In a non-teleological sense, I tend to agree with the gist of the OP and have written about the topic on more than a few threads ...

... in so far as inanimate matter (far-from-equilibrium entropy) has afforded animate matter (life) to emerge:

• life affords intelligence . .

• intelligence affords immortality ...

• immortality affords ephemeralization ... — 180 Proof

... specifically the advent of AGI in the first link (above) on "immortality". Speculative forecasting? or (not-so-hard) science fiction? – that's in the mind's eye of the beholder. :nerd:

In a sense, isn't that what drives all inquiry, the search for a deeper meaning? — Pantagruel

No doubt. Nonetheless, there's an abundance of scientific circumstantial evidence in support of conjecturing 'the non-uniqueness of terrestrial biological life in the universe' (e.g. ubiquity of carbon (and other precusors of organic chemistry & self-replicating molecules), water, rocky exoplanets in "goldilock's zones", deep time, billions of sun-like solar systems in this galaxy alone, etc). There isn't any such comparable scientific circumstantial evidence of "cosmic consciousness" – at most, that's just tilting at windmills. Like a mind that's never been outside a sensory deprivation tank, what would the cosmos even be 'conscious of'? The notion makes no sense as I've pointed out previously.

Poetry (à la "the force" in Star Wars)? Okay, you're welcome to it. :nerd:

Metaphysics – Plotinus' "One"? The Stoics' "logos spermatikos"? Hegel's "Geist"? Jung's "collective unconscious"? To my mind, these analogues, like the idea of "cosmic conscioisness" itself, are nothing but Camus' nostalgias (i.e. philosophical suicides). :yawn:

:up:

:fire:

Agreed. There's nothing to debate – no propositions in dispute

I deny nothing. As I've pointed out already

Btw, I wasn't proposing an exegesis of any particular sacred scripture when I summarized my understanding of the concept, so your question is besides the point I made. — 180 Proof

so make of my idea of "karma" what you will or dismiss it. :roll:

Science seeks testable, good explanations for formal structures or natural phenomena.

Philosophy seeks to unlearn self-immiserating habits (e.g. illusions of knowing) through reflective inquiries (re: formal, natural & historical sciences) and reflective practices (re: arts, trades, lived experience).

Of course, YMMV. :up:

"Encourage"? I don't know. Do they challenge – oppose – philosophical suicide? Defijitely not. Here in Absurdistan "religion & (mass) media" are, pardon my french fries, de rigueur. :pray: :joke:

What do you mean by "knowledge"?

Well then it's an unfalsifiable "hypothesis" – at most, (perennialist) poetry. And the "appeal to aesthetics" with respect to ontology, however, makes "cosmic consciousness" just another empty name like "god" :sparkle:

:fire: Welcome to the Anthropocene! :fire:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/20/world/rivers-lakes-drying-up-drought-climate-cmd-intl/index.html :eyes: :mask:

Isn't it quite apparent that inferring "the universe is conscious" from the universe is inhabited by at least one species of "conscious" beings is a compositional fallacy?

:cool:

Reread my first post . Whatever you find missing from my conception answers your question. Btw, I wasn't proposing an exegesis of any particular sacred scripture when I summarized my understanding of the concept, so your question is besides the point I made. Of course, you can dismiss my idea of "karma" as heterodox deflationary bastardization or just merely a confused misconception of the ancient Hindu idea, which would be valid exegetically I suppose.

"Cosmic consciousness" seems to me an incoherent concept at best – category error? ad hoc anthropomorphism? Feuerbachian projection? – especially given the phenomenological conception that 'consciousness is intentional, or conscious of (more than just itself)', and yet, besides chaos (of which cosmos might be just a phase-state), there is only the cosmos itself. In my little book, therefore, this notion is just another woo-of-the-gaps like e.g. panpsychism. So tell me what I'm missing. :chin:

I guess the analogy is lost on you ...
Consider: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/380306 :nerd:

The difference is that I interpret "karma" without the non-pragmatic bits.

I assume philosophizing is more engaged than just 'politely exchanging opinions'. Anyway, likewise, be well. :flower:

Well, you're not a 6 year old ...

:up:

:up

Origami-folded paper? Fluctuating vacuum? Knotted string? :chin:

A lot of fantasy "what ifs" ... which don't persuade me we have any more significance to interstellar spacefaring ETI than pond scum has to us.

And yet there's a good chance they take over congress in a couple months and obtain the presidency in 2024. Pretty scary. — Xtrix

No I don't think so. Don't believe the hype. Individual-1 is dead man trundling. Desantis is loathsome even in Florida. Maybe Tucker Carlson will run ... :sweat:

No need to fret just yet about 2024.

Anyway, as for 2022, long before Moscow Mitch conceded this week (or last) that the Dems are likely to pick up seats in the Senate, I'd been saying at least since SCOTUS wantonly shat on Reproductive Freedom that the Dems chances of holding the House & Senate were good. Recall the anti-abortion referendum got crushed in ruby red Kansas just a couple of weeks ago! (Iirc, about a third of rural Republicans – women no doubt – voted against the GOP measure!)

