Ok, this fits for my ethereal body. A change in the ethereal body requires an alteration in the physical body, (including mental alterations). But the physical body doesn’t require an alteration in the ethereal body. Although the ethereal body does/may experience that change.

As someone else mentioned supervenience may be a way to elucidate this misunderstanding further?

Thanks, a new word for me. I’m of the opinion that this is going on in the human body, as there are layers of complexity. There are lucid dreams and imaginary worlds, which appear to be experienced. But which don’t necessarily have a subvenient component. Suggesting that there is the supervenient component, that would be present if there were supervenience.

Going to stop you right there because you probably forgot. I am not a 'physicalist'. That's stupid. I simply note that rational science and fact allow us to know a reality that is physical. I have yet to see someone able to point out with conclusive proof the existence of something that is non-physical that is not simply a contextual language game. Science does not run on the idea that there is some type of non-physical substance out there that we can measure and create outcomes from. Well...I can think of a few but those never seem to come up in our conversations. Which tells me that your arguments are still simply the very human desire to have our beliefs and imagination reflect in reality.

Yes, here is the language game (in bold), because you are requiring something non-physical to be demonstrated with physical apparatus/experiment.

I can offer a rational argument for an ethereal being, but I cannot show it to you under the microscope. Therefore it is a figment of my imagination

Here is the argument;
A physical humanity can perform all that is required to live as a human in the physical world without being conscious. (Just like a bat can perform everything required without the power of sight) Consciousness is not required for this, but consciousness is present, therefore it must be required for a different process (purpose). It could be argued, perhaps that it is pre-hensile, or some kind of unintended consequential, in some way. But that would be a bit hand wavey.

This different process is the evolution of an ethereal body, or being. A being hosted, maintained, sustained by the physical body. This ethereal body is a sentient conscious, self conscious entity with a rich experience of a subjective world, real experiences etc. But is entirely dependent on the physical processes in the physical body for its continued existence (in this world). It shares these processes with the physical body. This not only includes the chemical processes, but the processes of mind (x).

Now (x) can perform every mental action required for humanity to live in a material world. Without sentience, without self consciousness. After all, it is all computation. We know that computation can produce an intelligent body, because we have super computers and AI. All the senses in the human body can be responded to computationally without the body being conscious of them, experiencing them. They can be processed in the usual way, by the mental activity of the brain.

Now I will ask you, is there something that a human needs to do to live in this world which definitively requires conscious sentience to do?

In particular the focus here is on the use of Mental Acts and Physical Acts in terms of Philosophy of Mind. I think there is still worthy groudn to cover within more a more focused scope.

Yes and I’m hoping to learn something.

I’m not a philosopher so can’t use the terminology much and might not be familiar with the arguments.
I would say though, that the problem seems to be in the idea that a human being is both a mind and an animal and how to account for it. I think that some of the approaches have baggage as a result of other philosophical arguments. For example accounting for how it came to exist and whether a mind can exist without a body (idealism), or how a body can have a mind (physicalism).

I come to this from a different direction, where I am interested in what is going on. Not necessarily how it came to be, or how it works. But rather what are we, what are we doing and where are we going.

When I look at a human in this way, I see a being*, in a world, learning, practicing, participating in a world of dense objects (material), where there are a set of very hard constraints and how they adapt and live in such a place. With the goal of becoming proficient, or wise as beings who can act as creators in that world.

*a being, with a highly integrated mind and body, resulting in an agent with the ability to mould their surroundings.

I think sometimes philosophical machinations can be so reductive that they fall prey to becoming so abstracted from any real life scenario that the crux of the matter is lost.

Yes and this issue is a good example, it’s quite a simple issue when one realises that causes regress to a first cause. Unless they are the result of an intelligent mind. In which case in order to regress to a first cause, it would mean that the agency in the first cause had in mind, Beethoven’s fifth, or Hamlet, (or anything which a mind can produce), when determining to create the universe.

At any rate, I think the really interesting question is that of mental causation - of how ideas and thoughts can have physical consequences, as they plainly do. I don't think it's an insoluble problem, but I think that the assumption the brain is a physical thing is the wrong place to start.

The way I see it is that a human has something extra than anything else in the world. An ability to act in a unique way, free of instinctive, or deterministic patterns. Which other animals and plants, or physical objects do.
This unique ability is like a vast pool of choices. Any choice can be made and there is no way that external influences, or states determine which choice is made. A human is a chooser, a chooser can choose any order of notes when choosing a musical score, Beethoven for example. But to be able to make more sophisticated choices, the chooser needs a more intelligent way of deciding, rather than a random choice generator. In a human this intelligence takes the form of a being developed by having been evolved in a natural world, of plants and animals.

