You're confusing "sense" with "stimulus." Senses, as humans understand them, are faculties that one has at least the capability of being conscious of (should the pre-conscious mind choose to send them on to the conscious mind) — Unseen

‘As humans understand them’ - this is where your problem is. My definition of ‘sense’ is from the Oxford dictionary. Your anthropocentrism is getting in the way of your understanding of consciousness.

This takes me back to the query I had before: When you define ‘consciousness’ as ‘having experiences’, it seems like what you mean is ‘being aware that you are having experiences’, which in my view is a definition of self-awareness, NOT of consciousness.

Do you believe it is possible for consciousness to exist without self-awareness?

In Australia, groundwater makes up approximately 17 per cent of accessible water resources and accounts for over 30 per cent of our total water consumption. Some sources are as susceptible to rainfall and drought as dams and river, while others like aquifers are ancient, finite supplies that are replenished much slower than they are being consumed. Groundwater is not a long term solution.

More recently we have desalination plants, which are quite energy intensive for the amount of fresh water they produce - giving with one hand while it takes with the other...

Our best option is still to reduce our per capita consumption of fresh water.

The scientific record doesn't support a theory of higher and lower order rocks where marble, for example, can be shown to have ancient granite ancestors. Much of this has to do with rocks not being able to reproduce, much less actually having DNA.

Rocks don't process information in any literal way. This conversation remains ridiculous regardless of how much you wish to stubbornly maintain it. — Hanover

LOL - I probably asked for that one. FWIW, I don’t believe a rock as such is conscious, neither do I believe it can evolve.

By evolution, I don’t mean Darwin’s theory of ‘chance’ variation and the limitations imposed by natural selection, either. I mean a gradual development of information systems from non-living matter (eg. Carbon) to chemical processes, to biochemical processes, to biology and to humanity. I could substitute ‘carbon atom’ for ‘rock particle’, but the only relevant difference is in our perception of their potential for life.

My particular train of thought developed mainly after reading Carlo Rovelli’s “Reality is Not What it Seems’, and in particular Chapter 12: Information.

It’s not really worth defining interaction as an experience on the part of a rock particle - I’ll grant that. But to dismiss it as having nothing at all to do with consciousness is ignorance, in my opinion. You can quibble about my use of language that suggests panpsychism or personification of rocks or carbon atoms or amoeba, but that’s just fear talking, really. I personally maintain a largely materialist (as opposed to idealist) perspective in relation to consciousness.

An amoeba has no "senses" in the sense we generally use the term. Just responses. — Unseen

A ‘sense’ is the faculty by which a body receives an external stimulus.

A ‘response’ is the reaction to that stimulus.

Just because it isn’t processed by a nervous system as such, doesn’t mean it cannot ‘sense’ the environment to some extent.

Alright then, let’s go back a step or two...

Why do you think a nervous system is necessary for consciousness?
— bert1

Because alteration of an organism's nervous system predictably affects its consciousness. — Hanover

I can see how this makes sense for you. It’s hard to believe an organism can be conscious if it can’t feel pain. But I get the feeling it’s because we keep drawing lines like this against what we assume cannot be conscious that we have so much trouble understanding what consciousness actually is.

My argument is NOT that there is no difference - it’s that we need to better understand and explore the many, many, MANY incremental differences in how information is processed and embodied between a rock molecule and human being as an evolution rather than as a single line in the sand.

How do you elevate a chemical reaction (in an amoeba, for example) to a chemical condition outside its cellular border to having an experience? You're painfully close to personifying a single-celled creature's reaction to an environmental condition. A Roomba's navigation system may be more sophisticated than an amoeba's but we don't imagine that the Roomba is experiencing cleaning your floor. — Unseen

It only seems close to personifying from your perspective, in which only persons have experiences. But try to keep an open mind.

A Roomba has a central processing unit that does all the work: ‘receiving’ the information from sensors and then transmitting that information as instructions to the mechanical systems according to sophisticated programming. I’m not entirely sure how it works, but I can safely say that none of the Roomba parts are changed by the information they receive (except perhaps in temperature). There is no change occurring in the Roomba - only in those parts of its program that are open to new information. I imagine you could swap out the CPU in a Roomba without any problems.

Bacteria doesn’t work like that, though. It experiences the environmental condition precisely because its reaction is chemical. A change occurs to the cell itself - not simply to the information that cell receives or transmits. Not only that, but it occurs based not on a single bit of information, but on the relationship between two bits of information: enabling it to respond in time according to the direction in which the desired chemical condition is stronger.

It depends on how you think consciousness evolved from non-living matter to plants and animals to humans.
— Possibility

I don't think it evolved the way the eye evolved. I think it is a mutation that was never eliminated. The reason I believe this is that I see no need for consciousness in order to survive. Some of the most successful creatures on the planet, in terms of survival, are not conscious. Bacteria, the entire plant family. — Unseen

So, do you believe that consciousness simply appeared as it is, or developed from something simpler?

Bacteria have the capacity to sense their proximity to a desirable or undesirable chemical and adjust their movement accordingly (chemotaxis). Their ‘experience’ is extremely simple, but it is an experience nonetheless. I wouldn’t call this ‘conscious’ as such, but the capacity to process information (relate one bit of information to another) before incorporating or ‘responding’ to it could be seen as a precursor to consciousness, depending how you think it may have developed.

As I noted, the only reason I believe any object other than myself has consciousness is by observing its behavior. Consciousness cannot be seen directly and the only consciousness I can actually experience is my own. I therefore have no reason to believe rocks have consciousness. — Hanover

Do you believe that a rock molecule has the capacity to receive an isolated bit of information from its environment (eg temperature change, directional force) that it embodies, and in doing so transmits information to its environment - whether or not it is aware of that information AS temperature change or directional force as such?

That’s because you view survival as the ultimate success. In your view, then, humans - as soft, porous-skinned creatures with over-developed information processing systems and an acute dependency on each other for survival - are a complete ‘fluke’ of evolution. In my view, we are its greatest potential yet to be realised.

If survival were the ultimate pinnacle of evolutionary success, then there would have been no reason to evolve past bacteria and plants. The fact that life did, you seem to consider as a series of mutations that animals are just trying to make the best of in the ultimate battle for survival. If that’s the case, then as humans we make very little evolutionary sense at all.

If survival were the ultimate pinnacle of evolutionary success, of life itself, then congratulations: you’ve already made it, and all you have to do is make sure you don’t die. Good luck.

