What is the alternative? — Wayfarer
Everything we see other than us lacks what we have. The only awareness the universe ha is through/in us. (Of course, maybe there are other pockets of it out there in other parts of the universe.)If we are throwing around metaphysical potentialities, why couldn't the universe be entirely self-aware? Could it not be that it's humans alone who are in the dark? I don't understand how we get to arrive at something so specific as the universe is gaining self-awareness. — Tom Storm
Speculation. Sure, maybe, anything is possible I suppose. But we only know what we know. And that is, we are self-aware, and not much else is.What exactly does self-awareness consist of when it comes to a universe (I am assuming by universe you mean something more like cosmic consciousness)? — Tom Storm
I like it!Is there an end result - all meaning is assimilated and converges and 'bang' a new stage in consciousness commences? — Tom Storm
I hope so! I don't know much about meaning, from any formal, educated pov.The question of 'meaning' is an interesting one. My intuition is that meaning is something pertaining to human beings and sense making. How does the notion of meaning apply outside of contingent beings?
I sense a fresh thread on this. — Tom Storm
But this doesn't sound like a good argument in favor of something. Isn't this close to an appeal to ignorance? — Tom Storm
What exactly does self-awareness consist of when it comes to a universe (I am assuming by universe you mean something more like cosmic consciousness)? Is there an end result - all meaning is assimilated and converges and 'bang' a new stage in consciousness commences? — Tom Storm
Nagel’s basic argument is this. If materialism cannot explain consciousness, then materialism cannot be a complete explanation of the natural order. This argument is more interesting than it looks. It is perhaps easy to suppose that we could fully explain the beginning of the universe in terms of matter and forces and so on. But if the arising of life and subsequently consciousness cannot be explained in terms of matter and forces – that is, that life and consciousness are not susceptible to reductionist explanations – then materialism has not explained the natural order. Life and consciousness must always have been possibilities within the natural order, even before the conditions for their actual arising were not fully present. Therefore materialism is not a complete theory. Nagel does not stop there. In a chapter on ‘Cognition’, he goes on to argue that the faculty of reason, by which he means the capacity (for a few of us) to intuit truths that are independent of the mind, such as mathematical or logical truths, cannot be explained by evolutionary theory alone. Neo-Darwinian theory must explain the appearance of faculties such as reason as somehow adaptive, but we cannot explain the capacity for insight into the truth in terms of adaptation for survival. And in a chapter on ‘Value’ Nagel argues that our capacity to make correct moral judgements is based on the objectivity of good and bad, it being an objective matter that certain actions are good and certain bad, which is similarly inexplicable in terms of materialism alone. For each of these broad areas – consciousness, cognition and value – Nagel sketches what might count as more satisfactory explanatory theories. One such sort of theory would be intentional – that God has set up the natural order is such a way that there is consciousness, that we can intuit the truth and know good and bad. But Nagel does not explore intentional theories as he does not believe in God. He plays with panpsychism – the theory that mind is somehow in everything – but does not find this kind of metaphysical theory very useful. His preferred tentative solution is what he calls ‘teleological naturalism’, meaning the theory that the natural order is biased in some way towards the emergence of life and consciousness, as more-than-likely directions or potentials of development. He does not develop this theory but merely indicates that it might at least be along the right lines. — The Universe is Waking Up
I suspect that --- for fear of straying into the seductive mindset of spooky Spirituality --- those who espouse the metaphysical doctrine of Materialism dare not use their imaginative faculty (Reason) to infer intangible invisible subjective abstractions, that exist only in the matterless, and unverifiable, realm of Ideas, Concepts, Thoughts & Fantasies.How about "immaterial subjects" in the sense of immaterial ideas abstracted from the objective material world — Gnomon
I'm fine with that. — Relativist
If the material universe popped into existence with a "bang", can we imagine that, like a planted seed, it came pre-set with un-realized Potentials that took eons to mature (actualize) into the complex cosmos we humans are now scanning with our far-seeing technological eye-extensions? The Webb space-scope is said to be looking back to the beginning of the universe, even as it reflects our insignificance to the near-infinite bubble of being that was born in a Planck-scale bit of possibility.Why specifically the formulation of growing self-awareness? — Tom Storm
Ah. Yes, I've read the book. (Even understood it now and then.) I just didn't know what your quote was from.It's from a review in a UK Buddist online magazine, of Thomas Nagel's 2012 book Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False. — Wayfarer
Speculation. Sure, maybe, anything is possible I suppose. But we only know what we know. And that is, we are self-aware, and not much else is. — Patterner
I think the idea of a meaningless universe into which humans are an accidental byproduct is very specific to modernity. — Wayfarer
His preferred tentative solution is what he calls ‘teleological naturalism’, meaning the theory that the natural order is biased in some way towards the emergence of life and consciousness, as more-than-likely directions or potentials of development. He does not develop this theory but merely indicates that it might at least be along the right lines. — The Universe is Waking Up
I think the case can be made that at least esoteric spirituality presents this kind of understanding in symbolic or mythological terms. Why symbolic or mythological? Because it is a very difficult thing to discern! — Wayfarer
Was "awareness" a property or quality of the nascent cosmos? If not, how did sentience & consciousness emerge from an explosion of space & time & matter & energy? Is it not reasonable to say that there is a "growing awareness" or that the "cosmos has, eventually become aware of itself", only in the last few millennia of evolution? Is it possible that Awareness evolved, along with Life and Mind, from an insentient & lifeless state of fecund oblivion? — Gnomon