So a human chooser is intimately acquainted with the ways of the world, through evolution. This means it’s difficult to tease apart the intelligent being from the animal, it evolved in. In a way they are fused together body and mind.

They should remind themselves that all life of this planet is one family, literally brothers and sisters of one common parent* and that they are a result of one continuous lineage of life. One life begetting another all the way through our evolution.
— Punshhh

Yes, good point.

I would go further, in a very real sense we are one being. One instantiation of life and all that that involves.

Maybe

Well I can’t think how else something would be caused.

The billiard balls are under the influence of gravity the whole time and gravity plays a role in the movement and trajectory of the balls and plays a part in the collision. Yet gravity is a force operating (in an unknown way) at a distance from a median point within a in a very large ( in the part played by the planet earth) group of atoms. Acting against a median point amongst another group of atoms.
The white ball holds a force (momentum) as a group of atoms, but not from a median point, but as a group as a whole. That force is only a force in that the white ball is moving relative to the red ball. But perhaps the white ball isn’t moving, but the red ball, the snooker table and the planet are moving towards the white ball with an equivalent force and the white ball is stationary. In which case that same force is now held by the red ball. So in this case the red ball causes the white ball to move.

This would suggest that the cause of the change in momentum of the two balls could be given to numerous different forces, held in various different points in the system. Depending on which perspective the observer is coming from.

Surely everything we know is part of a causal cascade instigated by a demiurge. While mental activity is mini demiurges (us) learning what’s involved in instigating things.

Just noticed that this article was published the same day as your OP:

Teleology: What Is It Good For?, by John O'Callaghan

Nice essay, summed up in this sentence;

But what it does prove is that the random variation of traits that result in survival advantages does not rule out evolution having a teleological end or purpose.

The people who deny this teleological purpose are in a way blind to it. They see things only in the external. This results in a failure to understand what an organism is. In a sense they look at individual organisms, or species and see them as one of those body parts that Frankenstein was working with. But this denies the essence of life which courses through those organisms. They should remind themselves that all life of this planet is one family, literally brothers and sisters of one common parent* and that they are a result of one continuous lineage of life. One life begetting another all the way through our evolution.

*this does not require one individual common parent. But rather a pool of unicellular organisms at the point of the inception of life.

He has a strong and realistic sense of what is possible given the tangible constraints of nature that he is so familiar with. He is not going to shoot for the moon and thereby risk losing what has taken so long to carefully develop. In general he is less ideational and more concrete, whereas progressives are the opposite.

But in the U.K. it made him vulnerable to the newly developed (post 2008) Tory populist ideology. Which has now royally screwed him up. Just like the fishermen, who also fell for the populists. They are now just left reeling and in despair.

Although there is a sink or swim process going on, in which those who can stay afloat are moving into large scale agribusiness which is the new trend.

I live in rural Norfolk and used to work as a polling clerk during elections. I remember seeing the older farmers ( there are not many young farmers) coming to vote who were all the same. They were staunchly conservative, anti immigration and weirdly pro Brexit.

So the trend in these parts is simple to understand. They were mostly coming into farming during the Thatcher years and enjoyed the prosperity it brought. This included the increase in land values, which have now become inflated. And they have witnessed the increase in immigration in the local towns, of mainly Polish people, which many of the more old fashioned and older people dislike.

There is a trend of people of the ages from about 60-80 who felt the prosperity of Thatcher and bought into the Thatcher ideology. Of careful financial management and the entrepreneurial spirit. This aligned well with what farmers do. They have to manage large budgets carefully, often with a small return on investments and run a successful small business.

These ideologies were hammered home through the predominantly right wing press. Along with similar campaigns spreading anti socialist ideology. Farmers were often not educated at University, or exposed to liberal, or socially progressive movements. Where the credibility of left wing policy could become understood. So they were more likely to be swayed by the Tory propaganda. Which probably explains the numbers of farmers who were pro Brexit (about 55%), something which was not in their interests. Because farming was propped up by CAP. They European Common Agriculture Policy, which subsidised farmers, quite heavily. To think, that they thought that a Conservative government would replace that with something as generous. Wonders never cease.

Wouldn't the average man make an average ruler? Someone who doesn't do too much harm or good? I'm thinking of most people I know and none of them would turn into, say, Pol Pot, if they were put in that position.

Assad was an average man, we was an ophthalmologist in London before he became a genocidal maniac.

Being in a pecking order does not make the other's good your good.