As I described before, however, when that kangaroo jumps out in front of your car and your survival is on the line, your consciousness is not just a passive observer anymore. Whatever you pay conscious attention to in that moment can be crucial to your survival. If you’re still thinking of whatever else is going on in your life, your pre-conscious mind is not going to get the job done on its own, because it has no precedence (unless you’re extremely well practised at dodging kangaroos, of course).

So consciousness may not be necessary to live (depending on how you live), but in a continually changing world and when the chips are down, it is necessary in order to survive.

Consciousness is more than simply having experiences, then, isn’t it? Perhaps it has something to do with not simply receiving and processing information, but also physically incorporating or embedding that elaborately processed information into the organism. A computer must store information, then retrieve it and communicate it to the system each time the CPU determines that it’s required. A living body, however, doesn’t require the CPU for all of its operations. Muscle memory, habit, impulses, instinct, etc - all of these are examples of information embedded in the somatic systems over time, rather than controlled by the brain. But it is through consciousness that this information is so elaborately processed before embedding as a pre-conscious sequence of events.

In my view, consciousness has evolved in matter from a one-dimensional information processing system that simply receives and incorporates the information (like a water molecule receiving heat), to a four-dimensional processing system that relates information to each other in spacetime (2D), quantifies, measures and evaluates that information (3D) and also has the capacity to relate the information beyond the existence of the organism to an understanding of the universe across all spacetime BEFORE embedding it into each molecule of the organism as required.

From Laudato Si’ (2015):

We see increasing sensitivity to the environment and the need to protect nature, along with a growing concern, both genuine and distressing, for what is happening to our planet. Let us review, however cursorily, those questions which are troubling us today and which we can no longer sweep under the carpet. Our goal is not to amass information or to satisfy curiosity, but rather to become painfully aware, to dare to turn what is happening to the world into our own personal suffering and thus to discover what each of us can do about it. — Pope Francis

I think the problem with evolutionary theory is that it assumes chance and survival are the only determining factors in evolution. But it then struggles to explain a number of evolutionary anomalies like altruism, suicide, love, art, etc.

There’s little doubt that natural selection has a significant impact on what kind of traits survive in life-threatening environments. But evolution and diversification occurs in abundantly resourced and non-threatening environments as well, and some traits or behaviours developed in these environments have little to no survival value, but instead suggest an underlying motivation to evolution that can be masked by extinction rates.

If chance and survival were the only determining factors of evolution, then humanity certainly would not have evolved into an organism equipped to maximise awareness, interconnectedness and overall achievement over individual or even genetic survival. We can think of ourselves as a ‘fluke’ of evolution, the pinnacle of its achievement OR as its greatest potential still to be realised.

Multicellular life persisted where it didn’t harm survivability, but I don’t think we should therefore assume ‘survival value’ as the motivating factor simply because it seems most obvious. It’s also too much of a leap to then claim ‘logical ability’ as a survival advantage of multicellular forms over unicellular. I find it interesting, too, that animals seem to discard under-utilised survival traits in abundant environments, but often retain traits with no survival value despite the threat of resource scarcity. Personally, I think we need to dispense with Darwinian apologetics and consider the possibility that there’s more to evolution than chance and survival value.

But before anyone jumps immediately to divine intervention (because I’m pretty sure that’s where the OP may be headed), I would argue that all matter started out with the potential to maximise awareness, interconnectedness and overall achievement. I think most of it is dependent on humanity now, though. An intervening God can be a way to ‘pass the buck’, in my opinion.

I'll stop you right there. The universe literally would not exist without someone to perceive it. That is the position known as idealism (vs. materialism), the view that nothing exists apart from mind. Is that really your view? Very few philosophers hold that position anymore. — Unseen

And I’m not one of them. The way I see it, there is a difference between participation in events and mental perception.

With quantum physics and process philosophy, it’s no longer a question of idealism vs materialism. The role of the observer in the unfolding of the universe need not be considered passive in a materialist perspective, as far as I’m concerned. It depends on how you think consciousness evolved from non-living matter to plants and animals to humans.

You seem reluctant to explore this unity or interconnection beyond the scope of ‘conscious’ individuals - in which case I agree with TS that you’re further away from pantheism than you might think.

I tend to also believe there is a connection between everyone - but that this connection is also with everything: past, present and future. Any sense of disconnect we experience is only a lack of awareness - which can’t really be helped on the ‘physical side of things’, but certainly can on the ‘consciousness side’. Where do we draw the line on our unity or connection with the unfolding universe, and why?

I believe it goes deeper than Jung’s ‘collective unconscious’ (which is restricted to humankind). I think the more we strive to understand consciousness in relation to information processing, biochemistry and quantum physics, the more we will recognise a fundamental similarity and connection between every process in the universe - and the entire path of evolution will become clearer. But that’s only conjecture at this point.

As for ‘God’, my experience with pantheism suggests that these beliefs could be a gateway to atheism, but not necessarily. Personally, I think we need to abandon the idea that ‘he’ is a conventional ‘being’, and see God as more of a concept. God and Evil are mutually exclusive as beings, for instance, but I believe they can co-exist as concepts. I recognise that this moves away from theism, but I still don’t know if I consider myself to be an atheist as such. God just makes more sense to me this way: it exists for me as a concept that equates with the entire past, present and future of the unfolding universe.

I'll go further. It IS gratuitous to have experiences. Our preconscious mind could function without the conscious one. In fact, it does so often. You do a long day of driving, mostly thinking of whatever's going on in your life as you do so. By the time you reach your destination, you got there making, really, very few decisions on a conscious level. — Unseen

When you say ‘have experiences’, can I assume you mean ‘be aware that you are having experiences’? Experience itself, or participation in events, is necessary for the physical universe to exist. But is it necessary to be aware that we are having experiences? I think that depends on how much experience we have with an experience.

When you first learn to drive, it is impossible to make the necessary connections in the brain required to drive a vehicle unless one is first aware that the information received from the senses correlates to the organism participating in the operation of a moving vehicle at a particular speed in a particular environment. Every thought, feeling and action related to driving a vehicle - including your visual attention, the pressure under your right foot and its relative position, the distance between buttons and levers and what they do, the rapidly changing placement of the vehicle on the road and in relation to stationary or moving obstacles - would have initially been consciously experienced, with each decision made in full awareness, and all relevant new information then processed in the brain for future reference.

As you acquire more driving experience, most of the operations and related decisions are gradually based more on stored information, and subsequent driving experiences of the organism, including visual and spatial cues, no longer need to occupy consciousness to trigger decision-making protocols. But if a kangaroo suddenly jumps in front of your car, then whatever else is going on in your life is probably going to quickly take a back seat, and you will once again become acutely aware of the rapidly changing placement of the vehicle on the road in relation to the kangaroo and other moving or stationary obstacles...one would hope...

