Indeed. And some objects only exist in specific realms, e.g. a cup exists in the realm of natural objects, which are subject to direct interaction, while the atoms of the cup exist in the realm of scientific objects, which are encountered symbolically. We encounter the cup directly, its atoms, inferentially.

Now, transhumanism, specifically hedonistic transhumanism of which David Pearce is a proponent claims or predicts that humans will/can abolish all suffering with the aid of technology — TheMadFool

Because tech has already solved so many global problems with no negative consequences....

Nice! That's on the shelf right next to me - must be a sign. I'm queueing this "up next"....

The times of reflection and contemplation are possibly as important as the peaks of transformation. — Jack Cummins

:up:

Balance

So, in a way, perhaps this is about helping others to see things in perspective, and beyond the limits of the personal ego — Jack Cummins

It is about that, but you can only control you. Trite as it may seem, there's a lot of substance in the Serenity Prayer. I've wandered more than once down the twelve-step path.

I have found for me by far the greatest insulation from the vagaries of interpersonal stress is the minimization of the ego. At some point, I just decided that creating conflict wasn't worth maintaining the pretence of petty personal preferences. Once you have successfully shelved trivialities and looked at human interactions as something that can be managed optimally, then you learn what an amazing power that is and you'll naturally become adept. I didn't really commit to this task until my late forties, it took almost another decade until it became second nature.

Most of the time, eliminating conflict really is the first step towards an optimal solution of almost every problem. It's an art, because you have to be reasonable, but not cold. My second wife is very empathetic and great with people, I have learned a lot from her.

But, I am feeling reasonably okay, but it may be that today or tomorrow I will end up having a horrible day, and feel the need for some kind of transformational experience. — Jack Cummins

What types of things can make a day horrible?

to take us beyond suffering, monotony and powerlessness. — Jack Cummins

Yes, it is relatively easy to climb to the peaks and enjoy the view, but inscribing that in some permanent form in the book of one's life is another matter. A lot of people aren't eager to be transformed. Some are even afraid of the idea. I live for it. Transformation is a species of growth.

In opening the thread I was really wishing to enable people to explore all the possibilities of this, with a view to thinking about consciousness explorations, and how this can be potentially enhance our lives. — Jack Cummins

One key is that one must be open to transformation. Otherwise, a peak experience is wasted, or worse, becomes a hedonistic trap, and one ends up chasing the dragon. From personal experience, if you become a peak-experience junkie and don't learn the lessons, then a couple of things will happen. First, the pleasure component will consistently decrease. Second, something will happen in your life that will put you face to face with your own need for self-transformation.

Any chance of expanding on that a bit? — Apollodorus

Well, if consciousness is energy then it is subject to conservation, which means it could be recycled theoretically. Perhaps the brain may not be so much the source of consciousness as a window onto it, an intersection point.

Thanks, can you provide a link please? — Pop

It's from a book on systems theory applications I read last year. I'll have to dig a bit.

edit - it is actually from Capra/Luisi The Systems View of Life which I know is one of Jack's favourites. Chapter 10, the synthetic biology approach to life, section 10.5.2 specifically, page 233. The number of cellular components is actually around 90, not 70 as I said.

Any ideas on what causes these to self organize? — Pop

One of the most interesting examples of self-organization I've read about was in the context of an experiment to simulate the genesis of life from organic precursor elements (abiogenesis). There are something like 70 constituent elements and in order for the experiment to succeed all 70 elements have to be present in the proto-cell after the cellular membrane is created/formed. Basically the odds of this happening are zero. But what actually happens is that many of the artificial cells have nothing inside the membrane, while a few of the artificial cells have all the necessary ingredients and, against all odds, the experiment works.

If consciousness is just some kind of complex energy formation then the fact that it gets "recycled" would be fairly straightforward. Certain constellations of properties might be more cohesive than others. Maybe every so often a whole personality makes it through. Who knows? It's like a surgeon doing an autopsy on himself, trying to analyze consciousness.

Don't the entropies of thermodynamics and information theory pretty much converge?

But are we ever confident of that...unless we are the majority?