It does, you should spend more time with chickens.
When a new bird is introduced to the flock, she finds her place in the pecking order by a stand off with the dominant bird in the flock. If she loses, then she will stand off with other birds around the dominant bird until she finds her level. She then adopts the good of the birds above her in the flock and offers it to those below her in the flock. She also forms alliances and friendships and learns, adopts and maintains the good, or bad behaviours in the flock.

Yes, "consciousness" can mean what I call medical consciousness -- a certain state of responsiveness as opposed to being "knocked out."

Yes, that’s closer to what I was thinking, but it’s inferior to the consciousness of an ant for example. This is because it is a diseased, or disordered animal, hence not functional.
I see consciousness as the me-ness, the sense of me, here, now, aliveness that is present in all organisms. This is a knowing, or inherent knowledge of their own presence. It is not articulated intellectually, but that is not a prerequisite for this kind of consciousness.

By contrast, the consciousness of a human is richer and more integrated with a computational ability which gives self awareness, reflectiveness etc. However I see this self consciousness as emergent from the computational ability in the brain, which is separate from the inherent consciousness of the organism.

So a human is no more conscious than the ant, but has many more developed sensory and mental abilities through which that consciousness is enhanced.

Rehabilitation is punishment? No wonder the jails are so full.

They’re full because it’s a good pyramid (ponzy) scheme.

if I need to commit mass genocide to survive

There are two people doing that right now and anyone who hears about it gets really angry about it (as I did watching the news last night).

Consciousness adds a new aspect to our valuing, because when we come to value something or someone, we not only have a new response to it, we have a new intentional relation. If I commit to someone, I make their good my good in a way that cannot be captured by a physical description.

Sorry my chickens do this too. It’s intrinsic in the pecking order relationship.
I’m not here to argue, because I agree with 99% of what you say. What prompted my to respond was my misreading of “consciousness”. I use it in a different way and what you call consciousness, I call self consciousness(which we observe in higher primates and humans). Whereas I regard my chickens as conscious. While they are not self conscious, they exhibit pretty much every other mental process that happens in humans. Crucially they have sentience, a feeling and knowledge as present in the world. But in some way, difficult to pin down, they don’t have that extra feedback loop of self consciousness, that we have. I don’t see this (in the chicken) as a lesser experience, but rather a more stream of consciousness, direct involvement in their world. Whereas humans indulge in self reflection, pondering, self conscious absent mindedness etc.

God creating universes might be like breathing, in and out. Or it might be for lesser beings, heavenly hosts to do it. We just don’t know.

I don't understand how this response could be a proper answer to my question.

I was suggesting some ways in which God can be the creator of universes, or worlds while not being fully aware (ignorant) of what he was doing.

If you know you can't die, maybe painful "deaths" are tolerable.

Have you ever stood on a nail?

I presented a conference paper on value in April. In it, I argued that valuing is a two step process. First, we must recognize something as valuable. Such recognition requires awareness/consciousness of our response to an object -- a form of self-awareness called "knowledge by connaturality." Most organisms give no evidence of being self-aware. Second, it requires commitment -- an act of will by which we make the valuable actually valued. Again, most organisms do noting to make us think that they possess a will. Instead, they respond automatically and mindlessly to their environment.

Self awareness is not required for step one, or step two. I observe my chickens doing this every day*.
I suggest that all biological organisms have these abilities, albeit in very simple forms, or in embryonic form. That humans and other primates act in the same way most of the time and that the difference between all organisms and humans is only a higher mind function, a more complex and integrated intellectual process, that these primates possess.

*two examples. If I give my chickens a choice of foods at the same time. They will have already decided which one is their favourite. They have remarkable acuity and often know from your actions if you are preparing their favourite food from subtle signs in your behaviour. Secondly when it comes to selecting a roost. They will spend hours looking for and deciding about a suitable roost. They will often try good candidates numerous times before deciding on the one they will use. Once the decision is made they show great determination to roost there even if you chase them away, you might place them in one of the other favoured roosts, but they will not roost there. Their minds are already made up.

If Catholicism is right, then if Catholicism does indeed demand "controlling populations", then controlling populations would thereby be right.

I'm not seeing much here apart from the tautology that if some doctrine is right, then it is right.

Then you would be right, bingo!

For God creating universes might be like breathing, in and out. Or it might be for lesser beings, heavenly hosts to do it. We just don’t know.

God either created out of ignorance or not. Which one do you pick?

I could toss a coin and let you know the result.

If God created the medium, then He should know what a medium is. You cannot act from pure ignorance!

