What is an idea's nature? Of what was a good Christian aware of before Christianity? How did this come to be? Was consciousness the same in all areas, or was it different in different environments? Why did it take so long for us all to have computers?

All excellent questions. Allow me to answer them in order, to the best of my ability.

What is an idea's nature? — Athena

Surely an idea has a minimum of two natures. That which the creator or purveyor of said idea intended, and that which the observer or analyst interprets.

More generally, one must first define "an idea", to get a more direct answer. We often go by consensus, hence the value of a dictionary and why such books remain prevalent. Obviously, by that case, it depends on the idea. :smile:

Of what was a good Christian aware of before Christianity? — Athena

I couldn't answer that. No man could, according to the relevant doctrine of belief. That would be like saying what was your favorite color before you were born? How silly a thing to ponder.

How did this come to be? — Athena

How did what come to be?

Was consciousness the same in all areas, or was it different in different environments? — Athena

Evolution suggests consciousness was evolved. If that's your bedrock understanding of reality, the answer seems to be self-evident.

Why did it take so long for us all to have computers? — Athena

Beats me. Maybe in 1,000 years your grand-kid will be asking people why did it take so long to have personal jetpacks. That's my point. We become unappreciative for things those before us would have given life and limb for. Can't you see that?

Surely an idea has a minimum of two natures. That which the creator or purveyor of said idea intended, and that which the observer or analyst interprets. — Outlander

That is an excellent point.

More generally, one must first define "an idea", to get a more direct answer. We often go by consensus, hence the value of a dictionary and why such books remain prevalent. Obviously, by that case, it depends on the idea. :smile:

Just last night, I watched a program that discussed the significant impact writing had on our human experience and ability to manage a civilization. I don't think pondering this is a waste of time. You said the following about wondering what others thought back then....

I couldn't answer that. No man could, according to the relevant doctrine of belief. That would be like saying what was your favorite color before you were born? How silly a thing to ponder.

Einstein said imagination is very important to our ability to think. We are doing an excellent job of resurrecting the past. From marks on wood to the stories of archaeology and geology, we can learn a lot about our past. I think this is our present purpose in life, the Resurrection is the work of archaeologists, geologists, and related sciences. It is our job to learn all we can, and to wonder, and use our imaginations as we rewrite the earth and human story.

It would be silly to ponder an embryo's favorite colour, but it would be wise to consider how the embryo is affected by what it hears.

How did what come to be?

To answer that question, you must be willing to wonder about past consciousness and the ways it would be the same or different from our present consciousness. We can see that Zeus's fear that with fire we would learn all other technologies and rival the gods was justified. From archaeology, we can see human progress that was built on the technology of controlling fire, and in so doing, learning about the quality of rocks and eventually learning how to mix tin and copper and make excellent tools and weapons. And how this technology of metals shaped where people lived and traded. To me, this is very exciting information that makes me feel connected with humanity from the day we first walked out of Africa.

You answered my question about why it took so long to invent computers, thus...

Beats me. Maybe in 1,000 years your grand-kid will be asking people why did it take so long to have personal jetpacks. That's my point. We become unappreciative for things those before us would have given life and limb for. Can't you see that?

You and others may be unappreciative of our progress, but sincerely, I think that is because these careless people do not know about our history and sadly do not care to know. I am sorry for them. I am so fortunate to hunger for knowledge and get very excited about learning. My life is very good because I have security, the internet, and a love of learning. As the internet improves and science increases our knowledge, my life keeps getting better. I wish this were true for everyone. And I think our pioneer women would have been so much happier and powerful if they had the internet. Technology liberated women. Our consciousness today is very different from what it was before the women's lib movement, and we started using the word "she" in our communications, when we had only used the word "he".

Talk about the power of a word! Using the word "she" where we had also used the word "he" radically changed our lives.

I don’t think I would trust Plato's realm of ideas. It was cute thing to suppose we are a recession of internalizations apart from an externalized world... but this is merely all of Plato's reification of his own Allegory of the Cave.

Once you posit that “we” are minds looking out at a separate “external world,” you already presuppose the very dualism Plato needed for his argument. He built a metaphysics out of a psychological stance (our experience of being conscious, reflective, and mediated). And everyone bought into it, just as they bought into Kant, for the very same reasons (mostly).

You yourself are skirting around the fallacy of conceptual retrojection in using modern ideas to express something we have observed long beforehand. Though it doesn't make you "wrong" but perhaps there is a better, more primative way of detail what an idea is? Something along the lines of inspiration?

Inspiration doesn’t presuppose a two-world ontology. It’s not “a copy of a transcendent Form.” It’s closer to breath (in-spirare = to breathe into), a surge of force or affect that wells up and gives shape to thought or creation.

To answer:
"What knowledge does my theory contradict?"

The knowledge we currently have. Which is tentative is that consciousness/subjective experience is not something that is possible without some neurons. A quark has no neurons hence a quark wouldn't have subjective experience/consciousness.
You could say that ultimately we don't know. But practically we can tentatively claim to know.
Just like ultimately we don't know whether five seconds from now the earth will spin. But practically and tentatively we do know.

