I am going to answer your deep question with a simple: no. Is the spectrum of reality continuous, my answer is no. The other option is yes? Maybe in one direction it can be continuous....I'll go one step further. A deeper question is whether the spectrum of reality is continuous. As Einstein inferred, the moon exists - and our imaginations exist. What is in between? — jgill
What should not be underestimated is the depth of the meaning of the near-intangibility of consciousness (NI=Natural Intelligence).
That the human individual can imagine herself to be anything the imagination can conjure and manipulate means that the position and momentum of the NI-bearing sentient is always hedged against the closure of a finalized system.
This is one of the subtle meanings of (the centrality of) the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
Both position and momentum are essential to system, so their uncertainty, acting as a defense of future creativity via strategic incompleteness, mandates entropy and its function: non-closure of system. — ucarr
"Quantum Theory and the Role of Mind in Nature"(pg 12 of 41)According to the theory, this earlier event has an immediate instantaneous effect on the evolving state of the universe, and this change has an immediate effect on the propensities for the various possible outcomes of the measurement performed slightly later in the other village. This feature—that there is some sort of objective instantaneous transfer 10 of information—conflicts with the spirit of the theory of relativity. However, this quantum effect is of a subtle kind: it acts neither on material substance, nor on locally conserved energy-momentum, nor on anything else that exists in the classical conception of the physical world that the theory of relativity was originally designed to cover. It acts on a mathematical structure that represents, rather, information and propensities. The theory of relativity was originally formulated within classical physical theory. This is a deterministic theory: the entire history of the universe is completely determined by how things started out. Hence all of history can be conceived to be laid out in a four-dimensional spacetime. The idea of “becoming”, or of the gradual unfolding of reality, has no natural place in this deterministic conception of the universe. Quantum theory is a different kind of theory: it is formulated as an indeterministic theory. Determinism is relaxed in two important ways. First, freedom is granted to each experimenter to choose freely which experiment he will perform, i.e., which aspect of nature he will probe; which question he will put to nature. Then Nature is allowed to pick an outcome of the experiment, i.e., to answer to the question. This answer is partially free: it is subject only to certain statistical requirements. These elements of ‘freedom of choice’, on the part of both the human participant and Nature herself, lead to a picture of a reality that gradually unfolds in response to choices that are not necessarily fixed by the prior physical part of reality alone. The central roles in quantum theory of these discrete choices— the choices of which questions will be put to nature, and which answer nature delivers— makes quantum theory a theory of discrete events, rather than a theory of the continuous evolution of locally conserved matter/energy. The basic building blocks of the new conception of nature are not objective tiny bits of matter, but choices of questions and answers. In view of these deep structural differences there is a question of principle regarding how the stipulation that there can be no faster-than-light transfer of information of any kind should be carried over from the invalid 11 deterministic classical theory to its indeterministic quantum successor. The theoretical advantages of relaxing this condition are great: it provides an immediate resolution all of the causality puzzles that have blocked attempts to understand physical reality, and that have led directly to the Copenhagen renunciation of all such efforts. And it hands to us a new rational theoretical basis for attacking the age-old problem of the connection between mind and brain. In view of these potential advantages one must ask whether it is really beneficial for scientists to renounce for all time the aim of trying to understand the world in which we live, in order to maintain a metaphysical prejudice that arose from a theory that is known to be fundamentally incorrect? — Henry Stapp
Consider a thinking stream that would stay closed and recited in the privacy of my mind, instead of being recited and put into words via typed language skills communicating thoughts being thunk in action...In mind what is happening, a re-creating a conscious experience or creating thoughts or ideas that aim towards that experience in mind (consciously aware of self in world, identity of self known to what degree? enough to act on what you believe to be your purpose?), in thought with intentions potentially able to or do change in decision making moments. Knowledge being attained that forces a restart, revaluing, a change touching the experience you are to have. Identity and knowledge relationship should be considered at length.Because humans have a waveform state of being, their calculated probability of position and momentum acts as an anchor for their identity. This is a rather scientific-sounding way of talking about the human soul and its necessity.
Topology studies manifolding of geometric spaces across symmetry, with a constant, the invariant point that anchors a geometric space as intelligible. This property of topology applied to anchoring of human as waveform is a scientific-sounding way of talking about the necessity of the human soul. — ucarr
Wow! A man of knowledge! I am keeping this reference (Carlos Castañeda) in mind moving forward, that is going to be some very interesting reading! Right up my alley...but yes, I agree with how you have used it [reference] here and how you have neatly explained Stapp's point and yours. I am following and so far agree with how you've approached acknowledging the importance of the link and bounds of the will and imagination.There is a close and important connection linking will and imagination. When I decide that I will have something in mind come about as material fact, I’m entertaining intentions toward reconfiguring the material world in accordance with an idea.