It might make sense from our perspective. But we are in almost total ignorance about these issues. All we can say with certainty is that we don’t know

Biosemiosis inverts this framing. We are the machinery that can constrain the world to our own advantage.

Only in a very limited way. We are confined in the machine of the body with very little agency. Apart from a little bit I will call x.

We are modellers of the world for the purpose of regulating the world in a way that it must keep rebuilding and even replicating the delicate biological machine that is "us".

That’s not the we, the machine can do all that itself. We play no role in its development, or maintenance. Apart from a little bit I will call x.

Etc etc.

Consciousness boils down to the habit of predicting the state of the world in every next moment ... so as to be then capable of being surprised by what happens instead and thus learning to make better predictions the next time round.

It is the mind, facilitated by the brain that does all this. Perhaps what you mean by consciousness is self consciousness, which is where the mind becomes conscious of itself and becomes self reflective. This is not the root of consciousness, the root of consciousness was present in us long before we developed larger brains and became self conscious.

That self conscious being is little more than a toddler (who is concerned with x) compared to the complexity of the world and the body he or she finds themselves in.

And a strong sense of self emerges from this prediction-based processing. We know we are the "we" who generated a sense of a world as it was just about to be. Then we are still the "we" who has to halt and start again if the world glitched and we had to restart it from a refreshed point of view.

Again the “we” is not required to perform these tasks, the body can and does do it all by itself.

The Zen ideal for some reason. Sensory deprivation tanks cause the ego to dissolve. It is by having to push against the world that we also feel the us that is pushing. Once the world becomes fully ignorable, so also does our self-image lose its sturdy outline.

Leaving just the “we”. I know, I’ve been there.

What I’m getting at here is that as beings, people, personalities, self aware minds. We are babies, toddlers with a primary school level understanding ( x ) of the world we find ourselves in. We are doing well in our primary lessons. Working out things about the material of the world we find ourselves in. Even things about our own make up, biology psychology etc. But compared to the complexity of the world we find ourselves in, this is a tiny peek, a scratch on the surface of what’s going on. 99.99% of it we don’t have a clue about, or don’t even realise is there going on. And when it comes to why. Or how it came into existence, what mechanism, we don’t have a clue.

There are other approaches to knowledge about these things from religions and eastern philosophies. Which approach from a different perspective. Again we are toddlers.

I see this situation rather like a complex machine like what you describe, into which embryonic minds are introduced (implanted) (I will call these y ) to learn lessons, to grow and develop for some reason. Maybe to learn about good and evil, cooperation compassion. To have agency, to overcome the tendencies to succumb to base urges and desires, to be baby creators.

Now here’s the curious thing. My world and your world are identical, except for one thing, y.
I would suggest that a zombie world could be identical too.

At the end of the day, we don’t know which it is, or if it is something else entirely. We really are in the dark.

That’s the problem, you see, Catholicism. Maybe we could try Quakers, or Shakers. Although, I admit it might not translate well via the keyboard.

Each biblical reference here supports the methodological point that theology presupposes its conclusion.

Enjoying your dry wit by the way.
If you imagine that God does actually exist theology makes sense. Although as I was saying to Frank, Catholicism took its theologies too far. Where it became an apology for controlling populations.

By contrast, if you are of the opinion that God does not exist, then it’s all just pie in the sky.

So really we just need to settle the issue of whether there is a God first, then we can make progress.

I also think there are some interesting parallels to draw between the idea of living God's will with other concepts like living your Tao or other forms of enlightenment. I have seen some interpretations of hell as being bad not as a punishment so much as the natural state of being separated from God and his love/will, and because God is perfect, he cannot interact with imperfect beings directly, hence the necessity of Jesus as a sacrificial intermediary. In that reading, I think it's possible to see similarities, but perhaps I'm reaching.

We may already be in hell, earth may be hell. The spirit in each of us is separated by this heavy dense material substance that we wear like a straight jacket. Indeed we are imprisoned in this physical world. The only freedom we have is our imagination and our free will to live a good, or not so good a life.
I really enjoyed the works of C.S.lewis by the way.

Americans wouldn't have looked to the Pope for guidance. They were mostly Protestants

Then why all this focus on Catholicism?
All these doctrinal abominations you and Banno are going on about are just over reach in the Catholic Church. There are other religions and theologies.

Apokrisis’s explanation is effectively that the movement and life force we observe is like water flowing downhill. It doesn’t need an animating force, it naturally flows to the lowest point. The whole biosphere is just another cascade of entropy and once there is no gradient left, the world will return to stillness and we will be just ghosts.

