... the notion of a perfected preservation of the *self* and, hence, immortality of the self. — javra

It's not "the self" that is "immortal" – ageless or unaging – just the substrate upon which mind is instantiated. [...] "Perfect preservation of the substrate", I think, is what "immortality" consists in and thereby enables the continuity of self-awareness (mind). — 180 Proof

How does stipulating the self to be contingent on material substrata deny the self's intent to preserve the substrata for the sake of the particular emergent self’s immortality (or perfected self-preservation)?

As a non-Indigenous person who's only had a very passing introduction to Indigenous philosophies, I'm just wondering if anyone knows any good books/journals/thinkers that may be relevant to my search. — Grre

Partly due to being peeved at some former poster (who's been known to ask false questions :grin: ) some roundabout input that I hope might be of help.

Both Joseph Campbell and Micea Eliade are known to have addresses pre-Abrahamic religious beliefs in general. I don't recall either focusing in on the female aspects of indigenous peoples of the North Americas, but they both hold notable interpretations regarding what we'd term nature-based religious practices. Despite his faults, for some reason Eliade's book "The Sacred and the Profane" comes to mind as a good introduction to perspectives of indigenous peoples. It's been some time since I've read it, but I found an online synopsis of it here. And at under 260 pages, the book itself is not too long of a read. BTW, briefly skimming through the synopsis, I can find parallels to the Native American notions of a Sky Father and Earth Mother.

Hope this might inspire some ideas for your project. But yes, now that I think of it, a good sum of authors that I've read on this subject have a European ethnicity ... and those that haven't have been from the East.

The peak experiences I have had, which are what I imagine is more in the ballpark of the aim of transhumanist mind-alteration, feel the opposite of what I imagine a lobotomy would feel like, assuming a lobotomy would feel something like drunkenness or sedation. During a peak experience I not only feel more calm and happy and tranquil and accepting but I also feel smarter and more aware of both myself and the world around me, I take passionate interest in everything and find it all wondrous and fascinating, and I want to learn and to create, to find and build connections between everything. It's both peace and joy. — Pfhorrest

I grant what you're saying. What I was alluding to, through both examples, is that what you are grateful for experiencing and seem intent to further experience is what a layperson might term a heightened, or raised, consciousness. Which encompasses far more than mere happiness and longevity of lifespan. And without which happiness and longevity, I'll argue, lose their value.

The ideal of manipulating brains so as to invoke heightened consciousness, however, presupposes that one already knows a) what the zenith of this heightened consciousness (if there is one) consists of and b) how to biologically alter brains to produce it; rather than, say, producing something akin to drug-induced altered states that deviate from such heightened consciousness. So, were one to have one's brain preserved in some manner after death and then restructured at some future point in time when such understanding might be obtained, the transhumanist brain-alteration that would occur would render the person to not be the you which you are now. Like altering the brain of a particular frog (for lack of a better example) so that it obtains the awareness of the average human, the being in question that would emerge from the operation would not be the initial being that craves immortality as the self it knows itself to be.

Maybe more succinctly, immortality of self requires a stagnation of selfhood; whereas, I'm thinking, mortality of self is required for the evolution of selfhood in general. Here, one grants other selves their moment in the sun just as past selves have granted you this opportunity. With each generation learning from the last.

Murderers are making other people unhappy (the people who get murdered, and anyone who might miss them), even if their crimes are never discovered. It's therefore better that they not murder [...] — Pfhorrest

I of course agree with this. But if an individual's happiness alone is the goal, on what grounds would it be better for the happy murderer - who obviously harms others - to not murder?

I'll again aim at raised consciousness being a good that excels the goodness of individual happiness. Nebulous as this notion of raised consciousness likely is, I'll nevertheless argue that it in part is where one finds portions of oneself in others and treats these others as extended aspects of one's intrinsic self. This raised consciousness thereby leads to empathy. But empathy can lead to one's suffering when others suffer. The greater one's general empathy, the greater the number of people whose suffering will impact one. So again, a mere individualistic happiness doesn't seem to suffice as an objective, for the happy murderer is far more happy than the person who holds empathy for not only people on the other side of the world (like children in Yemen) but for future generations yet to come (think global warming as an example).

okay, let's make ourselves a different type of brain, and in the mean time survive long enough to do so. — Pfhorrest

I was struck by this and related comments in your posts.

What, if anything, then makes lobotomizing oneself bad, granted that it will lead to greater degrees of unperturbable happiness for the remainder of one’s days? Assume that the lobotomized individual will be well taken care of and will live a longer than average life. Else, that they will immortally live as such.

