The human mind is the most complex thing on this planet and we are constantly engineering circumstances — Mojo

-Well the human brain is the most complex thing we currently know in the universe. Its function "mind" should be special too...and it is.

Would you ever ask questions about QM in a Biology forum? Why asking questions about a Biological Processes on a Physics Forum? I mean why do you think physicists can provide answers on questions of an other scientific discipline?

-"Does quantum physics say nothing is real?"
-I will try to keep my post simple and short without technical terms and complex concepts.
No............

I just wrote the same thing (almost), my only objection is that you don't always need an agent to govern others. You can have a system that serves those goals, like i.e. Science methodologies and standards of evaluation serving the goal of acquiring knowledge.
Sure we need people to guard the method, but they can not change the criteria or evaluation methods by which we accept Knowledge claims.
This is not true for our current Pseudo Philosophical governing systems. The goals are set by Constitutions but the people who "guard" the process, constantly change the criteria and methods arriving to results that are in direct conflict with the goals of a society.
i.e. Constitutions around the world talk about equality of citizens but our economic systems ignore that and excuses are used by some to gain even more (crisis).
The results are against the goals we are trying to achieve through governing our societies.

-"Why Must You Be Governed?"
Environmental Challenges and Behavior of Individuals members affects the survival and flourishing of social species. That alone introduces the need of a center for Decision Making and Problem solving.
The important question is now "why must we be governed" but why we insist on using Pseudo Philosophical "solutions" to govern our societies.
I mean we have far more capable and modern systems to address behavior and problems.
Governing is the process of imposing rules and laws on populations. Laws are the "solution" we came up with when we don't really have a real technical solution for a problem.
The way we currently organize our societies is really primitive and it has failed miserably.

-"What do you think ? Is materialism right ? Is idealism right ? Is it some mix of the two ? Can we even settle the question ? Is materialism a good explanation for patterns in different experiences "

-Both are Pseudo Philosophical worldviews design to ease people's existential and epistemic anxieties.
Both make unfalsifiable metaphysical claims based on Logical Fallacies (argument from ignorance).
The only justified true Philosophical woldview one can hold is that of Methodological Naturalism(MN).

MN is the only Philosophical world view ( The Natural world is currently all that we can verify. There is no reason to assume additional dimensions or entities and include them in our explanations until we are able to objectively verify them) capable to assist our Philosophy by expanding our Understanding through wise statements(knowledge based descriptions).
Now materialism or idealism do not offer any explanations. They only make unfalsifiable metaphysical claims. In order to evaluate those experiences we will need science, not a pseudo philosophical view.
If science fails to explain those experience too, then the answer would be "we don't current know the answer". Making up answer out of thin air is not a Philosophical practice!

-"Self awareness is socially constructed. "
-Well there is Unconscious Self awareness(second fundamental mind property) and there is the concept of the self. The first is a biological driven Property of the Mind while the second is a construct produced by our conscious states as a result of interpreting Environmental stimuli, emotions and experiences.
All living beings with brains have a basic unconscious awareness of their existence as a physical agent and it is essential to take actions for their survival, so this is why it is recognized as a drive. The concept of "self" is easily observed in social species where interactions and feelings define more complex characteristics of an agent.

Those are scientific questions.

a. "What is consciousness?"
-"Consciousness is an arousal and awareness of environment and self, which is achieved through action of the ascending reticular activating system (ARAS) on the brain stem and cerebral cortex (Daube, 1986; Paus, 2000; Zeman, 2001; Gosseries et al., 2011). "
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3722571/

The content of those states is introduced by the cooperation of the Central Lateral thalamus with different areas of our brain responsible for storing memories,symbolic thinking and language, pattern recognition, reasoning etc etc.
https://www.inverse.com/mind-body/tiny-brain-area-could-enable-consciousness

b."What is self-awareness?"
-Unconscious self-awarness is an essential property of the mind, produced by biological brains. It only comes second to Awakeness and it is followed by consciousness composing the three fundamental mind properties of our brains. There is also the concept of the "self" which is produced by our conscious states but it a whole other topic.
https://www.futurelearn.com/info/blog/what-is-a-mind.

-"Third; what are the barriers?"
-You need to clarify that one, barriers of what?

I will also address the title of this thread:
-"How do we develop our conciousness and self-awareness?
-Organisms that are mobile need to seek for resources and homeostasis (food,shelter and avoid suffering). Being aware of our state and our environment that alone increases our survival advantages and the possibility of our evolved brain features to pass to the next generation. Organic and Environmental stimuli provide information and biological brains have been selected to interpret them and guide the behavior of an organism based on previous experiences, current state (emotions) and existing biological setup.

everything subjective is mediated by our biochemistry either by our default setup or our "epigenetics" (environmental influences during our life).

