This conclusion seems to imply that a conscious "God" that arose before all of creation is impossible because a) he would have nothing to perceive and thus have no content of thought or qualia, and ii) he would have no mechanism to perceive or sense. — Brenner T
6. Thus, sensory abilities and perceptions are contingent on each other, and so they cannot arise simultaneously. — Brenner T
7. Thus, a mind alone cannot perceive itself. — Brenner T
5. Minds have no perceivable structure of their own.
6. Thus, minds cannot be perceived or perceive themselves (from (4) and (5)). — Brenner T
If G*D is sentient, in a manner similar to human perception, then a feeling of incompleteness might be imputed. But, if G*D/Nature is purely rational, Spock-like, then emotions & feelings may not be included in its super-natural constitution. These are big "ifs" though, and we will never have enough evidence to allow a conclusive "then".I don't know if the absence of there being anything to perceive would be necessarily a hindrance for God, although there are tropes that the reason anything exists at all, was because He experienced a sense of incompleteness without there being something other than Him to contemplate. — Wayfarer
3. Thus, according to Berkeley, a mind had to exist before or come to existence simultaneously with ideas. — Brenner T
In philosophy, intentionality is the power of minds and mental states to be about, to represent, or to stand for, things, properties and states of affairs. To say of an individual’s mental states that they have intentionality is to say that they are mental representations or that they have contents. (SEP - Intentionality)
Consciousness is something that knows of its own being even in the absence of stimuli. As René Descartes said, even if all belief in an external world is suspended, one will still retain a sense of one's own being, 'cogito ergo sum'. — Wayfarer
7. Thus, a mind alone cannot perceive itself.
— Brenner T
My mind is here perceiving itself right now. There... and again... Maybe you should clarify what you mean by "perceive. — T Clark
5. Minds have no perceivable structure of their own.
6. Thus, minds cannot be perceived or perceive themselves (from (4) and (5)).
— Brenner T
I am not equated with Berkeley's theory, but within this theory couldn't a mind be equated to the perceptions it holds? If all that exists is qualia, then the mind must *be* the totality of such qualia, right? It side-steps the issue with assuming they are seperate and that both must precede the other. (I think your argument works well against the seperated position though). — Ourora Aureis
The Big Bang hypothesis didn't "make sense" to atheistic naturalists, back in the early 20th century. For example, Einstein included a dimensionless "cosmological constant"*1 in his theory of relativity, specifically to force the numbers to describe the static eternal universe, that he believed was necessary. He later abandoned that attempt to make the numbers "make sense", after Hubble provided evidence that the universe was not static, but expanding, and not eternal, but temporal. Also, the origin of that expansion has been calculated as a dimensionless-spaceless-timeless-matterless Singularity, from which space-time-mater-energy suddenly appeared . . . . much to the surprise and chagrin of those who assumed the universe was eternal & self-existent & godless."Something from nothing" at the start of the universe is problem inherent in our understanding of linear time, whether you agree with Berkelean idealism or not. Theists often cite it as proof of god, because it seems impossible and attributing the impossible to god makes sense to them. But while they're wrong about it proving god, you can't use it to disprove god either. The universe's beginning simply doesn't make sense to our normal way of thinking, we can only conclude that it doesn't work like the rest of time, not whether there could or couldn't be a god involved. — Paul
What theory of consciousness allows the statement "you could be conscious even without an external world" to be true? — Brenner T
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