Simply being happy to me seems to be an insufficient goal. As another type of example, mass murders who've committed and continue to commit "perfect crimes" can also be said to live happy lives, and if they obtain immortality while so doing they'd be so much the happier. Should we then change our brains into such mindsets?

... what greater quest could there be? — 180 Proof

For the physicalist, I don’t know. Although I could envision a quest for global harmony a la good old fashioned humanism, one that is accordant to nature as-is.

For the non-physicalist, such as for them Buddhists that maintain self to be a metaphysical (rather than physical) illusion, the experience of a self can be conceived of as that what brings about - hence in some sense causes - samsara, the latter in part being unending vacillations of pleasure and pain that equate to dissatisfaction. Here, the ultimate quest can be the liberation from this unending dissatisfaction via, for lack of better words, some means of transcendence, whereby the experience of a self ceases - this while not leading to oblivion. Yea, I know, not to be taken seriously by physicalists (although physicalists can also maintain the self to be an illusion). And this is just one person’s interpretation of Buddhist aspirations. Nevertheless, here the ultimate quest precludes the notion of a perfected preservation of the *self* and, hence, immortality of the self. Arguably leading to more selfless behaviors while in no way being nihilistic.

With the people who really seem to wish to live forever,I do wonder how this would change in the face of adversity. Regarding the transhumanists, I can't believe that the truly extended life is not going to come with a few nasty side-effects. — Jack Cummins

Yup. Personally, I never understood the quest for immortality.

Suppose transhumanism is obtained by a group who eventually become the only living group of individuals. This group thereby perfects the ideal of self-preservation at the individual level, such that there is no destruction, decay, or ill that can naturally occur for any individual within this group. How would this resolve the problem of interpersonal conflict, including activities such as sabotage, betrayal, manipulation, enslavement, rape, theft, and so forth, to not mention the yet viable possibility of murder - even if it only occurs through the extermination of a program that was once an uploaded consciousness? To unendingly live with the possibility of such activities, if not their actuality, doesn’t seem to me to resolve anything.

The notion of salvation via immortality of the self - even if the goal were to not be illusory, this as transhumanists claim - doesn’t seem to remedy the issue of undue suffering. I’m reminded of Sartre’s “No Exit” here. (For the record, I’ve never been able to buy into the notion of heaven as a place devoid of suffering for similar reasons. Nor am I an anti-natalist.)

Even an "immortal" is mortal as well as finite and uncertain — 180 Proof

:100:

Can’t say it’s a favorite, and it’s certainly not upbeat, but it’s pith still stands out to me. A thought experiment in ethics:

Without your consent, you will be placed in a desolate place, say on the moon, where you’ll be estranged from all of humanity and thus live for all eternity, and this with an eternal view of Earth’s inhabitants, who, together with all your loved ones, will fully forget you as though you’d never existed. This predicament of yours could be created by gods, through the teleportation and other advanced sciences of aliens, by the magic of demons, it doesn’t matter. It just sets the stage for the thought experiment proper. Given this predicament, you are forced to make a choice between two alternatives. Either A) you will eternally suffer and, in return, the entirety of humanity (hence, including all loved ones) will live in a utopian bliss of peace, love, health, prosperity, wisdom, etc., for all eternity, with you being aware of this state of humanity throughout or, otherwise, B) you will yourself experience eternal bliss with the price being that the entirety of humanity (hence, including all loved ones) will unendingly suffer miserably, again with you being aware of this throughout.

If you choose the latter option, you won’t suffer any while watching all of your loved one’s suffer, but will instead find great pleasure in so watching. And if you choose the former, you will suffer in any number of ways despite your loved ones’ obtaining all the happiness you could ever wish for them to have and you being aware of this.

Which of these future realities do you choose for yourself?

If the thought experiment sounds childish, it’s because it was concocted by a teenager while he was contemplating the extremes of morality. Embarrassingly, yes, me. But, its immaturity aside, I still find the thought experiment poignant as regards which choice would be good and which bad, and for what reasons so. (Would one's reasons rely on moral relativism, moral idealism, something other?)

Man, just saw this.

Seems to me there are two arguments here:

1.) God does not exist, and therefore life is absurd.

2.) Life is absurd without god, therefore god exists. — darthbarracuda

If existence is absurd because its being is beyond the principle of sufficient reason, and one seeks to make existence meaningful by deeming it the creation of God, who is beyond the principle of sufficient reason, then that would quite naturally entail that God is absurd. And, if God is absurd, how would anything God creates not be?