I think the preconscious mind of an adult could indeed function very well for the majority of the time without consciousness - and I’m inclined to think that many of them do just that. If SURVIVAL is your main purpose in life, then consciousness isn’t necessary at all once you’ve reached adulthood, is it?

For me personally, I’d prefer to have conscious experiences - seeking new information, more complex understanding and new connections with the universe - than not have them. But then, I would argue that SURVIVAL VALUE serves as a limiting rather than motivating factor in evolution - it’s certainly not the ‘be all and end all’ of evolutionary progress.

I have no opinion on whether a given person deserves something or not, here I am just focused on helping the person suffer less. If the path to happiness for that person is to find a woman to love him and start a family with, who am I to judge whether I think he deserves that or not? — leo

You misunderstand me. It isn’t for me to judge - it’s for him to question. If your focus is only on helping the person suffer less, regardless of whether what he wants is ultimately beneficial for him, for society or for the people around him, then you might succeed in relieving HIS suffering, but what if doing so causes someone else to suffer? I’m not suggesting you have an opinion, but you’re certainly not getting to the root of suffering with such a narrow focus.

If you’re aiming to relieve suffering one person at a time, then I guess you’ll always have a job this way. I was under the impression you wanted to relieve suffering in general, but I’m starting to see that I was mistaken.

As to "gaining control", if we help someone to get what they want then obviously we have helped them to gain control over their life. If we help them to change their expectations or their reaction to a situation then we're still helping them to gain control over their life. It is precisely control over ourselves and our surroundings that keeps us alive. Both gaining control over a situation and over ourselves (our desires, expectations, reactions, beliefs) can help relieve suffering. — leo

No. We’ve only helped them to experience an illusion of control over elements of their life. It is not control over ourselves and our surroundings that keeps us alive - it’s the relationships we develop and nurture that achieve this.

On the example of a young man, who wants a woman to love and to love him back and to start a family with, and who suffers because he can't find one, then helping him find one is the more obvious remedy, rather than making him think that he is such a shitty human being he doesn't deserve one, or that he doesn't really need love or a family. — leo

This is where I think we differ, because when I talk about questioning the assumption that he deserves to have a woman who loves him and wants to start a family with him, I’m not suggesting we convince him that he is such a shitty human being he doesn’t deserve one. What I’m suggesting is the whole assumption that ANYONE even deserves a romantic relationship and should therefore expect to get one is false. The belief that IF ONLY he could become more confident around women, more attractive, more generous, accommodating, genuine, etc then he would be able to find love and start a family actually contributes to, more than it relieves, suffering.

The Collins online definition of ‘deserve’ states “if you say that a person or thing deserves something, you mean that they should have it or receive it because of their actions or qualities”.

It seems to me you believe all non-shitty young men deserve to find love and to start a family, and I don’t think you’re alone in this belief at all. But should they then fully expect to have this experience (say, by a certain age) or else assume some sort of deficiency? And does this mean that all those shitty men who have a woman who loves them and a family have somehow managed to get what they don’t deserve? Have they duped these women, thereby denying the ‘more deserving’ young men of their ‘rightful’ experience? I think this kind of thinking contributes not only to undue suffering by young men, but also to ‘incel’ groups and violence against women.

I disagree with the assumption that a young man SHOULD expect to have or find a romantic life partner BECAUSE of his actions or qualities. I don’t mean to say that they DON’T deserve this experience. Nor do I disagree that certain actions or qualities may endear him to women statistically speaking. But there is no magic combination of actions and qualities in a young man that would ENTAIL this experience - and for a therapy or professional to claim to have ‘the answer’ contributes significantly to suffering.

Now in the process of helping him find a woman, the reasons why he couldn't find one would be explored and addressed, and if the root issues are addressed then a priori there is no reason that he would form relationships that keep falling apart, and if that turns out to be the case then that means the therapy was poor and something important was missed, the root issues weren't addressed, for instance maybe the young man was coached to fake a persona to make women attracted to him, but once in a relationship he couldn't keep it up. — leo

I get the impression you see relieving suffering as a matter of gaining control over the situation. In my view it’s important to come to terms with the reality that the situation can never be fully controlled, even with help from professionals. It is only how I personally understand and interact with the situation that I can hope to control - not the situation itself, not other people’s decisions or how they respond to the situation.

It is theoretically possible for a man to have zero faults and still experience ‘not finding a woman’. This is not a travesty - it’s life.

I think if we’re going to relieve suffering then we need to learn to accept and function within situations we cannot control - to control ourselves in an uncontrollable situation. When people seek help to relieve their suffering, we should be helping them to understand the situation and control their response to it, not helping them try to control the situation, or trying to control it for them. I believe this is as true for lonely young men as it is for starving families in Africa.

But if we acknowledge that suffering results from an interaction between what we desire and what we experience, then we have a framework that can guide us to find the source of a person's suffering and help relieve it: What does the person really want, that is in conflict with what they experience, and how can we best untie their knot to make their experience of life closer to the life they want? — leo

You’re still assuming that ‘the life they want’ is also what they deserve and what is necessary. If the young man wants ‘the whole thing, the intimacy, the romance, the life partner, the family’, then helping him ‘find a woman’ only to have the relationship (and subsequent relationships) fall apart is as effective as giving him drugs to treat his depression. To then say that his suffering has a new and different source that requires a new diagnosis and remedy is to commit the same error as the professionals who support the pharmaceutical industry by pushing their ‘be-all and end-all solution’ - only at a deeper level.

You’re still creating a dependency on external ‘help’ (ie. drugs, coaching) to attain superficial experiences (ie. finding a woman or keeping a relationship) which appear to relieve his suffering, but only temporarily take his mind off what he really wants (‘the whole thing’). Plus, you’re perpetuating the assumption that what he desires is both necessary and what he deserves: that it’s what he should have. Relieving his suffering is then seen as just a matter of finding the right way to make his experience of life mould to his desire, rather than critically examining the relationships with both his experiences of life and his desires.

I get that you want to make it simpler, but relieving suffering is never going to be simple. Suffering may seem to be ‘a feeling that we want to not feel’, but that’s only a surface explanation of a much more complicated web of interconnection. If you really want to untie their knot, you have to understand why what they want is in conflict with what they experience without assuming the life they want should be the objective.

