If No Consciousness Exists, By What Right Does The Universe?

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by Cyperium, May 22, 2021.

  1. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Are you sure. Ask it what a chair is and what it is used for, it will give you every possible scenario that involves use a of a chair.
    Did you see the series of scenarios the GPT3 painted of ; "illustrate a baby Panda wearing a beanie looking at its reflection in a mirror".
    Goto 2:44 in the video and consider the complexity of the request and the incredible creativeness of the illustrations.
     
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  3. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    However, formal meanings of qualia apparently entail mental, perceptual, introspective, or subjective classification. So "qualia of existence" can be construed as a category mistake.

    An adjective, like in "ontic qualia", might be introduced to distinguish such from the usual interpretation and background theory of a mind or brain setting. But this, of course, would also drag along its own background presuppositions or re-conceiving of what's going on.

    In the above context, various "ubiquitous proto-consciousness" terms (gesturing toward panpsychism) should be tossed out the window; and it thereby be recognized that "manifestation" fundamentally has nothing to do with consciousness. Until a cognitive system recruits this "how matter exists to itself" (i.e., minus the technical descriptions of physics) to constitute the cognitive system's complex experiences (representations of processes associated with sensory data and thought).

    As a further consequence, the meaning of "consciousness" should be adjusted to purely refer to memory-dependent activity where identification, understanding and so forth apply. Rather than "consciousness" almost exclusively referring to phenomenal experience as it is often wielded by philosophers today.

    Science could come closer to coping with traditional qualia than it could with "ontological qualia". Both would concern an intrinsic way that matter exists that cannot be expressed by quantitative, extrinsic relationships. But raw, "ontic qualia" would be completely aloof and unknown -- unlikely to resemble the phenomenal characteristics of our system-manipulated, cognitive-based experiences. IOW, too deep into the taboo of metaphysics.
     
    Last edited: Aug 2, 2021
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  5. WendyDarling Registered Senior Member

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    I agree. Consciousness has always existed. If you are still active, please join my philosophy thread titled Existence.
     
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  7. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    And exactly what is it that is conscious and has always existed?

    You do understand that this proposition is in direct conflict with a scientific understanding based on verifiable data?
     
  8. WendyDarling Registered Senior Member

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    Yes, I understand. “It” has always existed.

    What I envision...

    Dimensions of existence have always been conscious to varying degrees. In our 4-D space/time, there’s the glue/cohesive animating element of this consciousness(the spinning innards of atoms vibrating in their simplicity) forming inert inorganics, up a few degrees to simple organics, up a few degrees to botanicals, up a few degrees to biological(sub-divided into varying degrees), up a few degree to absolute consciousness.

    However, the above is only a description of our recognized dimensions, from millions of eye witnessed accounts and some scientific speculations, many more dimensions exist with their own varying degrees of interactive consciousnesses, perhaps lacking many aforementioned degrees.

    From personal experiences, emotions can be projected by us humans into the atmosphere(ex. tension so thick you could cut it with a knife)to varying degrees with unremarkable effects, but effects none the less.

    What if the absolute consciousness projects its emotions in a way that manifests as our understanding of perception?

    Working through the logic(like what logic?)to prove as much, messy is putting it mildly.

    And with that, unleash the Kraken, to kill that philosophic imposter and move this post to where it belongs, the cesspool.

    Something just struck me, presence may be a better, more accurate word than existence? Have to ponder that more.
     
    Last edited: Aug 26, 2021
  9. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    That does not answer the question.

    Shared emotions can easily be explained as Empathic responses, a product of mirror neurons in the brain.
    I ask again; "exactly what is it that is conscious and has always existed?"

    Better question, does something need to be conscious to be causal or to respond to causality?
     
    Last edited: Aug 26, 2021
  10. WendyDarling Registered Senior Member

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    Yes, to me, existence promotes the aspect of non-sustainability when in fact it has very long recorded past. Millions or billions of years?
    What exactly? Existence, everything perceivable.