Would you agree with me more if I replaced crime with immoral? — Agent Smith

Yes I would. An immoral act doesn't have legal implications (at least not most of the time).

Personally, I would like to be vegan, but lack the will power to be one. Perhaps people like me - want to but haven't yet adopted veganism - are carriers of a proto-morality gene which will be expressed fully in a few generations down the line; some like you, a vegan, are ahead of the pack. — Agent Smith

- Ι get your poetic reference to genes but in real life there are no genes in control of our ethics.There are genes (i.e. of the warrior or hunter) that affect our behavior but they are not stronger from the environmental influences around us. What I want to say is that most people well in the middle of a "Bell curve" of our human biochemical diversity, are not to be blamed for their lack of "will power" (even if christianity disagrees lol).
Sure there are some biochemical setups that do not leave room for the host to change many things but in most cases its the environment and how we are programmed by it that governs our behavior. In those cases we need to change the Situation (like we do during diets).

We are empirical animals and we are good in making judgments based on how well and direct a cause is linked to an effect. In the case of meat eating most of us are isolated from the pain caused or the negative implications of the industry on the planet or future generations so we don't really have empirical facts in our reach to inform our actions.
Think of small kids who are directed not to touch the hot stove but they do it anyway.

I am vegan for more than 12 years but I can not agree with the label "criminal" on meat eating. "Criminal" is a legal term while a moral evaluation of an act is not.
Sure our current dietary practices will have an negative impact on future generations but this can only be evaluated by ethics not by our judiciary system. The issue with such wide spread unethical behavior is that our Economical Systems depend on them hence they are promoted as "acceptable".
But I will totally agree with all your "yeps and Ayes"!!! Moral evaluations are difficult BECAUSE the degree of expansion and application of more rules"rules" depend on how good we are in including groups of different individuals through time. Its impossible to evaluate an act as moral/immoral without projecting its implications in a larger temporal scope and how it affects different agents in the world.

The supernatural would be some aspect of reality that is apart from the rational/regular nature of the natural world, not merely an unsolved mystery of the natural world. — Relativist

-You are not providing a definition for the supernatural. You are just stating what the supernatural wouldn't be part of.
In my opinion definition is far more meaningful.
Supernatural is the belief and the claim that Process and Agents can be manifested in our reality without being contingent to the laws and the conditions verified by Science.
I.e. the claim that mind properties can manifest in reality non contingent to the functions of a biological brain is an example of a supernatural claim.
Verifying Advanced Properties of matter in the fundamental scale of reality (quantum world) would be evidence for the supernatural.(i.e. finding biological, chemical or mental properties in fundamental particles)
Verifying a causal mechanism in our classical world that doesn't obey the laws of its physical scale would also be evidence for the supernatural (i.e. cases where mind properties alone can act as a cause of an effect outside an organism).

Consider that we don't know what dark matter is, but no knowledgeable person would label it as supernatural.

There is a good reason why we don't consider dark matter to be a supernatural phenomenon. The ability of particles not to reflect light, or generating pulling forces in the universe are basic properties displayed by particles. We just need to investigate the ontology of those physical phenomena.

It seems to me that the supernatural is something that humans have always claimed is behind the scenes of nature giving reality attributes like life, consciousness laws and forces. Or the hand of God or fate. — Andrew4Handel

-Yes this is what some people claim by the term "supernatural". IT appears to be directly linked to our superstitious heuristics and an easy way to ease our existential and epistemic anxieties by using a concept with zero explanatory value.

My point I suppose is that reality is at bottom mysterious and illogical and weird, that there is not a concrete machine like reality to be contrasted with the supernatural just the strange inexplicable reality of existence. — Andrew4Handel

-Well science keeps pointing to a Regular and Rational nature of reality. There are mysterious aspects of reality but every mystery we solve tends to verify the above rational and regular nature of our world.
So I don't see any difference between the term supernatural and a label we use as an "answer" to a mystery.
It sounds more like a hasty shortcut than a meaningful answer.

We haven't escaped the supernatural through science and philosophising but just deepened the mysteries. We have made the implausible/impossible the normal. — Andrew4Handel

We have never verified the supernatural so we don't need to "escape it" but to demonstrate it.
Possibilities need to be Objectively verified, not assumed and probabilities need to be mathematically calculated based on verified cased...that we don't have.
So we can not rationally argue in favor of this concept (supernatural ) without first being able to verify those two values (possibility and probability).

↪Hillary
I’ve extended that indefinitely as I regard you as a troll and/or manic.
You will not be getting any responses from me in the immediate future (months+). — I like sushi

-That is a direct insult for the all the trolls and manics of this world! Mr Hillary is a league on his own.