How ought a community deal with such a neighbor? Do we expel them? Which belief did we expel them for? How do we draw the line between a difference of opinion and something that someone ought to be expelled for? — BitconnectCarlos

The way you phrase this question makes it ambiguous who the community is identified with. Is the community the "majority," which includes the rabid racist? Or is the community on the side of the minority in this case??

Plus some people just always have to say the opposite....

Tension creates energy. I think it's a feature of the universe to create itself in counterposing forces.

I have an excellent article somewhere on the eye-brain mechanics of the frog's eye - I'll try to find it and post a link

Here tis. I remember when I read it getting a clear picture that the boundaries of cognition are definitely outside of the brain and nervous system.....

https://courses.cit.cornell.edu/bionb4240/Reprints/Lettvin_Maturana_McCulloch%20and%20Pitts_1959.pdf

The aim itself is not objective but a subjective formulation, so the only way that it can "run away" from you is if the means you choose to employ in pursuit of the aim contradict the aim itself. i.e. if you aim to be rich, the goal is not "money", per se, but "obtaining money," which means the aim has to be accomplished through means. But living just to "obtain money" is essentially vacuous, so if you believed that having money was the route to genuine satisfaction, but were unwilling to give yourself over body and soul to its pursuit (which is what people who really want money do, often quite ruthlessly and successfully) then you would find yourself in pursuit of a quarry you could never catch. So there is some truth to the metaphor. But I don't think eliminating goal-oriented thinking is the solution. Rather, recognizing that there must be conformity of means to ends, formulating goals that are "nearby" and whose accomplishment is at least partially realized in the pursuit (i.e. running a business).

If you view consciousness as a form of energy then it can be explained empirically. If it is a natural occurrence then it doesn't require "justification". Only what could have been otherwise than it is is subject to justification. Unless you stipulate that it is voluntary....

Evil is antisocial, although not all antisocial behaviours are evil. Most evil people try to conceal evil deeds behind a facade of virtue. Which shows that they know what evil is. Evil deeds cause harm, not just knowingly or incidentally, but intentionally. People can be greedy, which is evil if it harms others, but unselfconsciously so; if they don't try to conceal their greed, they may not know it is evil (ignorance). Some people revel in evil and do not try to conceal it. They usually get locked up or put down.

A perfect example. And a sphere has the property of rolling which a lump of clay does not have. So this is an additional property (reduced surface friction).

Experience is a strange little breast. Experience does create change (a creative action), but is it additive? I would say it is transformative. — MondoR

Interestingly, you used the term creative. I think creation implies novelty, hence something being added.

Consciousness is a state of being. It cannot be quantified. It is. — MondoR

If I have a new experience, then my state of being is different subsequent to that experience and prior. It seems reasonable to view this as an additive change. One doesn't have to quantify absolutely to recognize a relative difference.

Interestingly, I just started reading Dickens' Our Mutual Friend and it seems that the whole idea of the psychology of people who live according to what they 'want to believe' is actually a theme of the book. Mr Wegg, who takes great pains to maintain the integrity of his pretensions, not only to others but to himself, despite having only a vague understanding of the meaning of his pretences. Blight, the "clerkly essence," maintaining his "fiction of an occupation."

↪Pantagruel Do you have a page reference please? — Daemon

Of course. The example I cited is from page 195 of the original MIT press hardcover.

If you use "properties" in that way, referring to the function of a thing, then you must respect that functions which the object does not currently have, though the object has the capacity to be used that way if approached by the right mind, are not actually properties of the thing, because it is not being used that way. Otherwise the thing has all sorts of different properties at the very same time, in violation of the law of non-contradiction. — Metaphysician Undercover

True. And as I suggested, different people with the same physical capacities can nevertheless have very different abilities. Will and understanding are definitely factors. The properties of a conscious entity are much more complex than those of a material object.

The problem with this perspective is that our capacities always extend beyond our properties. — Metaphysician Undercover

Exactly. As Descartes says, "the will is much wider in its range and compass than the understanding." And yet not everyone discovers a bashing stick can be a lever.