We can say that the imagination is the quiver containing the arrows of will possessing pointed intentions for remaking the world. So, the bigger the quiver, the bigger the will power of its possessor.
The duet of imagination and will is especially important in situations facing a formidable barrier. In order to muster the will to do something from which we are obstructed, we must rally the imagination towards seeing the way forward to the goal. Per Castañeda, this creative exercise of will is the warrior’s intent. Brujos y brujas intend their visions into reality. It is said the “dreaming body” of the warrior can only become empowered to move with purpose via intent. — ucarr
The questioner who does an experiment to get an answer poses the question that activates QM processes towards a final state of the system i.e., an answer. — ucarr
In this way, the individual can always go forward into the future armed with the panoply of unlimited possibilities.
Strategic Incompleteness (SI) keeps human out of the reach of the calculus. You can’t sum human to a limit because of thoughts, ideas and feelings,
The mass of consciousness is sagaciously hidden from the calculation with strategic absence, so there’s always something that remains beyond the reach of measurement.
This is part of the end game of entropy and thermodynamic resistance to completeness of measurement, which is to say completeness of system.
The impossibility of complete measurement of consciousness goes heads up with the scourge of infinity as the diplomat who sticks his head into the lion’s mouth.
By seeming to be massless, NI uses escape from complete system to also sidestep the ultimate unwieldy mess of infinity.
Incompleteness resembles undecidableness, but the former is creatively future looking, whereas the latter is simply stuck. — ucarr
Remaining silent, hiding from light might be wise if you are a liar and have no beetle after all. It's like interacting with a catfish, who is a person using another persons looks, identity, color to portray something they are not. A deception in action, pretending to be a super model, when in reality they are obese and not in the league of where they are trying to play...They didn't think that far, so the deception is real...The ugly chick knows what her type WANTS to see, the person she is fooling also knows what they want. The ugly chick wouldn't even get the time of day if they crossed paths in daylight, maybe in a poorly lit bar after heavy consumption, she gets lucky.Maybe we have the same beetle, maybe we don't.We must realize it's irrelevant so we remain silent about it.— Hanover
Ripeness?Any other use of the word "red", e.g. to describe 620-750 light, or an object that reflects 620-750 light, is irrelevant, because the relevant philosophical question is "do objects like tomatoes, strawberries and radishes really have the distinctive [colour] property that they do appear to have?", and this question is not answered by noting that we use the word "red" in these other ways. — Michael
Colors are unlike chemicals. — creativesoul
Correct, they are like tastes. They are mental percepts caused by neurological activity, often in response to sensory stimulation. — Michael
Spend it while you liveTime can be a very hard thing for people because we only have so much of it — Gregory
I wouldn't disagree. BUT, let me ask you. These people doing that, living their day to day lives while stuck in what "could have been" are they aware that maybe two things are happening at once? Scratch that, do you think the awareness of these people to a certain level plays a considerable role? I wonder how a test could be given to someone and those that take the test will either be classified as aware or unaware, and not in a all around type of way just about this specific thing (bad thinking patterns, stuck in day to day life, unfulfilled, not happy)The thing about Many Worlds is that people wonder, regret, and dream of what "could have been" a lot. Humans want it all, however it is that they get it i guess — Gregory
Thanks for sharing some further reading! I have never heard of John Wheeler! Glad you brought him up, he's a good ole Florida boy and I am from the sunshine state myself! I will add this all to my list.....Thanks!!Anyway- the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2022 was awarded to three scientists for proving the world is not locally real. But is this like saying that noumena is not locally real? We know from experience what the classical is and isn't.. It's pretty interesting how this raises ancient questions but dresses them in modern garb (stylish). Between observer-centric theories and, say, pilot wave theory or objective collapse theory, there is John Wheeler's "participatory universe" theory, which states that the substrate of the quantum combined with the nucleus of the consciousness is what creates the world. It's an interaction between "I" and "not I". It's more of a duality becoming a whole rather than a duality of separation, and this is what guarantees we can have knowledge of the world — Gregory
Me too, I love it all! I'm online reading along quite often :eyes:I enjoy the discussions on this forum very much and although I don't always know where they are leading, there seems to be a pattern — Gregory