I think everybody from Tristan Tzara – a prominent founder of Dadaism - to folk such as Eugene Ionesco and clan - playwrights of the Theater of the Absurd - would approve. :halo:

… and yet there’s meaning within existence, such as in some of the posts on this forum, arguably excluding this one. :naughty:

As regards the ineffable nature of Nirvāṇa - it has always been understood that there is no way to understand it short of actually reaching or realising it. It is referred to in some texts as ‘the inconceivable’, and much of the language about it is negative, saying what it is not, rather than what it is. Of course, some here will say that this amounts to nothing or nonsense or suchlike, although this fails to account for the fact that Buddhism is one of the primary sources of civilised culture. However there are also positive descriptions in terms of its blissful nature, ultimate peace and final release. — Wayfarer

I’ve been under the impression that Nirvana is a literal, non-hyperbolic, non-dualistic awareness - hence an awareness not limited or bounded by anything: a limitless awareness. Hence, a state of being wherein a literally limitless awareness occurs sans any semblance of selfhood; the latter requiring a duality between self and non-self/other, which would logically cease occurring upon an actualization of complete non-dual awareness. This, in part, since all semblance of “objects of awareness” - be these physical things, or mental things such as desires and particular thoughts of which one is aware - cease to occur upon actualization of non-dual being … this state of awareness thereby being deemed to result in an unfathomable state of bliss. Maybe obviously from this description, a state of being wherein samsara thereby ceases.

One then can either actualize an awareness of Nirvana’s being, in which case one still remains in states of dualistic awareness while aiming to actualize Nirvana itself, or actualize Nirvana itself, in which case, again, duality ceases.

I don’t have references for this interpretation so much as this being the general understanding of Nirvana I’ve gained from my former readings.

To what extent am I misinformed?

But if one’s system of explanation functions as a unity, like a scientific paradigm , then it wouldn’t be a question of seeing certain truths and then making a decision to foresake them , but of not having a coherent glimpse of them in the first place. — Joshs

I so far don’t find a necessary contradiction between your statement and mine. As adults we all dwell in our own paradigms. A Young-Earth Creationist will build museums exhibiting a time when dinosaurs and humans coinhabited Earth, because this aligns to his paradigm. That he “forsakes the truth of biological evolution” else “doesn’t have a coherent glimpse of the truth of biological evolution in the first place” seem to me to go hand in hand for all purposes here intended. Likewise with the reality that we experience goal-directed behavior, this just as much as we experience physical reality. That we hold firsthand experience of goal-directed behavior is an unequivocal truth. But the belief that no such thing as a goal-directed processes can metaphysically occur forsakes this truth, denies it, fails to glimpse it as such, on grounds that it is deemed contradictory to the paradigm one upholds and via which one’s adult awareness of reality is filtered.

Kuhn said that events that fall outside of the scope of a paradigm are not experienced as evidence. — Joshs

Yes, but were this to have been pivotal for Kuhn, he would have never addressed the reality of paradigm shifts in physics.

I would say that what is meant by teleology isn’t properly grasped in the first place by the group rejecting it, because they have no framework in which to make it coherent. — Joshs

I would concur. If X contradicts one's system of explanations, either one's system of explanations is wrong or X is wrong. Unlike with young enough children, we adult humans will almost without exception choose the alternative that X must be wrong, rather than question and reevaluate our own system of beliefs. But then, so habitually doing leads to dogmatism, as per the Young-Earth Creationist previously mentioned.

Are you saying there is an alternative to this ‘bias’? If sense-making is a bias , what is the alternative to sense-making? — Joshs

Hmm, by “truth filtering” I was referring to forsaking certain truths that don’t cohere into one’s system of explanation in favor of those truths that do. And not to "sense-making". As one possible example, that the human mind is inherently teleological, goal-driven, thereby granting teleology an ontological reality, is a truth that is filtered out of the picture by all those whose system of explanations holds no place for teleology in the cosmos. To the latter, teleology is bogus, fictional, illusory, and so forth, even though they have goals in mind in so conceiving. Such as that of establishing what is and is not real.

As to an alternative, it's difficult if at all possible to establish, but it would be that of not denying the reality of truths which don’t fit in with one’s currently held system of explanations - regardless of how much damage this would do to one's presently held system of explanation. Fallibilism, what the ancient Greeks termed “skepticism” - which, unlike Cartesian skepticism, is in no way contingent upon doubts - can help to better establish such state of mind.

The reason that theories of everything end up getting replaced is that ‘the ‘ everything’ they are describing isn’t a static set of facts but is constantly evolving, because we are a part of this everything and are constantly evolving — Joshs

Even by this account, their so called explanation of everything failed to explain everything: here, failed to explain the evolution of everything. Thereby in fact not being explanations of everything.

but that the ‘vision of unity’ is at the heart of true philosophy. — Wayfarer

I'm in agreement with this.