Nice to read your way of explaining things again Apokrisis. But we are still at the impasse. The we in us is still the ghost in the machine.
How is this world not a world of zombies? Because there is no need for the we in us to be present. It all works as a well oiled machine without us.

Glad I'm not the only person who realized the holy spirit maps to the Christian God's feminine aspect

Yes, this is a profound understanding, as embodied in the father-mother-son relationship. In a sense, this is the trinity in human form.

Thanks for the link. Interesting.

I don't think that's how Original Sin works. Catholics believe humans are born cursed. That's why they baptize infants. The death of Jesus offers a way to be redeemed from the curse.

This doesn’t necessarily negate truly virtuous people.

This is a hang over from the political decision by the Catholic Church to require confession from all of the congregation. With the aim of knowing all the secret information in the society at large. So as to cement their power base.

There is a grain of truth in the notion that everyone is by birth, or nature, a sinner. In the sense that we can never know the complexity of the world we inhabit, or the consequence of our actions. We may only be aware of a small part of what is going on. So this might indicate that every human will require redemption in some way.

By "those mentioned things", I mean this: If there is a God and He does not know how to create, then there is only God. There is creation. Therefore, God knows how to create things.

Not necessarily, we can’t assume that God knows any particular thing. Also to God the bit of creation that we know might not be a creation. Or it might be something else, like part of his body. Let me explain this by analogy. A human person is in a sense God of the whole of his/her person. But even if this is the case, the person is not aware of many things that form part of his/her body. For example, the person doesn’t know the feelings, mind and experience of each cell in his/her body.

To extend the analogy, there may be a disorder/disease in the body, but the person is not aware of it, what’s causing it, or how to put it right. There might be this sort of thing in God’s world, or body. Indeed the self destructive activity of humans might be a disorder in his world.

All we can say is what we can deduce about the bit of it that is our world.

Right, so the narrative is that Jesus redeems us from the curse of Adam. Without that redemption, we're condemned.

Not necessarily, if a person is a good person and serves his fellow man. He does not require redeeming. Isn’t Christ the fisher of men, seeking out the virtuous ones*.

* It could be argued that virtuous people have learned the lesson of the fall. A lesson they could not have learned had there not been a fall.

In ancient history it was commonly understood that the earth was flat and that the sky (the heavens) moved across the sky from east to west every day.

We can be certain about those mentioned things.

The only thing we can be certain of is that in our finite world, a ground (medium) is necessary for this place to exist. This is the role signified by the Holy Ghost.
Yes an omnipotent God can in theory create without a medium. But in our case there is a medium spacetime (the universe), or heaven. That’s the only conclusion we can come to.

If you look closely at a specific historical era, it may seem chaotic and directionless. But if you zoom-out, and take a Hegelian Dialectic*1 perspective, you might notice that positives & negatives tend to balance-out over time. A historical thesis can be portrayed as a physical vector composed of both political force and philosophical direction. Then along comes a new vector to knock the ship off-track. So, the historical path will look like a meandering trail, except the average {historical direction below} is always pointed at the intended destination.

Yes, I agree with this. But this time it’s different and that’s because of the size of the global population, the rate of the stripping of natural resources and the destruction of ecosystems. We have reached the point where the destruction and pollution of the planet is at a tipping point. The ecosystem and life support systems in nature are starting to shrink, while rates of pollution and the size of the population are still rising.

In order to halt and reverse these trends it will require a coordinated global effort between nation states. However, once there is a breakdown in global cooperation and there are more and more failed states and states locked into populist control. This effort will fail, making the crisis more acute.

Once the mass starvation and migration begins to happen, it will probably be too late. The number of states making a real contribution to the global effort will reduce. Resulting in a cascade of failure, resulting in the establishing of three (in my opinion) fortress blocks. The North American block, the European block and the Far Eastern block. These fortresses will try to keep some level and prosperity within their borders and defend them. While everyone else will just have to survive as best they can. Reference Mad Max.

In the OP, the economic math revealed invisible structures within the complexities of the world economic systems : One example is Ownership Networks : “Here the nodes can be corporations, governments, foundations, or physical persons”. He says this kind of analysis “reveals architectures of power invisible to any other type of examination. . . . . this economic power is much more unequally distributed than income or wealth. . . . . This highly-skewed distribution of power has economy-wide implications related to anti-competitiveness, tax avoidance, the role of offshore financial centers, and systemic risk.” Hence "free market capitalism" has devolved into private markets for Oligarchs, and off-the-books black markets for wealthy criminals. :sad:

Yes and this will only accelerate with the looming climate crisis. Also the breakdown in ethical practices and codes. We are back to where we were when Moses came along I’m afraid.