I agree with your indictment of the pharmaceutical industry, and the educational, financial and even patient pressure on mental health professionals to treat drugs as a ‘solution’ to suffering, when at best it masks the symptoms of a much deeper issue.

But your definition of suffering as simply ‘an experience we want to stop’ is, in my view, insufficient as a starting point to reducing instances of suffering.

I understand that you’re argument is not to just treat the symptoms of suffering (with drugs), but to look deeper and help the person understand why they are suffering and then help them to ‘correct’ or ‘stop’ the experience itself. I agree with the deeper shift in focus - it IS more useful and despite the pressure it IS being practiced by some professionals, but it’s still only an intermediate measure. I’m saying we need to look even deeper again, and help the person to understand what contributes not to the situation, but to their unique subjective experience that they want to stop.

This is more than helping someone stop the unwanted situation of ‘not getting what I want’. In your example of a young man who wants to ‘find a woman’, there is the objective situation of the young man not being in a relationship or not ‘finding a woman’, and there is his subjective experience of not ‘finding a woman’ informed by the perception of ‘finding a woman’ as a) desired, b) deserved and c) necessary: which amounts to his experience of suffering.

What contributes to the situation of not being in a relationship would include the stress he may feel around women. We could give him a drug or coaching that stops him feeling stressed, which may help increase his confidence interacting with women - but if he continues to ‘strike out’ or subsequent relationships go south, then it’s likely his suffering would be intensified rather than reduced. We haven’t solved the problem - we’ve only masked the symptoms at a deeper level. The lengthy process and unreliable effectiveness of these intermediate measures, and the distress this causes their patients (not to mention waning confidence in such treatment) only encourages professionals to fall back on pharmaceuticals to help their patients ‘get on with life’ in the short term - like painkillers to cover up chronic pain that doctors don’t know how to fix.

By prescribing a drug or even coaching as the indirect ‘solution’ to his suffering, we actually validate the young man’s belief that ‘finding a woman’ is desired, deserved and necessary, and that the objective situation of his not being in a relationship is the cause of his suffering.

But this is not the case. The cause of his suffering is not the situation itself, but rather the way that he personally (with his worldview, values and belief systems) experiences or relates to the situation of not ‘finding a woman’. Because it is possible (and even normal or healthy) to experience not being in a relationship without suffering.

The situation of not being in a relationship is one we will probably all experience at some stage for various reasons, whether we want to or not. Despite our best efforts we cannot guarantee avoiding it, and if it happens to us, then we have no choice but to experience it in that moment. We don’t necessarily have to suffer as a result, though.

Reducing the experience of suffering involves understanding our relationship with and between what we desire, what we deserve and what we deem necessary in life, and questioning the assumptions, values and beliefs that govern them.

We can reduce suffering by helping to question the assumption that ‘finding a woman’ is a necessary situation for any ‘normal’ young man - by a certain age, for instance. The expectations placed on young men from society, media, from family and friends, etc. can be critically examined and seen as unnecessary pressure that contributes to suffering.

We can also question the assumption that being in a relationship is a right that is earned by behaviour, words or even by thoughts. One doesn’t deserve to find a woman simply because he displays the right attitude, because he says the right things or even because he treats women a certain way. Applying the concept of ‘reward for effort’ to the experience of ‘finding a woman’ sets up incongruent expectations which contribute to suffering.

But we can even question the assumption that being in a relationship is actually what is desired. What does it mean to this young man to ‘find a woman’? Is it an initial sexual experience, a regular sexual partner, romance, marriage, family, someone who looks at him a certain way, someone to take care of him; or is it the experience of feeling like a ‘normal’ male, of having his parents stop fussing, of having someone to come home to...? Equating what is individually and honestly desired with the perceived experience of ‘finding a woman’ can also contribute to suffering.

‘Not finding a woman’ is a situation we cannot hope to eliminate from human experience. The suffering that is associated with this experience, however, I believe we can reduce: by increasing awareness and understanding of what we desire, what we deserve and what is necessary in life.

The way I see it, the problem is not so much that uninformed and ignorant people are allowed to vote - good luck rescinding that right without violence, let alone getting people to agree with it - but that we celebrate and amplify the voice of uninformed and ignorant people.

Why? Because drama and conflict outsells intelligent discussion any day of the week. Polarity more readily stimulates a response from even the most intelligent and rational citizen, so they give air time to whingers and devil’s advocates, generating an assumption that what they’re saying has value other than simply stimulating response from others.

Rescinding the right to vote from the uninformed and ignorant will only generate a different form of class conflict. It’s not a solution, and to tout it as such only shows a lack of sympathy and an ignorance of what it’s like to be denied access to information, or to be raised ignorant.

That the age cap on democracy fails to ensure a standard of voting capacity is an indictment on our education and value systems. What happens historically when the ‘ruling elite’ dictate the criterion on which one can become enfranchised? Do you not see the problem with your supposed ‘utopia’?

I guess it depends on what values/properties you focus on.

In assigning values to everything, it seems we can always focus on whatever value hierarchies place our own interests at the top, and then simply ignore, devalue or deny those evaluative properties that fail to serve our purpose or remind us our limited perspective is neither objective ‘truth’ nor a priority.

It’s apologetics masquerading as reason. Don’t fall into the trap.

But do you agree that there cannot be an experience of lack or loss without a desire for what is perceived to be lacked or lost? This makes desire a more fundamental factor in suffering. — leo

No. You can experience lack without a desire for what is perceived to be lacking. I experience a lack of height every time I walk around in public, but I have no desire for more height. If you’re saying that you cannot suffer from lack without a desire for what is perceived to be lacking, then I agree - but this does not make desire a more fundamental factor in suffering.

Something to think about for next week: one problem is that where there is suffering there can always be said to be desire: a desire for the absence of suffering. So ‘desire’ in itself doesn’t tell us anything as to why people suffer, by construction any experience of suffering can be reframed as desire (by definition suffering is an unwanted experience, and in an unwanted experience there is a desire for the cessation of that experience).

I think it’s important to understand that pain, loss/lack and humility/humiliation are the experiences where suffering occurs, and that these experiences themselves are an essential part of living. But they are not the same as suffering, even though it sometimes feels that way. I think we are all agreed that these experiences can and do occur without suffering, but that where there is suffering, at least one of these experiences is also occurring.

But can we also agree that there is a situation in the mind where an experience of pain, loss/lack and/or humility/humiliation is perceived as unacceptable for whatever reason - and it is beyond this indistinct point that suffering occurs?