Often the matter of truth does not seem to be quite clearly distinguishable from the matter of taste. — spirit-salamander

Aside from truths and tastes, there’s also explanatory power involved. Here personal tastes lend themselves to what is deemed most in need of explaining.

As one general example that is readily apparent on this forum: The physicalist finds consciousness (by which I mean nothing more than the firsthand faculty of awareness) to be much ado about nothing, being primarily interested in maximally explaining that aspect of awareness’s environment which is equally applicable to all sentient beings, both affectively and effectively, and so which does not sway to the whims of any one being or cohort of such. This being what we term physical reality. To the non-physicalist, physicalism-grounded explanations fail to adequately account for givens that are deemed by such temperaments to be most pertinent: things like justice, beauty, meaning, reasoning, happiness - value in general - which are deemed contingent upon awareness and requisite for the evaluation of anything, including of that which we deem to be physical.

Once a system is obtained that explains that which one’s temperament deems most valuable, confirmation biases ensue. And here various truths are filtered in favor of maintaining the system of explanation that most assists oneself in making sense of existence. Thereby, that system of explanations which best helps one to live. I’m by no means any exception to this bias.

If there were to be a theory of everything in philosophy, it would need to explain everything to a t: both real and fictional, both metaphysical and physical, and so on. Thereby holding complete explanatory power for everything - for that which our own temperaments value as well as that which we find no great value in, though it be valuable to others.

Till then, if ever realizable, we can intend to better approximate this ideal. Or not. But I would not consider the latter lovers of wisdom.

Nothing for me to argue against here.

:grin:

Thanks. I'll confess to me having some fun for the time being. :blush: But, yea, you're right.

So given our history of exchanges on this thread where you've asked bogus questions of me, how do I now know that your latest statements are in fact real and not bogus?

What do you think might happen if you regularly violate your taken-for-granted moral principles?

[...]

So what do you think, moral realists? — spirit-salamander

Thinking of Buddhists whose ultimate aim is the emancipation from samsara, which is a predetermined and non-created state of being that awaits as Nirvana; or of Neoplatonists whose ultimate aim is union with “the One”, which is again a predetermined and non-created state of being that awaits; or any number of similar examples (with a potential secular example being the obtainment of a true, or absolute/complete, objectivity of awareness) wherein the ultimate end pursued is considered an uncreated absolute good, one that is universally applicable, that then establishes what ought and ought not be done so as to be attained (we are, after all, addressing moral realism):

What would necessarily happen - be it in this life, if not in the next, and so forth (here granting that nonbeing is not a predetermined ultimate end of awareness) - is that one would be furthered from that which one intends to ultimately actualize in the long term by one’s own hand, this via the actualization of short-term goals that, again, frustrate one’s pivotal intent. This furtherance from what one ultimately wants, then, would be unpleasant, this in varying degrees that are relative to one’s degree of deviation from what one ultimately desires and thereby seeks. Whereas increased proximity to what one ultimately wants results in happiness; and actualization of what one ultimately wants would be, well, bliss.

By the same token - regardless of hardships encountered - if one maintains alignment to those oughts which facilitate closer proximity to, and eventually actualization of, one’s ultimate end/aim of the absolute good, one will be closer to it than if one were not to so maintain.

I grant that this is simplistic, quite possibly to a fault. But I’ll leave it as-is for now. As a reminder, this presupposes that moral realism is.

It wasn't a real question. — Bartricks

Oh! My bad for replying, then.

Kudos for the historical facts of you last post. Agreed. But disagree that religion can only change people from good to bad (e.g., it’s not like Christian slave owners were good people prior to their discovery or indoctrination into JC’s teachings), or that atheism cannot produce bad consequences that would not occur where spiritual beliefs to be present:

I reckon that those who commit suicide after perpetrating mass shootings generally (?) do not believe in an afterlife. And, if no afterlife, why should so doing be egregious to the person in question? I likewise reckon that a good sum of the greed-is-good gurus among the economic elite also lack belief in an afterlife of any sort (despite their public pronouncements) and hold the same roundabout motives for prioritizing maximum financial profit for themselves in this life over the global community’s wellbeing (as in the repercussions upon future generations of the global warming and the planets 6th mass extinction currently unfolding, in significant part due to a pyramid-scheme global economy founded on the axioms of unlimited resources and infinite expansion). In cases such as these, lack of spirituality becomes detrimental to the actions of the individual relative to the community at large. On a different note, I’ve come across self-proclaimed “formerly bad” persons who’ve become good on grounds of “having found Jesus”. And they were indeed amiable to myself and the community for the time period I knew them—this despite my not having been spiritual at the time and our debates into these matters.