.....

Ok so subjective experience is consciousness. And the quark would be experiencing that it exists. (Something you might hear in a meditation retreat. Especially a non dual one). The issue with that is. When we experience in meditation, the sense of just existing. We have quite the system to back it up. Neurons.

Now you mighty say that our non dual meditation successes are still taking in sensory data so it's not a good analogy. Fair enough.
So we should ask. How do we know that a chair which gives no sign of subjective experience has subjective experience? A human in a coma we might keep alive even if they aren't having any dream or anything. But a chair... Is not something we would consider having such an experience. In fact if they do. Then they become moral beings worthy of consideration. A chair would be a living being. Since to experience requires to be alive. By definition. It would mean quarks have to be alive. No such indications are there. They just move. So yes it's the more radical view given our knowledge.

To be honest I do ..like.. the idea. It would be beautiful it is true. If all energy and matter is alive and having subjective experience. Which through merging and complexity becomes able to increase its ability to experience with more complexity. It is a extraordinarily beautiful idea. And in some sense I even hope it's true. But I can't let that be a bias. With current knowledge it's more reasonable to tentatively hold that subjective experience requires neurons. Or maybe so with my current knowledge. Maybe AI experts would say something different. Maybe neural simulations can have a cognitive subjective experience. But then again because they would be simulating neurons (to a degree).
I'd say I am not entirely closed to the idea. But extremely skeptical.

A question. Can you have subjective experience without any kind of awareness? It seems unlikely. You would need to be aware of yourself existing if you are to be aware of the fact that you simply exist.

How would that work without some form of cognition or mind? How would that work without more complexity then just a quark? Where does the quark get it's self awareness? And wouldn't that contradict the more complex animals that aren't self aware but only outwardly aware even with their complexity?

I see you're saying something similar as Nietzsche. He would probably say. "Platonists misinterpret their body".

I'm not a Platonist. I don't believe in a separate realm or magical dualism as far as I know.

But at the same time. It seems clear that when reality is configured as it is in you and me. And when it thinks of i.e. the idea of a dragon. Then it isn't just electrical signals and chemicals. A dragon doesn't exist. Yet these signals and neurons which do exist and are thus reality somehow create non reality. As if experience and neurons at this level almost create a new dimension in which this non reality is possible to exist. But it happens in that physical anchor somehow.

We can't say that ideas are merely a fiction and all that exists is those particles. Those particles re-arranged rocks willingly, intentionally to create the first pyramid out of an idea. It didn't do it by not imagining something that wasn't there.

It's just mind boggling.

I believe we have been thinking about consciousness, defining it, incorrectly. Most of what you said doesn't apply to my thinking.

My position is that consciousness is fundamental; a property of every particle, just as properties like mass and charge are. What does that mean for particles? Here are some quotes...

In this article, Philip Goff writes:

Panpsychism is sometimes caricatured as the view that fundamental physical entities such as electrons have thoughts; that electrons are, say, driven by existential angst. However, panpsychism as defended in contemporary philosophy is the view that consciousness is fundamental and ubiquitous, where to be conscious is simply to have subjective experience of some kind. This doesn’t necessarily imply anything as sophisticated as thoughts.

Of course in human beings consciousness is a sophisticated thing, involving subtle and complex emotions, thoughts and sensory experiences. But there seems nothing incoherent with the idea that consciousness might exist in some extremely basic forms. We have good reason to think that the conscious experiences a horse has are much less complex than those of a human being, and the experiences a chicken has are much less complex than those of a horse. As organisms become simpler perhaps at some point the light of consciousness suddenly switches off, with simpler organisms having no subjective experience at all. But it is also possible that the light of consciousness never switches off entirely, but rather fades as organic complexity reduces, through flies, insects, plants, amoeba, and bacteria. For the panpsychist, this fading-whilst-never-turning-off continuum further extends into inorganic matter, with fundamental physical entities – perhaps electrons and quarks – possessing extremely rudimentary forms of consciousness, which reflects their extremely simple nature.

In this Ted Talk, Chalmers says:

Even a photon has some degree of consciousness. The idea is not that photons are intelligent, or thinking. You know, it’s not that a photon is wracked with angst because it’s thinking, "Aaa! I'm always buzzing around near the speed of light! I never get to slow down and smell the roses!" No, not like that. But the thought is maybe the photons might have some element of raw, subjective feeling. Some primitive precursor to consciousness.

In Panpsychism in the West, Skrbina writes:

Minds of atoms may conceivably be, for example, a stream of instantaneous memory-less moments of experience.

I don't like Skrbina's use of "mind" in this way. I think it leads to confusion.


Proximity does not make a group of particles subjectively experience - that is, conscious - as a group. So a chair is not a conscious unit. It's just a group of particles, easy having its own, individual subjective experience.


The things we are conscious of are not what consciousness is. Consciousness isn't awareness. Rather, we experience certain information processing and feedback systems as awareness. We have been saying they are the same thing for millennia, but I don't think they are. That's just how something of our nature experiences itself.

mostly playing devil's advocate with the stuff I'm stuffing into muscle memory.