Math is intriguing.
Did you know that quite recently, scientists were able to create an entirely new phase state of matter that resists quantum decoherence by bombarding atoms in a quantum computer with a laser pulse sequence based on Fibonnaci numbers? Now that is math for you, try explaining that!
New phase of matter

Also, in a sense the machine becomes part of a model/simulation consisting of the measurable and the potential measurements....

An experiment is performed. A machine registers the outcome. This is when the "collapse" occurs. An hour later a scientist reads the measurement - his reading doesn't mystically create an answer. — jgill

Inasmuch as the machine was created and deployed by human intention, I don't think this successfully detaches the observer from the event, do you? It's definitely interesting.

The role of measurement, perhaps. — jgill

Can you amplify this?

You don't make a case for "science as metaphysics" – besides, the phrase seems incoherent insofar as the latter consists of categorical statements (ideas) and the former hypothetical propositions (explanations). :chin: — 180 Proof

This seems a gross oversimplification that does justice to neither.

You must be a very empathetic and generous person to put yourself in this position. It amazes me that the people with very limited resources are often so much more generous and kind than those with much and to spare.

I would hope to have the courage to continue to offer my support (in your place) and achieve the best outcome before suffering personal setback, but I can't honestly say I would do. I am glad there are people like you in the world, it is undoubtedly a better place because. If I were the person deciding to evict you I certainly wouldn't do that, even if that meant problems for me. Could you dialog with your housing agency to try and pre-empt that problem?

Magister Ludi
by Hermann Hesse

I think that the problem should be approached at the more general level of corporate accountability. Dramatically increase the scope of government to regulate corporate actions in anything that pertains to immediate social welfare - negative environmental impacts (externalized costs), cost of necessities (food, shelter). Then better regulation of the internet - insofar as that is a product of corporate interests - is just one more step in the right direction.

Knowledge and Human Interests
by Jürgen Habermas

maybe is the reason that we are always living in the present. — Persain

Yes. As I like to think of it, it is never not now.

I'm sure your descriptions match the inspiration of pantheists throughout time. Somehow, being born to awareness in any now links you to awareness in all nows.

If you undertake a dream journal, and thoroughly and regularly document your dreams, your dreams will grow in extent and clarity (at least your recollection thereof), and you will naturally achieve lucid dreaming. I have done it, the results are quite remarkable.

Critique of Instrumental Reason
by Max Horkheimer

Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe
by George Eliot

The Warden
by Anthony Trollope

What does it mean to give oneself purpose? — TiredThinker

Extending one's concerns beyond the limitations of the self. We are fundamentally social beings. Being stranded on an island of self-indulgent thoughts and actions can only lead to isolation. Believing that our actions contribute to an overall good, on the other hand, can be very rewarding in and of itself.

:up:

It was attributed to me by Pantagruel. — ArielAssante

It was never attributed to you, it was made by me, Agent Smith misread the post, which was clear enough.

And, FYI, mindfulness is not a new idea but is, in fact, one of the core principles and techniques of Buddhism.

Accuracy is so important, isn't it? In fact....mindfulness. Wow.

Living mindfully. :rofl:

I think mindfulness is the optimum state of mind.

Various theories of karma have in common that they view karma as a feedback loop, — baker

:up: :up:

Bottom line, when we get all of our ducks in row, at least temporarily, there can be a “feeling” of being ‘without any kind of internal or external deception or equivocation’. That is a very powerful incentive not to delve further and most people do not. — ArielAssante

So our ducks can never really be in a row?

I just went in to our local library and offered my technical and other skills as a volunteer, so I'll be doing that in the coming year too.

haven't read Weber but I learned a little about Calvinism in history. One aspect which I do think comes into play is the context of values related to the basic economic structure of social life. — Jack Cummins

As you mention social life, there is also the whole competing sociological traditions of Rousseau and Hobbes to consider in this context. Society as separating man from his fundamental goodness versus society as the source of order, controlling man's destructive and selfish urges.

Karma presupposes supernatural record keeping and judgment. — creativesoul

Why can it not simply be natural cause and effect? Very few (if any) actions absolutely terminate in their intended consequences. Anything you do continues on, past, and through what you intend.

Interesting. If you would like to read about the idea of the "calling" it was important in Calvinism, where it reached a very material form. Weber looks at it closely in the third chapter ofProtestantism and the Spirit of Capitalism.

How can it be considered as "true"? As opposed or compared to what? False, fake, divided, imagined, idealized? — Alkis Piskas

Yes, I'd agree with this. If your true self is in bad faith, that is still your true self. Maybe what @Jack Cummins is describing is the best self?

Academic writing aside, where the term is (I won't say arbitrarily but) specifically defined, I think that ego is a pretty nebulous concept, and, in my opinion, not the best one to use, for that reason. If ego is going to be used in the (most common) negative sense, it indicates an overinvolvement of self at the expense of other and often truth. Then I would say it is just self-deception and self-aggrandizement. On the other hand, if it means the sum total of what takes place at the conscious level (ala Freud) then really, it is just synonymous with consciousness (I would personally unite id/ego/superego under that heading). I'm just not sure it is a productive term.

Or it may mean your ego* is completely satisfied. — ArielAssante

If living in accord with the constraints of external reality without any kind of internal or external deception or equivocation is egoistic. In the pejorative context you suggest, doesn't ego usually imply some kind of falsity or error?