IMO, it's neither religion nor lack of religion that is the culprit. People can use either perspective to give more power to themselves in actualizing the goals which they seek. As two examples of the latter, either that of increased personal autocracy and control over all other or, else, that of an equality (siblinghood, or however else one may term it) of intrinsic worth between themselves and all who surround. One can use the same religion (such as Christianity) for either end, just as one can use irreligious physical facts (such as those regarding biological evolution) in the same ways.

You might be in need of defining "reason" for me to better answer your questions. Assuming that I could.

BTW: To be clear, my own stance is that the Good, which encapsulates the right and the correct, is an uncreated metaphysical facet of the world: not created by a monotheistic deity (be this God renamed Reason or otherwise), not by a plurality of gods, and certainly not by corporeal beings such as ourselves.

Any reason held is held with the Good in mind; this, minimally, with one's appraisals of what is good for one's own self.

... kind of thing.

I’ll try to reframe what I was previously saying in terms that you have used, humbly hoping to be more fully understood:

You are saying that Reason has reasons for Her reasoning which are themselves the self-contained creations of Reason alone as omnipotent arbitrator of these reasons. But then, if Reason is not Herself subject to reasons that are not of Reason’s creation, none of Reason’s reasons for reasoning will be based on non-arbitrary reasons, for all of Reason’s reasons will be arbitrated by Reason alone, thereby being fully arbitrary reasons without exception.

In summation, either Reason is subject to uncreated reasons that Reason Herself aspires to (in which case Reason/God does not create the Good/right/correct as reason for Her own actions) or all of Reasons’ omnipotently created reasons, including that of the Good/right/correct, are themselves created without reason by Reason and, hence, are irrationally created (in which case Reason/God creates the Good/right/correct in manners not subject to anything good, anything right, or anything correct – but instead, as you say, in manners that are fully without reason).

In short, you’re arguing for Reason Herself being fully irrational in all that She creates.

Lacking much subtlety of mind myself, I’m gonna post this.

Likewise, for moral norms and values to exist, God needs to exist (why? Because moral norms and values are the prescriptions and values of God). And if moral norms and values do exist, God exists. — Bartricks

This implies God to be a psyche, for prescriptions and values pertain to psyches alone. They, for example, do not pertain to Aristotelian notions of a final cause as an unmoved mover nor to Neoplatonist notions of “the One”, neither of which were deemed to be psyches (and thereby to prescribe things and to hold values).

This one supreme psyche termed “God”, then, would hold these prescriptions and values due to him/her/it being under the sway of a metaphysical good that is not of God’s creation - toward which God aspires and conforms - or, else, this supreme psyche, “God” would create prescriptions and values of the Good in a fully purposeless manner - such that they are the products of a senseless caprice which can hold no reason for manifesting in one manner rather than another.

If the former, God is not the creator of the Good - i.e., of goodness proper - but is a servant/subject of it as are all other lesser beings. There then is no reason to believe in God in order to believe in the Good, for the Good is not contingent upon God. (Here tentatively granting there being such a supreme psyche which is labeled “God”)

If the latter, God is the creator of that which is the Good, even to the extent of the Good being that which pleases God. For the sake of argument, here assuming that God being the creator of that which pleases God is not, of itself, logically incoherent … God’s creation of the Good, and of prescriptions and values regarding the Good, has then occurred for no reason, no motive, and no purpose: for these would all necessitate the correctitude of an a priori, uncreated Good toward which God aspires and conforms, and thereby intends, in the creations God brings about. In this second scenario, then, when overlooking its logical incoherencies, what was metaphysically good yesterday could be unadulterated evil tomorrow, or vice versa; bringing about a metaphysical moral relativism pivoted on the caprice of a superlatively amoral despot whose dictums are literally irrational. Here, then, there must be God in order for the Good to be.

So - if no major mistakes of reasoning have been done on my part - how does one go about demonstrating the verity of the Good being contingent upon God, rather than the Good not being contingent upon God?

In attempts to place linguistic shuffling aside: Sans the metaphysics of physicalism being a presupposed truth, what is the logical contradiction of ghosts occurring?

As to definitions, let "a ghost” be the disembodied consciousness, soul, or spirit - i.e., the disembodied psyche - of a deceased living being that interacts with this world.