Maybe all supernatural ideas are just natural items yet to be unveiled. — I like sushi

I will agree with your position. The Supernatural is nothing more than a made up bin where we human toss everything we currently don't understand. Every-time we had to go back and take something out out from that bin..that was because the explanation was always Natural.

I guess the Empirical Regularity of Nature doesn't leave much room for the Supernatural but at least it can still hide in everything that appears to be mysterious to us....like all fallacious arguments of ignorance do.

Unfortunately the statistical evidence, at least for telepathy, is
overwhelming. — Turing, 1950

Statistical evidence showed us that we can explain Telepathy "hits" by Random Chance...same rates.

The Supernatural in general is a claim that appeals to the existence of agents or causation by processes and phenomena that are in direct conflict with our current Scientific Paradigm.

Mainly they argue about the existence of properties or agents or entities being non contingent to fundamental natural structures and processes.

The claim that chemical or mental or biological or kinetic etc properties/entities can manifest in the cosmos without being contingent to the workings and functions of verified natural elements, structures or their documented limitations....that is in essence the main idea behind any supernatural claim.

-

I have got the impression over the years that the main objections against the supernatural are based on plausibility. — Andrew4Handel

-No the main objection is and always should be "Possibility". If we are unable to demonstrate objectively the possibility of the supernatural then its non sensible to argue about its plausibility.
It's the same logical error Alchemists did by spending money time and effort on something they thought it was plausible (chemical transmutation of metals) when they didn't even knew how possible or impossible it is.
People's belief in the supernatural is irrational not because its existence is implausible, but because we haven't demonstrated its existence to be possible.
So the Belief in the existence of the supernatural is Irrational, not a verified wrong belief.
Possibility is demonstrated objectively while plausibility is demonstrated through statistical probabilities. The first quality gives us the right to argue in favor of the later.

Politics and economic interests and knowledge, be it scientific, theological, or astrological, can't be logically separated and evaluated according to logic rules. — Hillary

:lol: :rofl: :lol: :rofl:

oh boy the level in here is way to low to waste any more of my time.

You think you decide what's irrelevant to the topic of discussion and I will follow? — universeness

I've repeated the topic over and over again. It was created by your respond to mr Hillary.
Hillary idiotically enough accused science to responsible for a specific GeoPolitical Applications of technology.
You came back with your silly argument "what crime do you prefer".
The answer to that is NONE. This is NOT a Historical course to analyze the possible scenarios.
If you are unable to understand that...then you are way too stupid on this subject to talk to sir.
I am not calling you stupid, we all are stupid in specific topics, but you happen to be on this one and anything that demands critical thinking.

If you are not willing to address the important arguments and your only goal is to make impressions...then you are done.

I guess...YOU ARE DONE on this topic too.

You won't going to answer.......aren't you?
You are here to promote your ego...not to learn.

Who cares what interests a fake interlocuter like you?and if you truly don't care about such then you are nasty. — universeness

-They are irrelevant to the topic of discussion...but I guess you are not capable to understand it or your cognitive dissonance is trying to keep you away from it.

Yeah Sherlock, human history has no relevance to philosophical musings. Another pearl of wisdom from the BEPO school of philosophy. — universeness

Argument from Ambiguity fallacy. Reflecting on the Historical implications of a event is History.
Reflecting on which act of Historical crime is preferable is Garbage Philosophy and its off topic.

Approximately 20 million civilians were killed in the soviet union in WW2 due to CONVENTIONAL WAR. — universeness

NOT INTERESTED in how many were killed and how they were.
I am only pointing to the idiotic act of bringing it up as a dilemma and using it as a red herring to distract people from the point in question.
Mr Hillary, with his limited abilities thinks that Systematic Knowledge and the methods enabling them are responsible for Nuking people. You come alone and you being you.... tries to find excuses for that act.
So you both...being you...started from point A and ended up making up false dilemma on which crime is preferable, instead of explaining why conflating politics and economic interests with Knowledge is Kindergarten Philosophy

his arguments are not better than yours. You both don't have arguments and you retreat in name calling and logical fallacies.
You never address or acknowledge the point made...you tap dance trying to appear as wiseguys....

If you interpret my typing above as advocating for war crimes then you simply demonstrate you idiotic thinking. — Nickolasgaspar

-Again crimes are not a matter of preference. It is a crime to nuke civilians and it would be a crime to kill civilians in a full invasion. Put your ducks straight.

this is NOT a historical forum. We are not analyzing the implications and make projections on hypothetical scenarios.
This is a philosophical forum. We reflect on moral evaluations on ACTUAL acts.
The prospect of a future crime doesn't make nuking civilians a preference...