    Then I tried to explain to what degree of being everything is a conscious presence, but not every degree of presence is self-actualizing.

    Then I tried to explain the effects we feel, as raw power, as we try to tune our semi-conscious perceptions to share the wavelengths of absolute consciousness. Ah, maybe not explained so much. I may add more later.

    If I walk into a room of tension, uninvolved in whatever transpired before my arrival, how am I empathetically mirroring tension I know nothing about?
     
  11. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, about 13.8 billion years from the "Beginning Existence" of this universe.
    i.e. the Universe itself.
    What persuades you that something has to be conscious to have Existence.
    Is consciousness a required property for existence? Should Occam apply here?
    Wait. You propose the universe has absolute consciousness but humans are semi-conscious?
    How about turning this differential equation around and propose that the universe is semi (quasi) conscious in its entirety and humans are fully conscious of a small part of the entire universe?
    You are fully conscious and your mirror neurons notice the slightest change in behaviors. Watch a school of fish act as a single organism when avoiding a predator. The mirror function is an evolved survival mechanism.

    When you are able to tune in you have Empathy, the ability to share someone else's reality. A very useful asset.

    This mirror neural function is already observable in most social mammals. But even as our universe possesses a mathematical quasi-intelligence, it needs not be conscious to function as it does. And that's where Occam Razor applies.

    It always comes down to "irreducible complexity". And you cannot logically start with that concept.
     
    Last edited: Aug 26, 2021
  12. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    How about this; "Conscious awareness in biochemical organisms is an advanced evolved sensory pattern in coping with a mathematically driven world".
     
  13. WendyDarling Registered Senior Member

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    104
     
  14. WendyDarling Registered Senior Member

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    104
    Biologically, if intelligence increased (over the last 11,000 years)through evolution, why is the average intelligence still so low?

    Maybe I’m impatient, maybe it takes 100,000 years or 1 million years per point.
     
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  15. WendyDarling Registered Senior Member

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    I agree with memory-based. Has the concept of memory-based been developed into any kind of explanation? The qualia connecting everything?
     
  16. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    No, it didn't develop accidentally. It developed probabilistically and given the raw materials and spatial surface it was probably necessessary that intelligence evolved. In it's 4.8 billion year existence, the earth has performed some 2 trillion, quadrillion, quadrillion, quadrillion chemical and bio-chemical reactions. Just a few fundamental steps is all that is necessary to get the evolutionary processes started.
    What are you talking about?
    The human brain is one of the most complex organic patterns in the universe. Are you aware that what produces consciousness in the human brain alone, are about a trillion synaptic neural connections?
    Normally any observable evolutionary processes take that long in Nature. Natural selection is a very slow process that takes generations to become evident. After all, Natural selection selects for ability to procreate. Any beneficial evolutionary changes are inherited by offspring and passed on to the next generation and any species developing detrimental mutations perish. This is obvious in the variety of humans, 8 billion different genetic expressions evolved and inherited from our ancestors.

    As to Human intelligence, I believe that was due to a rare beneficial chromosomal mutation, which allowed for the development of a more complex brain than the other hominids.

    I see this as persuasive proof,

    Human Chromosome 2 is a fusion of two ancestral chromosomes
    Alec MacAndrew

    Introduction
    The Evidence

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    Conclusion

    http://www.evolutionpages.com/chromosome_2.htm

    All humans have 23 or chromosomes, due to the fusion of 2 ancestral chromosomes into a single larger (more complex) chromosome 2 in humans. It is what sets us apart from the other great apes.


     
  17. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Quasi-intelligence developed very early on, even in plants and single celled organisms. The rest is matter of evolving sensory organs and increasing ability to process complex data.

    A single-celled Paramecium can learn to navigate. A slime mold can solve mazes . Sunflowers can track the sun's position. Bats and whales use sonar to hunt and navigate in the dark. Octopuses can shapeshift and become invisible.