And since the public J6 Hearings have significantly moved polls on Independents away from the GOP this summer and extreme Trumpstains are on so many ballots around the country making otherwise safe seats competitive, Dems midterm chances have only improved. The latest news about tr45h being investigated for Espionage, etc can only turn off / frighten the same Independent and moderate Republican suburban voters who bailed on the GOP in 2018 and 2020. And y'know there's at least a footlocker's worth of boots to drop before November, don't ya? :up:

Lastly, inflation is inching down and gas prices have been dropping – that'll ease up the anti-Biden/Dems negatives a little. Improvements on the margins in a number of areas will add up to significant, maybe general election size turn-out which always favors Dems.

As far as the Charles Blow op-ed goes, he gives greater voice to something I've been crowing about for years on a number of threads (re: posted a link above the op-ed link in my previous post) about the long-term "populist" trends and anti-democratic decades-long trajectory in America which has culminated in this historical moment: Make Apartheid Great Again. :angry:

You're farting, not thinking. I'll come back when you recognize the difference. :mask:

'Seeking simple solutions to complex problems' is a psychological bias as old as language, religion & politics, not just a product of a "mechanistic worldview". By default people (primates) are lazy, especially cognitively (which is calorie-intensive / expensive); thus, the path of least mental effort (e.g. magical thinking). The need to overcome this atavism IMO, had given rise millennia ago to (gradually) developing philosophy and science – ways of demystifying and self-correcting "common sense" (e.g. magical thinking, folk conceptions, prejudices), respectively.

Addendum to

"Republicans are America's Problem" by Charles M. Blow
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/17/opinion/republicans-cheney-trump-democracy.html

:100: :nerd: LLAP.

IMHO, there is nothing Earth has that an interstellar spacefaring ETI cannot acquire – without conflict with "the natives" – in exponentially greater abundance between here and wherever they come from (or simply engineer themselves). ETI will only take notice of us, I think, iff we somehow appear to be an existential threat to them, which, at Earth civilization's current level of technoscientific development by comparison to ETI's interstellar spacefaring technoscience, would be analogous to an anthill compared to a team of earthmovers or a coral reef compared to an aircraft carrier group. Apply the mediocrity principle. Here in the exurbs of an approximately twelve billion year old Milky Galaxy, it's quite reasonable to assume that h. sapiens is johnny-come-lately 'intelligent' species and that the ETIs out there roaming the stars are descendants, or autonomous artifacts, of xenospecies tens of thousands / millions of years older than us.

In my view it [the mechanistic worldview] is characterized by attempts to oversimplify systems that science has shown to be complex, thereby characterized by a disregard for the boundaries of science and thereby unscientific. — Tzeentch

Examples would help clarify exactly what you mean by this.

There is more to it than that. There is also the element of justice determining who we can be or become in this life, or the next — Amity

Well, from a naturalisric perspective, "the more" is woo-woo ... :sparkle:

Quit your whinging ...

Valar dohaeris, dude. :smirk:

Cartersian Scepticism appears to work only on condition you stop halfway. Descartes never doubted that truth exists, reason exists, criteria to distinguish truth from falsehood exist, and that the nature of existence is basically rational and follows logical rules, and finally - and this most telling - never doubted for a moment that God exists. Even to the lacklustre extent that he applied his "universal doubt", he relies upon God to pull him out of the logical hole he digs for himself. — alan1000

:clap: :100:

Also, Descartes doesn't prove he exists by attempting global skepticism since the attempt itself presuppose he (the attempter) exists on pain of performative self-contradiction (e.g. "I do not exist"). If "the cogito" demonstrates anything it's this: "doubting happens" (not that "the doubter exists").

:smirk: Yeah well also "a man's got to know his limitations."

"Karma" means action-reaction (i.e. cause-effect) and, as Yohan points out, the more pleasure gained the more pleasure needed – hedonic treadmill – leading to dissatisfaction (dukkha), or pain (ponia). Both the Epicurean "tetrapharmakos" and "CBT" are methods of managing expectations (i.e. habits of thought which reinforce habits of action-reaction). The analogy works, I think, if you take a naturalistic rather than supernaturalistic view .

As Plato might say: "opinions" (doxa) are the currency of sophists that, like Monopoly money, doesn't cash out at the supermarket or in philosophy. Aporia are, after all, coins of the realm (agora):

Now, an anti-Platonist retort :yum:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2teskVGoxUc

:up:

Quite Epicurean.

Consider the tetrapharmakos ... or cognitive behavioral therapy.

IME, meditation is irreflective attention to any internal process of inattention in order to reduce inattention to nothing-but-attention (or attention-without-object), with the goal being – through multiple iterations every day – to eliminate habits of inattention completely (or as much as possible).

I've read the OP but it's not clear to me how the "mechanistic worldview" is distinct from science (or scientific worldview).

:cool: :up:

Welcome to TPF.