Plenty of anecdotal evidence for ghosts interacting with living people both cross-culturally and historically, where this evidence again occurs cross-culturally (it can’t be physically replicable evidence because ghosts are not physical). Again, the *totality* of this evidence is to be considered hallucinatory, or else acts of charlatanism, without exception on what logical grounds when physicalism is not a presupposed truth?

---------

And to address the OP directly: None. Regardless of firsthand accounts, these can all be explained away as either hallucinations, delusions, or deceptions on grounds that the afterlife is not, or else cannot be, physical. This as per physicalism.

Ah. Got it now. As regards those who initially thought up the concept, point taken. It is expresses as applying to persons, rather than to subjective beings at large. Myself, I'm not that anthropocentric. But it is sometimes expressed as "agreement" or "mutual understanding". So I don't believe its limited to worldviews.

but those who thought up the concept of intersubjectivity seem to have done so with personhood as a bridge that's already been crossed. — TheMadFool

I'm not clear on what you mean and I'd like to better understand you. Care to elaborate?

What confuses me to no end is the word combination, inter and subjectivity. I immediately think of oxymorons like bitter-sweet and the movie True Lies. :smile:

The word "inter" suggests a group of people and the word "subjectivity" is usually associated with one person. — TheMadFool

The same can be said of “interpersonal”.

All forms of human intercourse are interpersonal – yes, sex, but also commerce and communication, and so forth - wherein two or more persons in some way or another and to some extent converge to traverse a commonly shared path in relation to their awareness, if in relation to nothing else. On a related note, “understanding” holds the etymology of “inter” – “standing”.

I so far find that the principal difference between “interpersonal” and “intersubjective” is as follows: intersubjectivity takes the personhood out of the intended concept and replaces it with the more generalized notion of subjectivity. Bees in a beehive share an intersubjectivity, such as when one bee communicates the location of pollen to others, but this communication between bees cannot be effortlessly expressed as interpersonal, since bees are not construed to be persons.

It is my understanding that young infants have to learn the difference between what is part of them and what is outside. Wouldn't that mean they are not conscious, again, in the sense we are talking about it. — T Clark

Well, yes, an infant would not hold abstracted ideas regarding their innate awareness of self via which other is discerned. And if that is how one chooses to understand what "consciousness" refers to then infants hold no consciousness.

This specified notion of consciousness is to me however very biased toward cognitively healthy adult humans as holding a metaphysically unique status. Something that goes against the grain with me. E.g.: an adult with extreme forms of mental retardation would then also hold no consciousness.

For one thing, I believe there are gradations of awareness; even when one focuses on consciousness as self-awareness, there are gradations of this among adult humans and over time in any individual adult human. On average, contemplation of the self gives greater self-awareness than does watching a movie. These gradations would hold to minimal extents even for infants. Despite an infant not having language to specify concepts of self, it does hold innate and nonverbal notions of "mine", as in what we linguistically address as my thirst, my pleasure or pain, my affinity to familiar voices, and so forth--this even if its associating these personal states of self to stimuli takes time. And, in so doing, I offer that an infant holds an ingrained awareness of self, hence a degree of self-awareness without which it (the infant) would literally perish. But if language use is considered an all-important item for consciousness, any such perspective would be mute. (side note: interesting how in English infants, lesser animals, and divine beings such as angels are termed "it" rather than "he/she", the latter being reserved only for those with whom one can linguistically converse. This isn't so, at the very least, in the Romanian language.)

Maybe more to the point, if an infant can be unconscious it would be wrong to uphold that it is not (i.e., un-) conscious when it is not unconscious. On a technical level, so affirming to me seems to be a logical contradiction.

Also, if consciousness is the holding of abstracted ideas regarding one's innate awareness of self via which other is discerned, what can be said to engage in this abstracting prior to the abstraction taking hold? I'm thinking that consciousness engages in such abstracting to begin with, but I'm open to different views.

Being a hairdryer would really suck... — bert1

Being a vacuum would suck more. :razz:

One can think of X without perceiving X e.g. "unicorns", right? — 180 Proof

Of course. As I wrote in my original reply to the OP, re: one can be aware of being content without perceiving oneself to be content.

Are we not aware of what we know ourselves to be thinking?