Interesting :up: I just finished researching and reading, Henry P Stapp's work. Might be of interest, I just posted in the Perception thread about this...I saw your comment now, after the fact and was pleased with seeing your refreshing take's throughout this thread.Anatman. Does the brain generate consciousness? Yes. Does the brain generate consciousness? No. Both — Gregory
It seems to me that these concepts are not mutually exclusive but rather complementary. Consciousness could indeed be caused by brain activity in a seemingly random and complex way where the brain's development and firings gradually give rise to conscious awareness.Phenomenal consciousness is either reducible to or supervenient on brain activity. The only connection between distal objects and brain activity is that distal objects often play a causal role in determining brain activity. This is what the science shows. — Michael
When I think about the colour red I am not thinking about light reflectances; I am thinking about the visual percep — Michael
No, I don't think it is ever accurately transferred or shared. OR worth attempting as it seems out of spite, revenge, or anger that one would want to share their pain. Make another feel what they experienced, so they KNOW. Sounds like bad news to me...If you could accurately measure neuron firings in your hand, you could also "share" that pain — Echarmion
jkop, do you think I correctly connected what you shared a few days ago in my response above to Echarmion? To me it seemed, the "shared" pain comment they meant was a physical demonstration or experience. Clearly not in the same circumstances, that may have heightened or lessened the initial pain from the start.Empathy is the ability to experience what someone else is experiencing. Since someone elses experience is not open to view, we must access it indirectly via languages, verbal, pictorial, interpretation of gestures etc — jkop
Banno, I think I see what you are saying. :grimace: *inserts Lionino's image of the dur dur dur emoji*So, yes, apparently brains can generate experiences in the vacuum of space. All that is required is the appropriate neural activity, regardless of what causes and maintains it. — Michael
When one has an experience, it is an experience of something. When there is no "something", it's an hallucination. — Banno
This one :point: :flower: the flower and the onlooker are both a part of (or "in") the world, by "being-in-the-world" (see Heidegger, "What is Called Thinking" A Translation of Was Heisst Denken by Fred D. Wieck and J. Glenn Gray) our experience interacting with flowers in our environment through our bodies sensory organs and/or a shared use of language or gestures that was "taken in" during the experience or interaction. By using both our vision and basic language in a shared world with another, we are asserting and verifying, THAT flower over there is the most vibrant red in the whole garden of roses.Hmm... So, there's the experience (the perception, qualia), the perceived (the fruit), and whatever is involved in the interaction (including the contact lenses). Could "mental phenomena" and "seeing the colors" be deflated, so they're the same thing? Or, well, for the mental phenomena to occur in this case, we'd first have to see with our eyes, right?
Could we say that the rose and the car have the property of being red since they can elicit/cause that (format of) experience/perception to most onlookers under common circumstances?
The experience/perception isn't "in the" rose, it's part of the onlooker when occurring. And the rose isn't part of (or "in") the onlooker. What "red" are we talking about anyway? :) — jorndoe
Hm, lion...nino...What is that, little lion boy? — Kizzy
You had to reduplicate the -n- there to make the joke work. But not too far anyway. — Lionino
WE?Oh, no. It is the indirect realism X direct realism discussion all over again. Herewego 50 pages. — Lionino
The brain generates experience out of a flood of diverse data. — frank
Data from inside the brain?
Emergence of experience requires more than just a brain. Persistence of experience does as well. Brains are not enough. It takes more than just a brain to smell the cake in the neighbor's oven. It takes more than just a brain to remember that smell. It takes more than just a brain to hallucinate that experience. — creativesoul
The burden would be on you to show that bodily interaction is necessary to consciousness. — frank
The brain generates experience out of a flood of diverse data. — frank
Magically sequestered! Ha, I like that! I picture a more vibrant experience for IT...maybe one not so alone, perhaps? What do I know?Truly isolated systems don't exist in nature and the brain couldn't maintain conciousness even if it was magically sequestered in its own universe. — Count Timothy von Icarus
It is astonishing, I do agree! I could go on and on and on and on about all the potential and power in/of/from our abilities to do many things BUT no.the mind could be trained to use ideas or visions from past memories or brain activity patterns? — Kizzy
Our ability to remember and imagine and dream is astonishing. It's fairly easy to imagine what a red pen might look like, or a floroucent pen that glows red in the dark etc. Past memories might help, but with basic language skills one can compose infinitely many descriptions of what a red pen looks like, or might look like, in real or fictional worlds etc.