Where that point is for us depends on our awareness of, beliefs about, and subsequent perception or evaluation of, the complex relationships at play within the multi-dimensional experience in question. It is then different not only for each person, but also each experience, and is subject to change as our relationships with everything in the world change.

Desire is an important factor, but it is our relationship with this desire that leads us to evaluate whether the experience is unacceptable, and therefore suffering. One may desire to be rid of financial stress and also rid of chronic back pain, but instead continue to experience both. In most cases, they would ‘suffer’ more from the second than the first.

One reason for this may be that they can more readily share their experience of financial stress with others, but not their back pain. This relates not just to the fact that bank statements cannot be questioned as much as internal pain, but also to the common experience of financial stress at varying levels, and the capacity for others to ease one’s financial stress to some extent.

Chronic back pain, on the other hand, can be ignored, dismissed or forgotten by those around us, who then refuse or reject our attempts to share our experience with them. We don’t want to hear about someone’s back pain when we can do nothing to relieve it. They tend to ‘suffer’ because the pain is theirs to bear alone - it isolates them.

But the experience of lack of suffering is also an experience of lack, yet it is not suffering. And the experience of the lack of something unwanted is usually not suffering.

Meanwhile the experience of presence of suffering is suffering, and the experience of the presence of something unwanted can be suffering.

We could say that experiences of lack can lead to suffering, and experiences of presence can lead to suffering, but any experience can be formulated as lacking something or as having something, so we can't say that a lack or presence indicate in themselves suffering over anything else.

Basically, lack or presence in themselves are not variables that act on suffering. It is the lack or the presence of something that can act on suffering, and what we are looking for are the something. — leo

This is why I initially use the experience of ‘loss’ in relation to suffering - because people feel compelled by reason to attribute an experience of lack TO something that is missing. But lack here refers to an experience of incompleteness, rather than the lack of a specific thing. The attribution of lack to a missing thing or experience is simply a justification for the experience of lack itself.

Like experiences of pain, experiences of lack and loss are essential to the process of life. From a single-celled creature to a human being, each living organism must continually part with elements of itself (loss), and is also continually compelled to incorporate elements of the environment into itself (lack). Without this process, there is no life. We are dissipative structures, maintaining a status of non-equilibrium that motivates us to increase entropy: to consume our environment and dispel waste.

When we experience lack, we don’t tend to accept the experience as a normal part of living. We feel hungry because the body must continually process nutrition and energy in order to live. But we don’t believe anyone should have to suffer from a lack of nutrition or energy, and so we tend to over-eat and consume high energy foods to avoid an experience of lack. We see food that we desire, and even though we’ve had enough to eat, we ‘reason’ that because the body expresses desire for that food item, the general feeling of lack we experience as living beings could be satiated by incorporating this particular element of the environment into ourselves.

We don’t like to think of ourselves as incomplete, as lacking anything - and yet that is what it means to live.

When humans are diagnosed with kidney failure, we have options such as kidney transplant and dialysis. I’m wondering if anyone knows the reason these are not available options for a cat?

Just a thought.

Everything up to "the capacity to develop, achieve or succeed as a whole".

At this point, if everyone had proceeded into their "own potential [...] broadened in the awareness and fulfilment of a universal potentiality", then bellum omnium contra omnes would be a paradise-in-the-flesh. — Merkwurdichliebe

I’m not sure that I follow how this comment relates. In my view there is a difference between everyone pursuing our own needs as a priority, and the broadening of our own potential by pursuing the fulfilment of a universal potentiality as the priority. The latter I think is more in line with this Buddhist concept of not-self, and the view of pleasure as described in this thread.

Pardon my ignorance, but you might have to explain what you mean a little further before I can respond.

Let's say you want some specific thing you have never had, but you can't seem to get it and you suffer as a result. There is no physical pain nor loss involved. There is not necessarily humiliation involved. But there is suffering. — leo

This is an experience of lack, which I did mention in my original post in tandem with loss. Lack is a more accurate and inclusive description of the experience, but loss seems to make more sense to people when we talk about suffering. This is also the case with humility, which is an inclusive description of the experience for which humiliation is more often considered suffering.

I can believe I deserve something and not suffer if I don't have it. I can believe I deserve something, but if I don't care whether I have it or not then I don't suffer if I don't have it. I will care if I want that thing and I don't have it though, desire has to be involved. — leo

I have not argued against the significance of desire in a model of suffering, nor have I argued against the significance of belief. But to say that suffering is simply a conflict between desire and perception/belief is to reduce a multi-dimensional experience to only two dimensions of awareness. If you want to make a more accurate model of suffering than what we currently have, it won’t help you to disregard or dispute the significance of the other dimensions to the experience, despite how much easier it then becomes to illustrate.

Suffering is a conflict between desire, belief/perception, and direct experience. It occurs when the way we want to move in the world, the way we think about and understand the world (including but not confined to our beliefs), and the information we receive through our senses, are in conflict.

So when you want some specific thing you have never had, but you can’t seem to get it, it is not just a conflict between desire and perception/belief that leads to suffering. You might reword this experience to say that there is a conflict between desire for that specific thing and the belief that you can’t get it, but it’s more complicated than that. For suffering to occur, there must be a conflict between desire for that specific thing, the belief/knowledge/perception that you can or should be able to get it (that getting it is a normal or expected part of life’s experiences), and the direct experience of not getting it. This is where lack becomes suffering.

If you desire something, believe you should get, and experience getting it instead of not getting it, there is no suffering.

If you desire something, experience not getting it, but don’t believe you should get it, there is no suffering (eg. a gold medal).

If you don’t get something that you believe is a normal part of life’s experiences, yet you don’t want it, there is no suffering (eg romantic love).

In my view, it is how we think about and interact with pain, loss/lack and humility/humiliation in the world that should be explored if we want to reduce suffering. Also, we should take a close look at some of the concepts that contribute to suffering, to see if the way we think about and interact with them are part of the problem.

Why do we believe that romantic love, for instance, is something everyone should experience? What is it about the concept of romantic love that makes it desirable? What is it about the concept or the way we understand it that makes it only available to some people? Given that we cannot control what we desire, and we cannot control what we experience, can we adjust the way we think about and understand the what - the relationship between what we desire and what we experience - so as to reduce the conflict between desire, belief and direct experience, and thereby reduce suffering?

