vulcanlogician
Well-Known Member
Aw, thanks man. It's a pleasure having you here.
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An official re-introduction thread for a returnee from the SF Bay Area
- Thread starter Whateverist
- Start date
Whateverist
Active Member
Rugelach?! You made me rugelach?? I may just move in. Ember won't eat those but she'll take any salt you may have on your skin. This is from when she first arrived using me as a salt lick. Videos stored on Flickr don't always play one my phone but do on my laptop.
Probably Ember misses him even more than I do. He was very good with her and even better for her development.
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Whateverist
Active Member
Briefly, because I've already started a related thread which covers much of the same ground and this thread is just to soak up all the warm fuzzies: You won't find it in any science book, it isn't empirical in nature. Philosophy won't infallibly take you there. But I believe it is an ontological primitive, like matter which is just as basic though perhaps not quite. Lots of physicists have commented on this including Niels Bohr and Max Planck. A few quotes all taken from Iain McGilchrist's book The Matter With Things:
Mathematician/physicist von Neumann: ‘..it is inherently entirely correct that the measurement or the related process of the subjective perception is a new entity relative to the physical environment and is not reducible to the latter. Indeed, subjective perception leads us into the intellectual inner life of the individual, which is extra-observational by its very nature.’
Adam Frank, Professor of Astronomy at the University of Rochester, New York: 'we must entertain the ‘radical possibility that some rudimentary form of consciousness must be added to the list of things, such as mass or electric charge, that the world is built of.’
Regarding our reluctance to even entertain the notion that consciousness may have a rudimentary form of existence which predates brains, philosopher/psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist has written:
..a form of anthropomorphism operates in reverse: ‘doesn’t do what humans do with their consciousness, so can’t have it’. Sometimes I am asked, ‘surely you can’t think a mountain has awareness?’ I feel like replying, ‘but how would you expect a mountain to behave if it did have awareness? Mow the lawn, drink a beer and go to Sainsbury’s?’ The idea that consciousness is an ontological primary looks much less bizarre in any other culture than our own. We don’t have the luxury of adopting a common-sense attitude here, because our alternatives are (a) either consciousness does not exist at all (see above[regarding Dennett]), or (b) it was there all along, in everything. Which is the more absurd?
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Secret Chief
Very strong language
Ooooooh that's intriguing!
Secret Chief
Very strong language
I'm going to have to buy this book....£47 in paperback?!... although with 1500 pages...
Whateverist
Active Member
If you do, the Kindle version is by far the better bargain especially if you already use one. Please do let me know what you think of it if you do so.
Secret Chief
Very strong language
Aye good idea. I prefer physical books but admit I'm reading a book on Kindle currently (due to price).
Whateverist
Active Member
For me price was only part of the reason, though even with the cost of buying the Kindle I still saved over the price of hard cover. Soft cover is now available which is cheaper but the volumes are so large I don't know how well they would hold up. For me the deciding factor was the prospect of holding up such a large book in my arthritic hands in bed and not being able to enlarge the type.
Secret Chief
Very strong language
Yes, good points. I just use the kindle app on my ipad. Total cheapskate.
Whateverist
Active Member
If I had one of those I'd have done the same but a librarian friend swore by the quality of light over that of a pad so I took the plunge. While there are great features available on the Kindle I still do not know how to naviagate it very well. It really is more like reading a page than something backlit.
Aupmanyav
Be your own guru
There cannot be consciousness without there being something that is conscious (at the moment I am not taking up what or who is conscious).
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
Definitely. My cats litter box is the epiphany of Buddhism.
Whateverist
Active Member
It is a confront for normal ways of thinking about the cosmos, nature and consciousness. But there are good reasons to suppose that as an ontological primitive some basic form of consciousness may have predated brains and that even inanimate matter has a limited form of it. We are so used to thinking of more complex phenomena being made of more basic ones.
But to imagine how this may have come about requires a new mythos. Consciousness is more like the Tao, from the one come the many. The One differentiates into the many by standing back and letting new forms, especially brain enhanced forms, find their own way reshaping the form which the ground of being has provided. Animacy and consciousness are always there too but with the advent of brains the pace of innovation picks up.
Hey, @FaithNotBelief....how are things in SF?
I keep reading of decay.
I keep reading of decay.
Whateverist
Active Member
We briefly got more smoke from upstate and Oregon fires. But so far nothing like a couple years ago.
The only reasons I can think of for a person to declare themselves atheist is: to make themselves understood or to exercise their freedoms in the face of oppressions.
Aupmanyav
Be your own guru
No matter is inanimate (BTW, what is matter?). So in what did the consciousness reside if and when there was no universe?
Yeah, prisoners only think of chains.
Whateverist
Active Member
Unless you spell out what this god is that you believe does not exist then you haven’t succeeded in making yourself understood at least not to me. I suppose you are dismissing all the stupid things you’ve heard some believers say about the god they believe in. But if you’ve never heard anyone thoughtful and articulate describe what it is they believe in you’ve based your rejection on the lowest lying fruit.
Just to be clearer I don’t believe that what God/gods is about is anything like a person or any other kind of being in its own right. So it doesn’t have grand plan or keep score of everyone’s foibles or even mete out punishments and rewards. I don’t actually use the G terminology to describe anything I do believe, but I think of it as what underlies everything else, the intentional basis of all beings. As such it was an always already onboard but some people want to feel a connection to what it is. Some people do this by connecting to nature, engaging in creative endeavors, or meditation and others by worship and religious ceremony. The first two are my preferred methods. I see no reason to call it God but I do think of it as the ground of being.
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Whateverist
Active Member
Double post.
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I'm fond of the idea of God being transcendent, not part of this universe or a creator but as the superset that contains this universe. In this I share some similarity to you. I think if God were merely the creator of universe it would indicate that God had limitations. It sounds like you value an abstract conception of God if any, which is similar to me. I actually think NT authors would view God similarly, being mystics. I don't think God is anything like a person. I also don't think God (in the bible NT) is particularly interested in fixing individual people, because in the NT when miracles happen it is for a tangent purpose and not merely response to the plea of a human. Most pleas are denied there, but not the ones that have greater significance. Jesus is quoted to say an adulterous generation seeks signs, and 'Signs' are what he calls miracles which are mere teaching way points to him. In that respect I think you have some things in common with NT authors though not so much with many people who view things very differently from what I have put forward here.
Here is the essence of believing in God: I believe (or try to believe) that even a small amount of effort contributes to great good. Humanity is like prisoner digging out with a spoon. We each have a very small amount of good-will that must do something so amazing, and its sometimes frustrating that we only do a small amount of good. We question if it even matters. We are focused upon ourselves and our relatively petty loves and don't do much that is not selfish. We hear of problems and we wonder how society has gotten into wars and other evils and how we have gotten into problems or how we have ruined friendships and have family problems. Its then hard to believe that sending a little money here or there or giving someone a small thing matters, but it does matter. A smile can matter, and a 'Hello' can matter. Even being kind to animals matters. Even sparing the life of a tiny bug might matter. The fact is that we do so little, but a little can matter. Believing that motivates us to do things that matter.