I think that you have already answered your own question: authenticity. This is both an intuitively and comprehensively satisfying concept. If your thoughts and actions are in perfect accord, then you live authentically, and in so doing, can be said to be your true self. Of course, there are innumerable twists and turns to being actually able to do this. Self-knowledge, self-deception, knowledge in general. Still, it would be my chosen port of embarkation.

I don't think it's a problem when scientists do philosophy, only when they conflate philosophy and science.

Fermi's paradox is an example of trying to force an explanation on a description. In a quantitative study of abiogenesis, it was observed that, rather than the 90 or so precursor elements being randomly distributed among a large number of seed sites (of artificial membranes) some seed sites contained zero elements whereas a small number contained all the elements to produce biotic chemicals from prebiotic. Although the statistical probability of abiogenesis occurring in the context of the experiment was infinitesimally small, it did in fact occur.

So it is an observable feature of nature that its stochastic nature seems to break down or be superseded by more localized or focal effects where life (or perhaps negentropy itself) is concerned. Which makes sense, insamuch as negentropy is really a contradiction of the most basic law governing mechanics.

Keep the Aspidistra Flying
by George Orwell

:yikes:

There isn't any such comparable scientific circumstantial evidence of "cosmic consciousness" — 180 Proof

Unless you place any validity at all on subjective experience. Which is essentially what any humanistic science from history to sociology to anthropology to, dare I say, philosophy, does.

It isn't a common word, and your online sources are just someone clunking something together. I have encountered the word in texts, a quick survey of citations on google scholar will produce some of those. In particular, one includes a characterization of the word in the context of future architecture and the transphysical city:

As the prefix trans- implies, it will be at once a
transmutation and a transgression of the known, but it will also stand alongside and be interwoven
into that very matrix.
http://cast.b-ap.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2014/09/Novak.pdf

So your metacognitive strategy of looking up a word you don't know is valid, but you need to maintain an awareness of the true reliability of your reference source.

You wasted your own time.

By the way, with all respect to your prestigious online internet sources, the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, which is 2 volumes and 7000 pages and is in my library, defines trans- as a freely productive prefix, which is how it was used. It does not contain the word transphysical. I am quite content that context of the usage accurately reflects the sense I am conveying.

AI are in the news again, and it got me wondering what the most common sense way to seeing these machines was. Animals have consciousness but not reasoning like we do. Artificial intelligence does or may someday have the reasoning we have, but does this mean they are conscious? I mean, we can imagine consciousness without reason, so why not reasoning without consciousness? I haven't seen this considered before, so I thought I'd throw it out there — Gregory

Right now so called AI can perform specific tasks based on extensive programming. At the height of its complexity, these tasks can be generalized to what may be called "abilities": carry on a conversation, for example. So the question is, if we think of AI as being conscious, is this a specific ability which we confer on it? That only begs the question of what consciousness is. In that case, if we think of AI as attaining consciousness, it must be in the context of us conferring more and more task specific capabilities such that, in a cumulative fashion, new generalized abilities emerge, at the apex of which emerges consciousness, the ultimate general ability. And if it is an emergent property then we would no more have created that consciousness than we created the matter out of which the computer was formed.

As to reason without conscious, in abilities-centric characterization just offered, I think reason and consciousness must be synonymous. Viz, a computer that displays the general ability of "carrying on a conversation" (in the context of the Turing test say) is not really reasoning, just executing a whole lot of algorithms very quickly. You could not call that reasoning unless it were at the same time conscious.

Well then it's an unfalsifiable "hypothesis" – at most, (perennialist) poetry. And the "appeal to aesthetics" with respect to ontology, howecer, makes "cosmic consciousness" just another empty name like "god" :sparkle: — 180 Proof

Compare it with the search for extra-terrestrial life then. No evidence for life of any kind has ever been discovered anywhere in the universe beyond the confines of earth. Yet many people and organizations devote lots of resources searching for it in what is considered credible scientific research. And even more people than conduct the actual research believe that it exists, many with great passion.

This could itself be construed as a search for a cosmic intelligence. Which is indeed the theme presented at the conclusion of the Stargate Universe series, where the analysis of exceptionally detailed cosmological data reveals a message embedded in the deepest fabrics of reality. In a sense, isn't that what drives all inquiry, the search for a deeper meaning?

There is no definite determination what causes the global warming. — god must be atheist

This is misleading. Scientific consensus is measurable and quantifiable through the findings of accredited organizations, national and international. Based upon that accepted standard, consensus is extremely high (97-100%) that global warming is human-caused. Whether we solely caused it isn't really relevant. The earth is a system, what we have done is unbalanced it. If a huge rock is balanced precariously atop a hill, and I push the rock, and the rock rolls down and flattens a house, yes, the mass of the stone and the mass of the earth are what actually crush the house, but if I pushed it then I am even more responsible.

edit: Scientific Consensus on climate change

The prefix trans- means across, beyond, or on the other side. So transphysical encompasses and extends the physical.

Since 95% of the universe is dark matter and dark energy, which are characterized mostly by the properties that they do not share with ordinary matter and energy, the traditional bedrock concept of materialism has become pretty tenuous, I think. What does it mean to be substantial? Concreteness and tangibility have more substance in the context of logical reasoning than the description of reality.

Yes, I'm dropping to 3 days a week in February, I'm definitely going to up my reading time then. :up:

I am familiar with classical S-R theory, but nowhere have I ever encountered the concept of identification with respect to it. I googled, but couldn't find any references either??

I am absolutely embracing the view that there are different degrees of consciousness though, yes.