    All acquired abilities in living organisms are a result of evolutionary processes and natural selection for best survival mechanisms depending on their specific environment.

    Nothing laughable about that. It's beautifully logical.
     
  18. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    Non-consciousness (as in being dead) is the absence of all modes of manifestation: visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, gustatory, interoception, etc. Which accordingly also means lack of the world presenting itself as representations, or no evidence of existence.

    Flip that meaning of non-consciousness around, and you then have a basic definition of elemental experience: The presentation or manifestation of anything, the feeling of anything.

    But minus identification and understanding of what is there, which is dependent upon information storage and retrieval systems (the memory that cognition requires, whether made possible by a biological or a technological substrate).

    Qualia are just an attempt to contend that our broad manifestations/feelings are composed of distinct properties which "show" themselves. Crudely similar to a television image being composed of pixels or writing being composed of letters, or a building constituted of bricks.

    For instance, if an image of either perception or thought was constituted of colors (including the grayscale spectrum between black and white), then those would be the qualia arguably making the visual manifestations possible. (When restricted solely to appearances rather than underlying neural or physical causes.)

    Traditionally, the term "consciousness" implied both experience and knowing (intellectual activity). But today philosophers seem to toss "consciousness" around as narrowly focusing on what the hard problem of consciousness deals with (i.e., experience, the qualitative presentations). Which can create confusion, because the hard problem doesn't concern understanding and identifying what is exhibited.

    Over-simplistically, the hard problem concerns how presentations arise from "stuff" (neural tissue, particles, fields, etc) that is dogmatically taken to lack the ability to manifest as anything.

    That mystery is why a theory like Russellian monsim can contend that manifestation is how matter exists internally to itself -- how it exists independent of technical description (physics nomenclature). Those internal states are the case prior to matter's organization as a mind (the brain), and thus Russellian monism doesn't actually concern psychological attributes existing everywhere (mental affairs).

    As a result, in the context of Russellian monism rather than conventional physicalism, death or non-consciousness would not be the absence of everything. Primitive, rudimentary events might arguably still be presenting themselves. But there is no intelligence available to verify that they are there and to cognitively apprehend them (know and learn).
     
    Last edited: Aug 27, 2021
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  19. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    Who says that it's low? Is there anything else that we know of, biological or machine, that approaches average human intelligence? (Whatever 'intelligence' means.) Human intellegence seems to me to be unprecedented, here on Earth anyway.
     
  20. Baldeee Valued Senior Member

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    A shame that you offer none of those to actually support what you believe, though.
    You do offer your personal incredulity, so that's something, even if it is logically fallacious.
    Seriously: do you have anything to actually offer, or are you just going to go with "reasonability, rationality, logic" without actually offering anything "reasonable", "rational", or "logical"?
    Yet you do nothing to show why it makes more sense.
    You offer nothing but bald assertions.
    Has intelligence increased?
    How are you even measuring intelligence?
    Do you have records or data of the intelligence of humans 11,000 years ago, for example?
    Is increasing average "intelligence" an evolutionary trait within a species, or is it simply a result of, say, improved education levels and methods?
    I look forward to any support for the premises of your question.
     
  21. river

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    To OP . Because the Universe is not made by consciousness . The Universe is made from dark energy , to dark matter ( both plasma based , and speed ) , to galaxies . To stars

    Light only comes from physical objects . Stars . And viseable light is the most inefficient form of energy . Hence the slowest .
     
  22. river

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  23. Holly-May Leslie Registered Member

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    I'm pretty sure that consciousness requires a body. Awareness does not. I presume that you meant awareness every time you said consciousness. In this case what you propose is self evidently true. However, I feel the need to describe your proposal in a different way in order to make it make sense to readers: Words which mean anything other than some kind of experience are impossible to interpret and therefore mean absolutely nothing. This yields the statement: words which mean anything other than some kind of experience mean absolutely nothing. This yields the statement: anything other than some kind of experience is absolutely nothing.
     

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