First off, I didn't think your discussion of "awareness" was contentious at all. — T Clark

OK. Cool. :grin:

As I noted in my OP, I did not consider it because I thought it was a general term. You're right, though, you can't be self-aware without being aware. I have no objections to keeping it in the discussion. Do you think it adds to the discussion of "consciousness" in a way that "self-aware" does not? — T Clark

Self-awareness becomes redundant it is specifies an innate distinction between self and other, an innate awareness of selfhood in this sense. An ameba will hold awareness of this distinction, but we do not say it is self-aware. Lesser vertebrates can become unconscious—e.g., due to sedatives—but when conscious we likewise don’t consider them self-aware in the senses defined in the OP. Defining consciousness by self-awareness, as self-awareness was specified in the OP, constrains “consciousness” strictly to critters that can not only conceptualize information but, additionally, can conceptualize information about (and thereby hold abstract knowledge of) their personal innate awareness of their own selfhood via which other is discerned. A conceptualization of self which young enough human children cannot do. So, in equating consciousness to self-awareness, one would be forced to state that human infants hold no consciousness. This being something I’m personally very adverse to doing. If, however, consciousness is equated to awareness, then human infants and lesser animals can all be conscious (again, in contrast to being unconscious). But, in so defining, then unicellular organisms can then be deemed conscious as well, since they hold awareness of things, including of that which is other relative to themselves—and, hence, of themselves relative to that which is other.

All this to me gives good reason to keep “awareness” rather than just “self-awareness” on the table in the discussion of what consciousness is.

So I’m curious, can anyone provide an instance where one is conscious of X without being aware of X? — javra

Gods (re: believers). Lies (re: believers). Other minds (ergo 'theory of mind'). My death.... — 180 Proof

Just checked definitions to see how “aware” can have a specialized meaning as you imply. Wiktionary provides two, one of which is “conscious or having knowledge of something”. So I so far don’t follow your examples. Could you be more specific about consciousness sans awareness?

Awareness - This is word that generally refers to perceptions of the world as a whole rather than our own internal experience. I don’t think it belongs on the list. If you disagree, do it in writing here. — T Clark

To me, "awareness" belongs in the list. I note that you’ve used “aware”/“awareness” in defining most of the other terms in the OP’s list. At least for some definitions.

For my part: If one knows oneself to be, for example, content, one knows this because one is aware of so being—i.e., due to an awareness of being content—and not due to perceptions of the world. I will add, nor due to perceptions of one own body (as one might perceive a stomachache): where there are sensory receptors whose data becomes interpreted by the aware being. To be clear, there are no known physiological sensory receptors for discerning the degree or presence of one’s own contentedness. Nevertheless, one is aware of being content when one so is. But it would be odd to say, "one perceives oneself being content".

Other examples can be offered alongside certain emotions and states of being. Awareness of value, of meaning, of concepts (i.e., generalized or abstracted ideas), and of the aesthetic come to mind. The same perceived item could hold different values, meanings, evoke different concepts, and hold different aesthetics to the same person at different times or, else, to different minds—despite being a perceptually identical item. And there are no know sensory receptors for discerning value, meaning, concepts, or beauty. Why one person discerns a sunrise as beautiful when another person doesn’t isn’t a direct product of perception—at least not when scientifically specified—though both will visually perceive an identical sunrise.

But (contentious as what I’ve so far written might be) back to the central point: My take so far is that all interpretations of “consciousness” will encompass awareness. This although certain notions of consciousness will specify only certain forms of awareness and therefore label other forms of awareness as not constituting consciousness proper. Many, for example, will believe that an ameba, despite being aware of its environment, is not conscious of its environment. (Then again, many will claim that great apes are not conscious either.)

So I’m curious, can anyone provide an instance where one is conscious of X without being aware of X?

It seems like men are not welcome anymore in educational institutions such as universities and so on. [...] But then again, they were all men. So they would be called lots of bad names. — User34x

My guess is that a certain portion of men get disliked due to holding baseless opinions such as this one that gets expressed in the OP.

Would some of these bad names be those of "cunt" and "pussy" ... expressing attributes only women are endowed with ... that are innately derogatory ... on account of being what women are biologically endowed with? The label of "dick" doesn't have the same resonance; it retains a type of respect even in the worse cases. Then again, I've never heard someone say "she was a dick".

When gender egalitarianism becomes equated to harm against men, though, those who so equate might get disliked by those who are egalitarian. Some of the latter being quite healthy men.

Just sayin'.

Gonna need some stats here or this thread gets closed. — StreetlightX

Good call.

No worries. I feel bad about this misunderstanding as well. But I'm glad to see it was much ado about nothing. :up:

The link was not by means of an explanation for that (hence "That said..."), it was just in case you were interested. — Kenosha Kid

And I was supposed to somehow mind-read your cryptic intended point? The "its not all about you" snide followed by laughter was not ... um, constructive. C'est la vie.