Yes dimwit! When the choice is between the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and the death of millions of innocent civilians and hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides — universeness

-False dichotomy, who told you that those are the only choices...and if they are acceptable to begin with.
THEY ARE NOT. You are confusing the fact that crimes are committed with your act making up excuses for them.
What it might have happened, doesn't mean that you need to force us to take a side!
This is the propaganda that Mass Media forced on us in Europe. "You need to agree with NATO's existential threat on Russia...or else you are in favor of Russian invasion".
Why on earth should I accept one of your "evils" mr Propaganda? I reject both from your hypothetical buffet of options and I make a judgement based our current laws.
Boy you are slow and damaged.
CRIMES are not a matter of preference and they are not justified by hypothetical future evil acts or crimes.
Seriously , how old are you????

Nothing I have typed is in support of war crimes you complete fool! — universeness

Here you are.

Would you have preferred the death of many more American soldiers and goodness knows how many Japanese civilians during a full invasion of the Japanese mainlands. The evidence from the time suggests that the Japanese would not have surrendered easily. — universeness

You are making the act of killing civilians a matter of preference. You are using a hypothetical as a made up better evil.
We are judging the act ..and you are trying to justified with hypotheticals.
You sound like American cops who violate people's rights in order to keep them safe and .....free.
I can not believe someone can be that stupid...I think you are a troll.

You just can't address the point in question. You are just incapable to have an honest conversation.
The point in question isn't whether ending a war is less preferable than war casualties.
We are exposing your immoral preference to end a war at all costs...even if it means to use weapons of mass destruction on civilians. Do you really stay behind your initial statement??????? (simple yes or no question).
Now...the dance floor is all yours......

Based on what? — universeness

Based on the criteria we define the Laws of War and humanism. Two states might have differences and they might be irrational enough to engage, but to justify the mass killing of the population which is not taking part in the war you are just proving that you are not just irrational but an immoral thug too.

-"It's better to end a war as quickly as it can be ended."
-not by committing a war crime and killing people who do not participate actively.
You keep making the same immoral claim....and you are unable to realize it lol

-"Some soldiers are not volunteers..."
-I don't care about this irrelevant stupid argument.....I am interested in your immoral act to justify the use a weapon of mass destruction on civilians(women, kids, infants, old people, special needs etc).
Are seriously going to stand behind this position....do you want to change it like you did with your first slip on statistics?????

Grammar and Syntax is your call....just stay there. Logic is not your thing.

-"and you gasbag have elected yourself accuser, "
-I am just exposing your strawman.
You made an immoral and silly statement which also happens to be a war crime.
The reasons behind Truman's order are irrelevant to this discussion...its your excuse you gave to justify a criminal act of killing civilians with a weapon of mass destruction.
Pls start tap dancing on irrelevant topics and prove to everyone your dishonesty, immorality and irrationality....go!

Please offer your detailed evidence of the communications between the Allies and the Japanese during WW2 which explain exactly why Truman made the decision he made. — universeness

Irrelevant!!!! Why is this so difficult for you sir?....again your excuse is on trial not the claimed reasons behind the act.
You made it clear that it is more preferable to bomb civilians than losing soldiers.
Better just keep correcting my writings than proving your inability to understand a point and reason.

Lets me help you, it's not 'suppor' its 'support'. It's not 'say soldier's lives,' it's 'save soldiers lives.' — universeness

lol.....that's better, stick to "teaching" language. It doesn't demand Logic..... where you under-perform.

and how would you know! After all you are the one assigning percentages on things with zero verified samples and you suppor the use of atomic bombs on civilians as a way to say soldier's lives.....lol

:rofl: Matt Dillahunty says he has more problems trying to set atheists straight, who use poor arguments and bad logic than he does with theists. I dont think Matt would think much of Nickerless Gasbag but perhaps he would plague both our houses! — universeness

So the dude who brought statistical probabilities in unfalsfiable claims and justified war crimes....thinks he can criticize me or Dillahunty....lol ok

the mind boggling thing about you is that you objectively make really silly claims about probabilities, about war crimes...but you keep defending them, by talking about "the concept of civilian"and what Churchill's bombings etc etc.,,,
What's wrong with you? Are 13 yo or what? Are you honest enough to admit your screw ups? Why do you have to pollute this thread with your shenanigans ...do your self a favor and grow up.

The concept of soldiers and civilians is the reality of what is changing. Soldiers don't stay away from civilians during war — universeness

So are you a professional dancer or you just tap dance in forums?lol

btw do you know anything about atomic bombs?....one thing people can not do is throw one and make excuses about being inaccurate lol

Again we are not comparing war crimes. Your silly excuse is on trial here.
Justifying the bombing of civilians for sparing soldiers' lives. Imagine if that excuse stick up......What a pleasant place to live earth would be! lol
Are you Putin's advisor.....if not....don't become one.