If the material universe popped into existence with a "bang", can we imagine that, like a planted seed, it came pre-set with un-realized Potentials that took eons to mature (actualize) into the complex cosmos we humans are now scanning with our far-seeing technological eye-extensions? — Gnomon
How are we not? Regardless of how, regardless of whether or not it implies anything about anything, regardless of how incalculably tiny a fraction of the universe we are, we are, unlike anything else we are aware of, aware. Perhaps the only speck of awareness in the universe. Or maybe not even a speck, but growing.My own speculative tendencies wouldn't consider human life to be significant enough to be rated as a 'growing awareness'. — Tom Storm
Perhaps the only speck of awareness in the universe — Patterner
A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe", a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish the delusion but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind. — Letter of condolence sent to Robert J. Marcus of the World Jewish Congress (12 February 1950)
No. I'm saying we're a 'growing awareness'. Significance doesn't enter into it. Same with the growing plant in my yard.So are you saying subject to human judgment humans are significant? :wink: — Tom Storm
Sorry to hear that gloomy outlook. It seems to focus on the small percentage of bad stuff that the media calls "news" : "if it bleeds, it leads". I would hope that philosophers could ignore the gory headlines to see the 98% of good stuff that goes un-reported. Ironically, some people seem to think that cynicism makes you appear smarter than the happy-go-lucky sheep.My own speculative tendencies wouldn't consider human life to be significant enough to be rated as a 'growing awareness'. Perhaps a growing malignancy if we consider pollution and climate change. — Tom Storm
I know that materialism rendered a holy of holies becomes a death trap. At the other end of the spectrum, skittering around, spewing glib, scientific catchphrases scintillating with the current cachet in smartypants verbiage becomes another death trap.
— ucarr
Is that your disdainful view of philosophical speculation? :cool: — Gnomon
When the Enlightenment gave birth to Empirical Science, it threw-out the philosophical baby with the bath-water. The Materialism and Scientism found on this forum are the off-spring of that "disjunction" between Ideal & Real worldviews. EFA is, in part, an attempt to heal the rift between the science of Matter, and the science of Mind. :smile: — Gnomon
Both Math and Language are theoretical in conception (principles), but practical in application (details). :nerd: — Gnomon
Theoretical Philosophy is the study of the principles for human knowledge, the development of the sciences and the basis for scientific knowledge, the principles of thought, argumentation and communication, metaphysics and the history of the subject itself. — Gnomon
Philosophy and Its Contrast with Science
Science is about contingent facts or truths; philosophy is often about that but is also about necessary truths (if they exist) — Gnomon
Sorry to hear that gloomy outlook. It seems to focus on the small percentage of bad stuff that the media calls "news" — Gnomon
Ironically, some people seem to think that cynicism makes you appear smarter than the happy-go-lucky sheep. — Gnomon
Evolutionary Progress?
How could anyone who accepts an evolutionary view of life deny that progress has occurred? — Gnomon
Nothing is ‘ ultimately material’. No material ultimate has been discovered, despite the construction of the most complex apparatus in the history of science. The standard model of physics is itself a mathematical construction. — Wayfarer
Well, I tried to present it inn a humorous way. But not really a joke. In that way, we are, unarguable, growing. It's entirely possible our population will continue to grow, and we'll spread out among the other planets, and maybe even the stars. Awareness may come to occupy a larger percentage of the universe.I'm assuming this is intended as a joke and it is kind of funny. — Tom Storm
Our awareness is currently greater than that of our ancestors who lived at any point in the past, or any other awareness on the planet. — Patterner
Yup.Ok. For me this sounds more like a matter of quantity rather than quality. — Tom Storm
I didn't say it's an improvement. Just that it's more aware. We are certainly more aware than our cave-dwelling ancestors were. Even if our brains are identical to theirs, we have learned much since then. Greater body of knowledge. We are aware of more things. And more kinds of things. Odds that improvement?I'm reasonably certain a lot of people will find this problematic. Is the modern mind an improvement on the pre-modern? How would you measure improvement? More reason, more science, less superstition, less religion? The die hard secular humanists will agree to this. — Tom Storm
Math may have beginning because we noticed repeatable patterns in material objects. But math is not a material object. The mathematical writings in book or on computer screens are material things, but they are not math. They are how we share mathematical ideas.I’m thinking math began when cave people looking at their fingers started seeing repeatable patterns. — ucarr
Do you hold a metaphysical commitment to the claim the phenomenal world is undergirded by an immaterially extant realm ultimately real albeit undetectable to the senses? — ucarr
this essay (Nature of Number) takes for granted the division of mind (‘in here’) and world (‘out there’) as being, to all intents, separate realities. And that itself is a metaphysical construction! — ucarr
Ultimately, what we call “reality” is so deeply suffused with mind- and language-dependent structures that it is altogether impossible to make a neat distinction between those parts of our beliefs that reflect the world “in itself” and those parts of our beliefs that simply express “our conceptual contribution.” The very idea that our cognition should be nothing but a re-presentation of something mind-independent consequently has to be abandoned.
Try to think about anything without spatial and temporal extension and you’ll soon discover language cannot proceed meaningfully without them. — ucarr
My hypothesis claims that If spirituality is higher-order thermodynamics (teleodynamics), then matter/energy are two positions on one continuum. — ucarr
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