So the purpose of this thread is to try and get a discussion started on whether this view on pleasure (found also in the thought of the Buddhists, Arthur Schophenauer, Locke, Hegesias, etc) is correct. And in a wider sense, how we should respond if so. If the good of our existence is not found in chasing pleasure, satisfying desires, fulfilling our needs, then where is it found? How should we then choose to find value in our lives? — Inyenzi

Perhaps the good of our existence is found in chasing awareness and interconnectedness, and in fulfilling the overall potential of the universe. We should then choose to find value in the way our lives intertwine with everything else, and how our own potential is broadened in the awareness and fulfilment of a universal potentiality: the capacity to develop, achieve or succeed as a whole.

I want to clear up a few general assumptions here, if I may. But first I will explain that I’m speaking specifically about catholic schools in Australia, so it may be different in Canada. The same assumptions occur here, though.

Catholic schools here do not teach creation theory - they have a carefully structured religious education curriculum that begins with the myths before children develop an understanding of science that enables them to quietly relegate the stories to childhood myth in much the same way as Santa Claus and fairytales (but also allows their parents to push a more literal interpretation if preferred).

I went to all Catholic schools (not being allowed by my parents to go to a public school because my family is Catholic). They do teach another language, philosophy, literacy/maths, life skills courses, the trades, etc - as well as evolution theory in science. The time in RE learning what it says in the bible and how catholic ideology relates to everyday life is not wasted when it also teaches about ethics, relationships, social justice and community-mindedness.

Not all Catholic schools here are run, funded or disciplined the same. Some are elitist, but most prioritise students whose families demonstrate ‘support’ (ie. tolerance) for the catholic ethos, allowing for less conflict in the classroom and respectful participation in all aspects of life at the school (prayer, etc). Enrolling families who will fight these elements of school life is not in anyone’s best interests.

Government funding relates to the alternative of building and funding sufficient public schools and supportive infrastructure to cater for the population, especially in rural and remote areas. It’s in the government’s best interests to support the catholic system, enabling options for rural and regional families which the government cannot financially justify.

The regional catholic school my own children attend has only 55% baptised catholic, with Anglican, Muslim, Mormon, Hindu and Sikh families also enrolled. It is not more expensive or better funded than other schools in the area, and it doesn’t eject ‘troublesome’ kids - yet it has an excellent reputation because of the focus on relationships between teachers, students and families, which produce educational results. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care, and students learn best where they are loved and cared for.

I’m not defending the Catholic Church, which has many serious problems, or its doctrines, which I fundamentally reject. But I do think the catholic school system is unfairly criticised as a whole, based on a number of false assumptions and the fact that its a big target.

Now you can go back the actual topic. Carry on.

But there can be pain, loss, humility and change without suffering, so surely they cannot be the root causes of suffering. — leo

There can also be grapes without merlot, but can there be merlot without grapes? I’m not saying that pain, loss and humiliation are the ‘root causes’ of suffering, but in a model of suffering, is there an example of suffering without an experience of pain, loss or humiliation?

I feel that the most inclusive view of suffering (given the examples in this thread) is that we experience suffering when we desire something and we believe we can't have it. Can you find any counterexample to this? — leo

I should point out that I agree with your suggestion that conflict, desire, belief and perception are key ingredients in the experience of suffering. But I think there’s more to the experience of suffering than desiring something and believing we can’t have it.

Would you agree with the idea that the person who experiences physical pain suffers because he doesn't want to experience the sensation of physical pain, and that the young man who is having trouble finding a woman suffers because he wants to find a woman and he can't do it?

In both cases, there is a conflict between what is desired and what is experienced. I suggest that this is what suffering is. — leo

Firstly, it’s not only masochists who experience physical pain without suffering. People who exercise, lift weights or compete in individual sports such as marathons or rock climbing, often willingly endure physical pain, not because they want to experience the sensation of physical pain, but because they want the results of stronger muscles or a sense of achievement. We might say that they ‘suffer’, but that’s only because we don’t understand why someone would choose to endure physical pain, which we believe should never be endured by choice.

So the person who experiences physical pain suffers not because he doesn’t want to experience the sensation of physical pain, but because he believes he deserves a life without pain, and the young man who wants to find a woman is not suffering because he can’t find a woman, but because he believes that every young man is supposed to find a woman.

Perhaps suffering is when there is a conflict between the desire for what is believed and the perception of what is experienced. When we believe that life should be without pain, and we desire that to be true, then we perceive an experience of pain as suffering, as something that is inherently bad or harmful. But we’ve already agreed that pain can be experienced without suffering, so this perception is false - as is the belief in a life without pain. There is a cognitive dissonance here. I think that better understanding our relationship to experiences of pain, loss and humiliation is essential to eliminating this conflict in our minds that we call suffering.

Thanks for your response - it’s reassuring to hear that someone follows the way I see this issue. I have done a lot of thinking on this subject, so I’m trying to keep my posts relatively short, otherwise they’ll just get ignored. But there’s a lot of ground to cover, so bear with me.

I will try to clarify one point for you:

I think I am on board when it comes to eliminating pain. But to compromise with Leo's position a little, I am comfortable with suggesting significant reductions in suffering is possible. I think your next paragraph indicates you might be ok with that too? (although determining EXACTLY how much we can reduce suffering is probably very debatable) — ZhouBoTong

I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to reduce suffering - only that our current perception of suffering is that it is inherently bad. But we don’t understand it enough yet to make that judgement. I think that understanding how we cause others to experience suffering by ignoring/denying relationships could go a long way to reduce suffering in the world, as a start.

Once we recognise that everything we do depends on our awareness of relationships with the universe, we can apply this approach to other people and to our own bodily systems, as well as to the environment. The more aware we become of these relationships, the more connected we become with the universe. But we need to be careful to continually balance our awareness of the universe with our awareness of our own bodily systems. Too much focus on relationships with the universe and those around us, and we suffer by misjudging our body’s capacity to cope, its need for rest, nutrition, etc. Too much focus on the relationships with our own physical or emotional systems, and we suffer by misjudging the state of our relationships with those around us, which also increases the suffering of others by thoughts, words and actions.

When we recognise the suffering of those born into extreme poverty, for instance, we need to try and understand why we’re responding the way we do. There is a difference between compassion and pity, and many religious groups don’t acknowledge the difference.

Pity is when we respond to poverty because we imagine what it would be like to experience lack or loss to such an extent, and this conflicts with our firm belief that no-one should experience such lack. So we give what we can spare to ‘the poor’ in order to ease our own suffering, not theirs. We effectively give until we are aware of our loss, and then we stop - because we believe that no-one should have to experience loss. This is the system upon which most charities operate. It is effective because it doesn’t require us to be aware of any relationship with a poor person, and enables us to avoid suffering ourselves.