But for the person using the stick, whatever functional effects that stick confers de facto become properties of that person in the context of the world. If someone attacks me, and I have access to a stick, it is a property of mine that I will bash him over the head. Just like it is a property of glass that it will shatter when struck. It's called a dispositional property.

I think there is an underlying drive and ideal for knowledge to be an organic whole, encompassing all dimensions of the actual life of an individual who is part of a community that is part of a species that exists in a natural environment. There is also another tendency towards very specific knowledge of specific things in specific circumstances in a specific domain. Scientific knowledge is of the latter type. Scientific experiment, in particular, only works to the extent that certain parameters can be held artificially constant, in order to better examine certain other parameters. This can lead to the well-known and often lamented problem of overspecialization.

The problem is, the more dimensions of knowledge you synthesize, the more abstract become the relationships. These used to find form in the so-called 'Renaissance Man' who was himself the epitome of the broad synthesis of human knowledge. Today, it seems we've passed the point of any one person achieving that level of synthesis. Nevertheless, for me it represents a motivating ideal.

John Searle talks about intentionality rising to the level of background abilities. In other words, your mind steers at the level of its expertise (which is a function of experience and skill). A beginning skier focuses on 'shifting weight onto the downhill ski' in each corner, while an expert skier just 'picks a path' down a slope. — Pantagruel

The example is Searle's, from the book Rediscovery of Mind.

:up:
I think this concept fits well with the approach of embodied or embedded cognition as well.

If consciousness is understood as a pragmatic modelling relation "we" have with "the world", then this ever-larger ability to anticipate the actions and reactions of our environment are what we would mean by a "deepening" consciousness. — apokrisis

Yes, this is exactly the sense in which I cited Searle on intentionality and background abilities. Exactly. Situational awareness.

Another interesting dimension is the idea of 'cognitive effort'. For example, it can be more difficult for someone with muscular dystrophy to lift an arm than for a weightlifter to lift 200 lbs. People do seem to have different degrees of willpower, so that, with either much more focused or much more prolonged effort one person can accomplish more than another having the same set of physical capacities. I'd venture this is another difference in degree of consciousness.

:up: Yep. So, we create our own reality? We create ourselves? - within physical constraints, including the constraint of being a node in a lineage of life. — Pop

Yes, the mental certainly seems to occupy a unique and irreducible role in evolution. I don't know if we create reality so much as shape it. Maybe those are not really different. Form become content.

:up:

So we are the origin point formed by having so many "shapes" of action or states of intent available to one coherently integrated neural system. Or as humans, the origin point for the space of actions available to a suitably encultured and economically enabled creature. — apokrisis

Yes, the self and sociation definitely becomes integral to what consciousness is.

Specifically, I like the notion of mental shape because shapes have specific properties, and our properties or abilities 'fit' with what I've described as environmental gradients. I think objective reality itself can be viewed in terms of physical gradients. Density, for example, if you reduce it far enough; density has significance only insofar as a region of one density adjoins a region of a differing density. In which case, it isn't so much what the density of one region or the other is, what is significant is the density gradient between the two regions.

What do you think is the maxim behind that? — baker

The first precept against killing, since all life is sacred. And all living things partake of Buddha nature.

As I pointed out alread, "awareness" (like "self-awareness") is not "consciousness"; so yeah, I agree, "awareness" is gained, but not "consciousness". — 180 Proof

As I offered, I consider this type of awareness, situational awareness, to be the exemplary state of consciousness qua consciousness. This is why the highest level of intentionality presents at this level situational expertise, to look at it in Searle's terms.

assuming different beings have different degrees of consciousness serves a particular ideology -- such as that it's okay to treat children like cattle, or that animals don't feel pain or much of anything — baker

These are all non-sequiturs. If anything, partaking by degrees of the same consciousness as us should afford rights, not subject to ignomies. Buddhists don't step on insects.

I'd call it 'situational awareness.' And, to use your terms, a more experienced consciousness does become more aware. John Searle talks about intentionality rising to the level of background abilities. In other words, your mind steers at the level of its expertise (which is a function of experience and skill). A beginning skier focuses on 'shifting weight onto the downhill ski' in each corner, while an expert skier just 'picks a path' down a slope.