You asked me about my response to Gary's OP. Whatever you might have been discussing beforehand or since is irrelevant to that. It's not all about you, dude :rofl: — Kenosha Kid

Well, dude, I asked you about what on Earth your statement of backwards determinacy was supposed to mean in terms of causation. Making my two posts to you mostly about you. The vacuousness of you sending me to read your entire thread on QM as a followup reply seems to be lost on you, righteous one. But you’re not one to be bothered with explaining your extraordinary statements on a philosophy forum; in this case, that of quantum causes being fully determined by their effects; fine, got it.



Thanks for clarifying that.

That said: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/9391/determinism-reversibility-decoherence-and-transaction — Kenosha Kid

You might have been better served pointing me to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed-choice_quantum_eraser - something I've been acquainted with almost since the time of the first experiment. As it is, the wiki article is a shorter read than the thread you've linked to and, it seems to me after skimming the thread, more to the point here addressed.

All the same, the issue I was asking about regarded what causation is - its nature of being - which is an a priori, metaphysical issue that gets applied to a posteriori, empirical observations of the physical. Even Hume made ontological, i.e. metaphysical, commitments in defining what causality is prior to affirming that our knowledge of what causes what cannot be deductively obtained, but can only be inductive. Seeing how QM is a posteriori, I find that referencing QM does not address the a priori issue of causality I've previously asked about.

Given an effect (state of the world at time t) and laws of nature, the cause (state of the world at time t-1) can be *logically* derived. That may include both ontological and epistemic determination. — litewave

Its a very unique way of defining both effects and causes as "states of the world". A billiard ball's motion as cause for another billiard ball's motion as effect is not "a state of the world at time t" unless one equates the billiard ball's motion at time t to the state of the world at time t - which we don't do in practice.

But more to the point, to logically derive a cause is to epistemically determine what the cause was. To be clear about what you're saying, are you by the underlined sentence affirming that logically deriving what a particular cause was is - or at least can be - what determines (sets the limits or boundaries of) the given cause's occurrence ontologically? In other words, are you saying that our reckoning what the cause was is of itself what ontologically determines the cause's occurrence - such that an observed effect is ontologically uncaused up until the time we logically determine what its cause was?

Please keep in mind that I'm not affirming what I take causality to be but am only interested in clarifying what it is that you've stated causality to be.

Quantum mechanics *is* backwards deterministic, that is: the cause of a measurement is fully determined by the outcome. It's the other way round that's problematic: the effect is not predictable. — Kenosha Kid

Are you suggesting A) that the outcome/effect can *ontologically* determine its cause(s)? Or only B) that we can at times *epistemologically* determine cause(s) by the outcomes/effects that are observed?

If (A) - if the effect ontologically determines its cause - by what means can the notions of cause and effect retain their cogency?

I find that, here, the cause becomes synonymous to the effect just as the effect becomes synonymous to the cause. For a cause is that which determines its respective effect.

As an aside, in notions of retrocausality (regardless of their validity) this relation between cause and effect is preserved (wherein the cause determines the effect), only that they are taken to occur backwards via some universalized background of time - such that the effect is temporally antecedent to its cause.

Funny, I initially thought this thread was about the anxiety of a geocentric universe as regards sentience.

I seem to remember a line from (I think) Leonard Cohen which went something like: "Do we have the strength to be alone together?". — Janus

Yup, its from Cohen's "Waiting for the Miracle". Partial lyrics:

I dreamed about you, baby
It was just the other night
Most of you was naked
Ah but some of you was light
The sands of time were falling
From your fingers and your thumb
And you were waiting
For the miracle, for the miracle to come

Ah baby, let's get married
We've been alone too long
Let's be alone together
Let's see if we're that strong
Yeah let's do something crazy,
Something absolutely wrong
While we're waiting
For the miracle, for the miracle to come

Nice first post. :up:



My best attempt at a soundbite definition of what I take love to be: Love is a cohesion of sentient being which dissipates ego. This form of love is hence utterly different from - though at times intertwined with - intense liking. To intensely like (love, in this sense) money or ice-cream is not to love in the first sense specified. From non-egotistic/narcissistic forms of self-love, to non-obsessive love for a romantic partner (sexual as well as non-sexual), to love of family members, friends, or any other cohort of beings, love is about expanding one’s sense of self to encompass other beings such that one’s self, one’s ego - as an individual unit of being that is separated from other individual units of being - begins to vanish. It doesn’t much matter if the experience is pleasant or if it hurts, it is always an experience of ego-diminution via the widening of the intrinsic value other beings hold relative to oneself. As one consequence, when one loves, what others value become of equal worth to what one oneself values, even when others’ perspectives and one’s own perspectives differ.

Well … something along these lines.