Compassion, on the other hand, means ‘to suffer with’. When we respond with genuine compassion, person to person, we acknowledge that we are not more entitled or deserving than they are to a life without loss or lack - which I already suggested is not even possible (without ceasing to live). Genuine compassion seeks to level the experience: to endure more loss ourselves - not so they experience less, but so they experience no more loss than we do, even if only for the time that we interact with them. Compassion is sharing a meal (instead of tossing them scraps), giving the coat off our back (instead of donating our cast-offs), etc.

Here’s an interesting thing about suffering in terms of pain, loss and humility: there can be no process of life without experiencing all three. There is no interconnectedness without loss, no growth or development without noticing and adjusting to change, and no awareness of anything in the universe without humbly recognising that the universe is bigger and more valuable than my existence.

So the only way to eliminate experiences of pain, loss and humility is to cease living - I think it’s important to recognise this if our aim is to find a way to model and then control, reduce or eliminate suffering while continuing to live.

I question this need to ‘control’ everything. Despite every effort and every elaborate illusion we construct, I can potentially control my thoughts, my words and my actions, and you can potentially control yours. That’s it, at best.

That doesn’t mean we do, however, but it’s a start to recognise where our individual capacity for control starts and finishes. As a human being, as an animal, we can literally do nothing else in isolation. Everything else we achieve requires a relationship: awareness of interconnectedness and potentiality beyond ourselves.

I may assume, for instance, that I ‘control’ the axe I am using to chop wood, but that sense of control is dependent upon my body’s awareness of certain interconnective properties of the molecules that form the axe and its handle and their collective capacity to split wood, the combination of situational properties (position of the wood, angle of impact, force, arc of swing, grip, etc) that will achieve the desired effect on the wood, as well as my body’s capacity to lift and swing the axe in the required manner every time. Even if I don’t have to consciously think about all of this detail to make it happen, my body still has to take all of this into account to appear to ‘control’ the axe. If I have misjudged or incorrectly assumed any one of these relationships (beyond a certain margin for error), I may ‘lose this control of the axe, as what I intend or desire to happen with the axe fails to occur as intended or desired. But there was never any ‘control’ as such - there are a number of interconnected relationships at work as a result of awareness.

I think perhaps this idea of ‘control’ is where we have a misguided view of our relationship with the world. When we don’t feel like we have control, when what we intend or desire fails to occur as desired or intended, we experience suffering. When what we believe should happen doesn’t, when we incorrectly assume the properties of a relationship with our environment, we experience suffering.

Love is a traceable notion that supersedes time because it is nature. Love isn't an emotion, it's a biological commitment to mating for life. It might raise emotions within us, but it's based on something primal. — whollyrolling

Marriage is a commitment to mating for life - if it were biological, we wouldn’t need divorce. Love is doing what I can to enable another to do what they can - it is an awareness and actualising of potentiality. Yes, it is based on something primal, but I think it’s more primal even than biology. Love, in my opinion, is pre-conscious.

Desire brings another’s potentiality to our attention, along with its connection to our own, in a particularly profound way. This is because we have learned to be very attentive to this feeling. It serves us well as an organism. Love can develop from this situation, as it can also develop from similar interests, familiarity or sharing an intense situation, among other scenarios.

But one could just as easily ignore this deeper call to enable, encourage and support the actualising of potentiality in another, and focus instead on serving their own needs/desire. They might both call this ‘love’ for a time, but in reality one is focused only on receiving love and the other on giving it. This is a recipe for conflict, not love. Not to say love cannot eventually develop, but it won’t come easy.

As for being ‘in love’ - I think this is a complex emotion in which one is aware of love through desire. It is a whole body consciousness of this intertwining of potentiality: recognising that the two of us can achieve more together than we could alone. It is very much tied to our awareness, so is subject to our fears as much as our senses, and is far from a constant emotion.

But love itself is constant, and only needs us to be aware of each other’s potentiality.

You put it into terms of importance, I put it in terms of accessibility.. STEM concepts is difficult, religion becomes more easily accessible, so the "feel" they have more understanding and control. Large, impersonal systems based on hard-to-understand systems of scientific principles and engineering are too much for many to want to really get into. It's a lot of minutia to cover and comprehend. — schopenhauer1

The way I see it, both religion and science operate on two main levels: there is an easily accessible level, which is underdeveloped and based on old information; and there is also a hard to understand level, which is complex and requires a multi-dimensional awareness - a developed ability to interrelate several pieces of information in the mind at once.

Religion in church on Sunday is not the same as advanced theology, just as popular science is not the same as, say, advanced physics. But if one has an aptitude for STEM, they have a tendency to understand religion at little more than a church on Sunday level, and likewise those with a strong theological background tend to understand popular science, but then struggle with the technical details. Some of us struggle with developing this capacity for multi-dimensional awareness, and must rely on simpler explanations of both in the meantime.

I’m overgeneralising, of course. There are some people who make a concerted effort to develop both approaches. One of the hardest obstacles we need to overcome is the centuries-old myth that science and religion don’t mix, and the need to then prioritise one or the other. In my own struggles, I have found that the two have the potential to converge at the forefront of their studies, if given the freedom to do so. In my opinion, Philosophy, delving as it does into both fields of study with the capacity for multi-dimensional awareness, is well placed to assist and promote this convergence.

This is what brought me to TPF. I have, on the whole, not been disappointed.

The point in building a model of suffering is precisely to come up with techniques to have a better control over suffering (such as to prevent or reduce it), in a similar way that building models of the world allows to come up with techniques to have a better control over the world (such as to communicate or travel more quickly across the world).
— leo

Do you see the presumption in this statement? — Wayfarer

That suffering can be modeled? I don't see what you are hinting at. — leo

That suffering can be controlled?

↪Shamshir that's more what I'm thinking but most people would laugh at conscious rocks. — khaled

I don’t believe a rock is conscious, BUT I do think that there is some degree of consciousness at a molecular and/or perhaps even subatomic level. While a rock has no sense of being a rock, it consists of molecules that interact and exchange energy/information with their surroundings - they are individually ‘aware’ of something more than this, here and now, at least - even if only in each fleeting, indistinct moment.

As for your description of humans as ‘data processing, self-replicating biological machines’, while I agree that we are nothing more than other animals except perhaps a more developed system, I would argue that the biological system itself is more elaborately interconnected, and therefore potentially aware of itself, than any one machine. A digital system, however, may be another story.