However, I don't know how to imagine what it might be like to see something invisible, or a pen that is red yet green in the same respect. It's easy to write or say, but not so easy to imagine. — jkop
Hi jkop, It seemed to me at first that Banno's reply to mp202020 was worth a deeper dive. I am now finding myself struggling to explain where I was going with my shared contributions. When you put it so simply it's clear I was mistakenly considering how the red is noticed perceptually in the brain when its not actually being seen in person. The red pen must be enough in order to do that! Duh....a swing and a miss for me.what if the concept of a “red pen” exists within the realm of every subjective mind’s ideas? — Kizzy
Is a red pen not enough? — jkop
I got ya now and see where I went off the rails.First, the experience cannot solely be an experience of redness unless it is the seeing of something red, say a patch of red paint. Or else it would be an hallucination. — jkop
Does the color “red” exist outside of the subjective mind that conceptually designates the concept of “red?” — Mp202020
If "red" is just in your mind, when you ask for a red pen, how is it that the person you are asking hands you what you want? — Banno
This may be bias on my part, but I've had the chance to talk live with quite a few of these people, and every single one has come across as an idiot who just wanted to justify doing whatever they wanted to do. My apologies if I'm a bit harsh, but this idea has always just struck me as being terrible and attracts the worst thinkers to it like bear turds attract flies. — Philosophim
:up:My issue with this is that there is absolutely no requirement to postulate objective goodness to explain these things, and to my mind the ontology of "objective goodness" doesnt even make sense. — Apustimelogist
An objective goodness is a definition of goodness that can be rationally used by everyone despite our own personal subjective viewpoints. Its the difference between, "Rain is heavy cloud precipitation that falls to the ground," versus, "Rain is a feeling of rainness." — Philosophim
I think the difference between morality and the scientific case is that presumably there is some kind of hidden cause out in the world separate from us which we are trying to make sense of and which bears out empirical data that we can use to evaluate our scientific models. But in the moral case the only data we have is our own opinions based on how people want the world to work. So there isn't really a sense in which there is some separate hidden object which we are right or wrong about. We are the analogous hidden object whose properties are contingent on what opinions we happen to have. Its then not clear to me that someone disagreeing objectively means one person is right and the other wrong. — Apustimelogist
Nice....Interaction is not a necessary condition for treating someone as an end. If I give a donation to a charity that works to help people in Gaza or Ukraine, I am treating those people as ends, but it can't be said that I interact with them: I don't even know who they are. — Herg
Whatever Kant meant by what he wrote, the emboldened rendering above is what I was aiming for (except that I think all beings capable of pain and/or pleasure should be treated as ends, not just humans: "The question is not, Can they reason nor Can they talk, but, Can they suffer?" ). — Herg
thats what i was saying...kinda. Suffering part, particularly... (minus what was mentioned in your parenthesis-my opinion differs [good thing that is a non-factor) BUT nonetheless, progress is made.I might still just watch the 20 get hit. Depends how they beg I guess....thats so disturbing that I went there but am I surprised? Cant say I am. Am I enjoying myself? Not pleased to admit my truth but willing to accept the reality of it. — Kizzy
Yes!! Glad you continued on here with this important addition...consideration to these details ought to be had even further....I am walking on imaginary eggshells here.If we say that everybody has his/her exclusive feeling of being “I”, what we are talking about this way is not anymore the true authentic experience of subjectivity, because, by adopting this way of describing it, what we are considering is what is common to everybody. What is common to everybody is something objective, even when we consider “what is exclusive of everybody”: this is an objectivistic language, that moves our attention away from the exclusivity of my or your personal feeling of now. This means that the only way I have to make an idea of the feeling “I” of other people is by objectifying it, that is entering in a context of ideas that completely betrays the fact that what we are talking about is subjectivity, not objectivity. As a consequence, the only correct, authentic way of thinking about subjectivity is when I try to pay attention to my feeling “I” the moment I am thinking about it. As I said, if I think of my feeling “I” that happened yesterday, that one is an objectified, petrified concept, it is not the real concept of subjectivity that should coincide with the experience felt now by me. The same applies if we say that we are talking about “the feeling “I” here and now”: this expression is just another objectification of the concept because, when we think of it, we think of an abstract idea, similar to the concept of “my feeling I of yesterday”: these expressions do not guarantee that we are paying attention to our present feeling “I” the moment we are thinking about them — Angelo Cannata
I find this intriguing. I once envisioned a similar scenario: a new couple, where one partner prematurely declares their love. This declaration alters the dynamics of the foundational base that was building the relationship between the two individuals. The more time left for contemplation, I believe, may start to shift the perceptions of the other partner.In this situation, wanting to objectify subjectivity, to be able to study it, is like wanting to put a kiss or a hug in a slide to be able to observe it with a microscope — Angelo Cannata
Treatid, I wouldnt task my worst enemy with such a job of analyzing my BS...maybe because its a bit revealing but it is indeed a hot flaming mess burrowed yet not letting the void keep anyone stuck. I am fired up in this void, even alone...I light up with any glimpse of acknowledgment, so thanks for that at least.As such, I recognise what you are saying as genuine reflections of what you think and believe.
However, I'm not going to do statistical analyses on your stream of consciousness. Partly because no-one has time to do that but mainly because the process of creating structure on the page out of structure in the mind is an essential component of dialogue.
The effort to represent our internal shapes in an external format is part of learning and growing.
Even if no-one reads what we write, we learn from the process of structuring our writing. By examining and considering our thoughts as we express them we can change our ideas even before we engage with other people.
Stream of consciousness can be a useful insight into our own thoughts but as a form of communication with other people it lacks an essential element of self-reflection. — Treatid