The universe, curiously, behaves intelligently, — Agent Smith

Hi. According to whom and why do they think so? (And what do they tell us it means to "behave intelligently"?) — tim wood

I am thinking about the nature of human consciousness. I am wondering how others understand Dennett's outlook and also about the connection between human consciousness and language in culture. In many ways this does go into the field of anthropological consideration. I am also rereading Julian Jaynes' ideas about the connection between language emerging from images in the development of consciousness. However, I will end this here, and I am interested to know your understanding of the relationship between language, consciousness and culture. — Jack Cummins

what does Daniel Dennett mean by the idea that consciousness is an illusion? — Jack Cummins

So, I am still asking about the relevance of language for understanding how human consciousness emerged? — Jack Cummins

One interesting remark which may lead many of us to feel less alone in thinking about the nature of consciousness, especially in relation to where it stands in relation to physicality is Dennett's remark, ' I was the one who's terminally confused, and of course it's possible that our bold community of enthusiasts are deluding each other.' — Jack Cummins

he is seeking to demystify the nature of consciousness — Jack Cummins

The idea of consciousness as ' a last hideout for the sacred' is an interesting idea, because it may be that many would prefer a perspective in which the individual human being has little value, the person being a mere number and of insignificance. — Jack Cummins

So, it may come down to the authenticity of meaning and about whether materialism captures the truth. What is really real and how much is about fabrications as fantasy? Perhaps, those who can live with their fantasy constructs are those who are valued in society, because this may be about validation and going beyond some kind of illusion. — Jack Cummins

As I see it, a Wittgenstein-adjacent view (and he was by no means the only thinker one could mention here) does dissolve the individual into the community, making language prior to sensation, making the community prior to the Cartesian ghost that dreams itself. (I think participate in language therefore I'm not an 'I' but (primarily) a 'we.') — ajar

And yet, for Wittgenstein the personalistic perspective doesn’t simply disappear into the communal whole. His approach is person relative, occasion sensitive and context dependent. — Joshs

What needs to be corrected is the tendency to take personhood as fundamental rather than emergent. How can 'consciousness' have a meaning? (Well, a family of meanings.) (I think it does have such a meaning, that it plays a role or family of roles as a token within a community.) — ajar

One aspect which is interesting is the way that languages vary unlike mathematical ones, like numbers and the basic principles of mathematics. — Jack Cummins

I do wonder how the basic ideas seem to have a certain universality but with different expression in the many languages. — Jack Cummins

It could be asked how such similarities and differences come about. In some ways, it is about naming of objects in the physical world, but it is also about abstract concepts — Jack Cummins

The nature of concepts in general may be why metaphysics may exist beyond language. This may have been thre basis for Plato's theory of Forms. — Jack Cummins

I do believe that he is at least wishing to understand the complexities of the nature of consciousness. — Jack Cummins

In his essay Barbarism, Michel Henry examines the link that exists between barbarism and science or modern technology, from their opposition to culture understood as self-development of sensibility and of inner or purely subjective life of living individuals. Science is founded on the idea of a universal and, as such, objective truth, and which therefore leads to the elimination of the sensible qualities of the world, sensibility and life. There is nothing wrong with science in itself as long as it is restricted to the study of nature, but it tends to exclude all traditional forms of culture, such as art, ethics and religion. Science left to its own devices leads to technology, whose blind processes develop themselves independently in a monstrous fashion with no reference to life.

[Scientific materialism] is a form of culture in which life denies itself and refuses itself any value. It is a practical negation of life, which develops into a theoretical negation in the form of ideologies that reduces all possible knowledge to that of science, such as the human sciences whose very objectivity deprives them of their object...these ideologies have invaded the university, and are precipitating it to its destruction by eliminating life from research and teaching. Television is the truth of technology; it is the practice par excellence of barbarism: it reduces every event to current affairs, to incoherent and insignificant facts.

This negation of life results, according to Michel Henry, from the "disease of life", from its secret dissatisfaction with the self which leads it to deny itself, to flee itself in order to escape its anguish and its own suffering. In the modern world, we are almost all condemned from childhood to flee our anguish and our proper life into the mediocrity of the media universe — an escape from self and a dissatisfaction which leads to violence — rather than resorting to the most highly developed traditional forms of culture which enable the overcoming of this suffering and its transformation into joy. Culture subsists, despite everything, but in a kind of incognito; in our materialist society, which is sinking into barbarism, it must necessarily operate in a clandestine way.