I think the question of how chemistry interacts with information processing might be worth exploring here. Non-living molecules seem to process information uni-dimensionally (they simply internalise it), whereas living molecules process the same information bi-dimensionally - that is, they can relate information to other information, leading them to internalise it in a different way, and eventually to distinguish between instances of that, there and then, and build a ‘picture’ of their environment.

I have nothing to back this up, mind you. Unfortunately I don’t know enough about chemistry, biology or information theory to either confirm or deny these wild speculations I have. If someone more knowledgeable could set me straight or point me towards studies in this area, I’d appreciate it...

There is the Buddhist model, according to which the cause of suffering is attachment to desire, and the technique to end this suffering is a series of practices called the Noble Eightfold Path. It has definitely helped people, but it demands a strong commitment to its practices and beliefs that many people aren't in a position or willing to make. Also I agree that attachment to desire is sometimes a cause of suffering, but I disagree that it is the cause: one can be attached to a desire and not suffer or suffer little, working towards making the desire a reality while being hopeful about succeeding. Many people function fine while being attached to desires, and it demands a strong commitment to give up all attachment. I see this as an instance of a model that provides useful techniques to reduce suffering, while being embedded in some beliefs that are not based on empirical evidence. — leo

The way I see it, it is how people relate to their desire/attachment - and the experiences of pain, humiliation and loss that come from that relationship - that lead to suffering. According to the Buddhist perspective, all is suffering. So it’s not so much a matter of ending suffering as learning to relate to pain, loss and humiliation in a very different way so that the concept of suffering from these experiences effectively disappears.

Take pain, for instance. We tend to view pain as a signal that something is wrong and needs fixing. We experience pain when there is tissue damage, as a warning to stop, or when a relationship breaks down. But pain is also a signal that our muscles are developing, that we are focusing on the present moment, that progress is happening. If we look at all experiences of pain, it could be understood as an awareness of change that requires the experiencer to adjust in some way. The problem is that, in many cases, we don’t want to make those adjustments, or we don’t believe that we should have to make them. This is where suffering occurs.

In modern science, we understand everything in the universe as process. Change is always happening, and every ‘thing’ comes and goes, undergoing many changes along the way and bringing about changes in interactions with the rest of the universe. We are part of that, not separate from it. When we act, we impact on elements of the universe, which adjust in response, bringing about more changes as these elements interact with other elements, and so on. So why is this awareness of change and the necessity of adjustment a source of ‘pain and suffering’ for those of us who are self-aware? Why do we resist change? Why do we refuse to adjust?

As a start, here are some instances I see where people suffer:

- Feeling hungry or thirsty but not knowing where to find food or water to stop that feeling
- Wanting to feel loved but feeling rejected, while not knowing how to be loved
- Wanting to feel considered but feeling ignored, while not knowing how to be considered
- Wanting to have biological children but not being able to have biological children
- Wanting some person to be alive while that person is dead
- Wanting to feel free but feeling enslaved, while not knowing how to free oneself
- Wanting to stop experiencing physical pain, while not knowing how to make that pain stop
- Wanting to reach some goal while believing that this goal can't be reached
- Wanting to avoid something while believing it can't be avoided — leo

I’ve been thinking outside the box on this concept of ‘suffering’ from a number of different angles recently, and I’ve noticed a few things.

First of all, if we look at the above examples, many of them have two related situations in common: there is a particular belief/lack of knowledge that prevents someone from coping with a particular feeling/experience they don’t want, or want the opposite of.

This suggests that education and awareness would be a significant part of any potential solution - especially in relation to what these feelings are, why we feel them, and how this amounts to suffering.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that there seems to be three main experiences associated with suffering: Pain, loss/lack and humility/humiliation. Sometimes the suffering consists of a combination of these experiences.

All three appear closely related to consciousness, especially to self-consciousness. Animals that we recognise to be lacking in self-consciousness do not appear to suffer from pain, loss or humiliation.

As humans, we tend to have a complicated relationship with these experiences. That is to say, there are times when we consider experiences of pain, loss or humiliation to be bad, evil or unnecessarily harmful, and other times when they are a clear indication of one’s humanity, a reminder that we’re alive, or the ‘stuff of life’ itself. And there are those who determine that both of these are true, and so they understandably seek to ‘opt out’.

But there are also those who find the significance or the very joy of being alive in experiences where they embrace the risk of pain or death, and the humbling sensation of putting their abilities at the mercy of nature’s power.

Why do we both suffer and feel alive in experiencing pain, loss and humiliation? Is the difference in the value of the experience, or the level of awareness? Is it then our suffering or feeling alive that is a misinterpretation of the experience?

If you exclude supernatural explanations (souls and the like) then you see that humans are nothing more than date processing, self duplicating biological machines. — khaled

You seem to base your reasoning on this observation, but how are you so sure the statement is true? Can you be certain that what you see is all there is?

Surely to assume that humans are ‘nothing more’ than what they see is equally unreasonable.

We know how and why particles go where they go and there is (almost) no unexplained phenomena left. Whatever this first cause is it's either no longer a factor, or is one of the forces we see in physics. Maybe the first cause was gravity, or electromagnetism, or some mystical force that no longer plays a role because we don't detect it. — khaled

Can we explain what this concept we call potential energy is and where it comes from? We can observe evidence of the impact (energy) it can have on the physical world, we can even define, quantify, measure and predict this impact with impressive accuracy. But what is it causing this impact: investing everything in the universe with a capacity to do work (ie. to develop and achieve)? What is this formless, timeless, unchangeable existence that preceded the Big Bang and continually ‘reveals’ itself to physical reality through works?

Is it enough to simply give it a name and a number and use its works to our advantage? In physics (Shut Up and Calculate) we can pretend that we don’t care what it is - but from a philosophical perspective, I think potential energy remains largely unexplained...

But if our definitions of existence and non-existence bear little resemblance to reality, then all such questions are rendered pointless. — Jake

I agree. The entire question is pointless, because neither definitions of God nor existence bear any resemblance to either the experience or understanding of reality. Hence the rest of my post:

I’m not looking for a definition of ‘God’ - I’m looking for an understanding of the universe that is fully inclusive of these experiences we associate with ‘God’ and spirituality, rather than of what anyone claims to ‘know’ about ‘God’. — Possibility

What matters is that people keep referring to experiences of ‘God’ as if the personal and reciprocal nature of such experiences point to the existence of an actual, sentient ‘being’. Like our experience and awareness of ‘time’, it could easily point to our ignorance of the complex relations between all events in the universe, and may effectively ‘disappear’ as an external entity as our awareness develops. — Possibility