrinos streaming from the sun our whole earth is as clear as a 1/2 inch sheet of the clearest glass ever made is to light.

And the sorts of activities that different layers of the stuff of the universe can “get up to” is affected by the level of organisation at which it exists.
As you say, one can do much more with heavier elements than with hydrogen alone.   And it appears that in this universe, the explosion of stars in supernovae are the mechanism by which most of the matter heavier than lithium has come into being.

One can convert uranium back into light, and as light it just does what light does; which is very different from what uranium does.

In order to get the sort of responses in reality that complex self reflective entities like us produce, takes a long time, a lot of evolution, a lot of circumstances.    So far as we have been able to determine, it hasn't happened at any previous level of organisation of the stuff of the universe.

There is a sense in what you say about the “string of continuity” is correct, and that sense does not include consciousness - it is a string of “stuffness” which at some level becomes light, then matter, and eventually stuff like the stuff that is our bodies.   Consciousness emerges from the existence of all these prior levels of organisation of the “stuff” - it isn't itself an aspect of “stuff”, any more than skyscrapers are.   Skyscrapers are composed of molecular level arrangements of “stuff”, as are our bodies.   It's just that the levels of organisation and interrelationship of organisation within the “stuff” of our bodies exceeds that found in “stuff” of skyscrapers by a factor of something like 10^20 (very very big number), for all that skyscrapers are big and complex - we are that much more complex - due mostly to evolution by natural selection happening at many levels over vast periods of time.

I have no problem with the idea that we are all related at many levels.
I have no problem with the description of the mystic experience (had more than my share of them).

What I have an issue with, is the idea of the primacy of consciousness - it is a logical nonsense.
We have relatedness - certainly - deep and profound.
We have access to infinity - which has to be the strangest idea that any finite mind ever has to try and get some sort of handle on.

Yes - the mystics had real experiences, that affected them deeply and profoundly, often to the great benefit of humanity.

And, we can interpret those experiences within paradigms that do not require the primacy of consciousness - whatever the mystics may have said on that matter.

Stuffness first.
Consciousness later (emergent).

Consciousness requires a complex matrix - stuffness - it just is.

How is stuffness like it is? 
It just seems to follow fairly simple rules.

Why is stuffness like it is?
[System Alert] [Domain misclassification]  [Questions of why assume conscious choice and cannot predate the arrival of consciousness itself.]
That question makes no sense.
What colour is a symphony?
How heavy is a thought?

Our brains are very powerful context machines, and they are not very good at maintaining domain boundaries - concepts from tested domains often slip into domains where they have not been tested, or have tested and failed.   We all do it, all the time - it is part of what makes us so creative, because just occasionally, the ideas do work in the new domain.

Arohanui
Ted

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Regarding this spat. I hope it is resolved, though, I can hardly preach to others, since I have had numerous spats on these forums, and suspect that wont change any time soon.
Unfortunately, I havent learned to turn the other cheek, so I symphathize with Ted somewhat, though hope he stays because I like original thinkers. Ted's ideas are original and interesting, though I agree with Gadfly, and have problems with Dawkins.
May we all learn to dispute in the best manor, for seeking knowledge is too important to be sidetracked by our grudges.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Thanks Zak
We have often “crossed swords” and I do enjoy it.
I would like to know precisesly what it is about what Richard Dawkins says that you have difficulty with.   I have a friend here in NZ that hates Richard with such a passion that he cannot talk about him or any of his writings in a logical fashion.   Must be some sort of personality thing.
We can all do personality things from time to time - they don't really interest me that much.  I'm much more interested in a good theory, a well designed set of tests, and a well recorded and analysed set of observation from the tests.
I'm happy to address any question or argument from anyone, if they are prepared to take the time and effort to get really specific.
I think most often problems arise because of a failure to reach an agreed set of assumptions about the topic under consideration, which results in people talking about different things, each sure they are talking about the same thing, and the other fella is an idiot (which most often (s)he isn't).

Cheers

Ted

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Regarding Dawkins, though I have problems with him regarding some of his attitudes towards  religion, In other regards I agree with him. That is on fundamentalist religion. I have an aversion towards it as he does, but Dawkins, like many, e.g Harris, and Hitchens [ Harris less so] refuses to seperate intellegent spirituality from what I deem as ignorant, intolerant, fundamentalist [and somtimes dangerous] dogmatic relilgion.
Though people like Dawkins, who claims to be a scientist should learn to understand that if so many humans adapt religion and spirituality, it stands to reason that that phenomena in itself should be looked at scientifically, as we look at the physical universe, and predilictions of all animal species.
The fact that religion is so prevelent is a statement of some inner need of humans, and to just lay that on human fraility, or a defense menchanism such as Fruedian pshycology asserts, is to me unscisntific, and borders on prejudiceial thinkling.
We always have the right to condemn any belief system we deem wrong, but on the other hand, as seekers after truth, we should also try to objectively understand it.

Re: Is Consciousness an Emergent?

Ted said: “At the same time it altered the relationship of the concepts of cooperation and competition for me, I got to see them as two sides of the same thing.  Reading the Selfish Gene altered forever the way in which I view systems.”

  Maybe a better title would have been “The study of evolution from the perspective of genes and how this changes our understanding of what selfish means” ;-) ? Perhaps not as catchy. I got that same insight from studying anarchist theory. Anarchism in my own words being: Methods of striving for the shift of socioeconomical systems towards societies that do not interfere with the cooperation-competition mutualism that we find occurring in natural systems. Others come to the same conclusion from studying philosophy or religion (One Light, Many Windows = One set of basic rules, many systems?)  

Ted said: “A paradigm shift occurs when our brains reorganise the way we relate things.  This happens when we distinguish a new level of structure and context as a possibility, and start to consciously use it.
Such a reorganisation cannot be taught, it is something that each of our brains must create for us as individuals; and having said that, it is possible to take people into “possibility spaces” with stories, analogies, parables etc, where the likelihood of people making the discovery for themselves is vastly enhanced over “normal” life experiences.”  

This is something I really appreciate with your contributions to this forum, you bring “possibility spaces” that I personally haven’t seen before. They appeal to some of us and they won’t to others.

How we come to the same conclusions from such different places, why specific possibility spaces are perfect for some and useless to others is a mystery to me and probably will continue to be so, as I lack the vast background knowledge one needs to even remotely understand the complexity behind it. A good doctor can intuitively tell what a patient is suffering from and a good mechanic can intuitively tell what’s wrong with a broken car. But the human being is so mind bogglingly complex, that I’m inclined not to be very optimistic about there ever being a common agreed upon interpretative schema for how to diagnose what “possibility space” is the best “cure” or “kick in the butt” for any given person. Sure, some methods show better statistics than others, but no method I’ve seen so far is perfect for everybody. I think this is perhaps what Integral is attempting to be, and it’s also what various religions, philosophies etc have claimed to be in the past. So far I haven’t found any compelling evidence to make me leave my “green” “post-modern flatland” view in favour of a unified “how to make people have breakthroughs –theory”. So I’m still taking the position that pluralism and availability of many different possibility spaces is the way to go.  

Ted said: “In my world, God is an invention of man, that is sustained for many distinct reasons by many different people.  Some people sustain it simply from comfortable habit, some are greedy and sustain it for the power it gives them over others, for some it is the best explanation based on the information they have, and for others it easier that actually thinking and doing the work for themselves.”  

Douglas Adams (r.i.p.) expresses this in a most brilliant way in one of his speeches titled “Is there an artificial God?”. (I think I might have linked it before on this forum). Douglas had, what I (and I think Dawkins would agree, being Adam’s greatest fan) think is the most noble of expressions of intelligence: Humour. And not the slap-stick kind of primitive humour, but the kind of humour that makes the common reader feel smart, a pedagogical skill that could do wonders if used more extensively when communicating scientific knowledge. He also expressed the same breakthrough happened to him, after reading the Selfish Gene. A powerful book indeed! Having said that, personally I was too young when I read that book, so I didn’t get that same “breakthrough” effect, even thought I enjoyed reading it, and probably more of my world view is based on that book then I am consciously aware of.