What a nice thing that would be, to know "What is Life?"
Élan vital was coined in the 20th century (albeit very early, if memory serves).
What do you mean by "structured matter"?
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Consciousness before physical creation
- Thread starter Sha'irullah
- Start date
What a nice thing that would be, to know "What is Life?"
Élan vital was coined in the 20th century (albeit very early, if memory serves).
What do you mean by "structured matter"?
Runewolf1973
Materialism/Animism
Forgive me, I am not a scientist, so I will try to describe this as best I can...
Redefining consciousness would explain a lot. It would go far to explain the origins of life and how creatures evolved to eventually become fully aware humans. Theoretically, if that conscious force (the ability to respond to stimuli as I define it) was already present in matter before life even began on Earth that would mean that all that was needed was enough time and the right conditions for living organisms to appear. Gradually, as all the molecules formed and the amino acids formed and everything started coming together, that simple ability to respond to stimuli grew stronger and more complex until eventually simple cellular life forms appeared. Initially those simple cells were probably very limited, having only a very primitive, low level of consciousness, but as those simple forms evolved, that response to stimuli became even stronger, attaining new levels of conscious perception. Consciousness eventually developed from a very simple form (simple actions/reactions in matter) all the way to a very complex form we know of as human awareness. The evidence for this is if you look at different creatures along the evolutionary line and see how they differ in their degrees or levels of perceptiveness or their ability to react or respond to stimuli...all the way from the simplest life-forms up to the most complex life forms. A human has a highly evolved and complex brain and therefore has a very high form of consciousness that we call self-awareness. A cat or dog has a much smaller brain with less ability to be self-aware, but it has more going on in it's brain than perhaps a mouse which has an even smaller brain, a mouse may have more going on in it's brain than an insect, an insect may respond to more stimuli than a plant and so on...until we get down to the simplest forms of matter, but even at the subatomic level there is still some ability for particles to act or react to an outside force even if it is in a seemingly non-conscious manner. My theory or idea is that as life evolved on Earth from simpler life forms, so too did consciousness evolve from simpler, less conscious forms. This simple redefining of consciousness would explain a lot about how life came about on our planet and how human awareness appeared/evolved without completely tearing apart what is already known through the sciences. It is in a way much like the "missing link" of life itself.
So maybe it is "crackpottery", I don't know...but it answers some questions and makes sense to me.
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Looncall
Well-Known Member
So it would. Unfortunately, the word gets bandied about pretty much undefined and gets all kinds of nonsense draped around it.
Thanks for this. Always happy to learn something.
I see these sort of vague notions as a way to avoid the hard work of actually figuring things out.
Matter arranged so that the process under consideration can occur. Silicon chips and wire etc arranged so that computer programs can run. Organic molecules arranged so that minds can happen.
Looncall
Well-Known Member
Forgive me, I am not a scientist, so I will try to describe this as best I can...
Redefining consciousness would explain a lot. It would go far to explain the origins of life and how creatures evolved to eventually become fully aware humans. Theoretically, if that conscious force (the ability to respond to stimuli as I define it) was already present in matter before life even began on Earth that would mean that all that was needed was enough time and the right conditions for living organisms to appear. Gradually, as all the molecules formed and the amino acids formed and everything started coming together, that simple ability to respond to stimuli grew stronger and more complex until eventually simple cellular life forms appeared. Initially those simple cells were probably very limited, having only a very primitive, low level of consciousness, but as those simple forms evolved, that response to stimuli became even stronger, attaining new levels of conscious perception. Consciousness eventually developed from a very simple form (simple actions/reactions in matter) all the way to a very complex form we know of as human awareness. The evidence for this is if you look at different creatures along the evolutionary line and see how they differ in their degrees or levels of perceptiveness or their ability to react or respond to stimuli...all the way from the simplest life-forms up to the most complex life forms. A human has a highly evolved and complex brain and therefore has a very high form of consciousness that we call self-awareness. A cat or dog has a much smaller brain with less ability to be self-aware, but it has more going on in it's brain than perhaps a mouse which has an even smaller brain, a mouse may have more going on in it's brain than an insect, an insect may respond to more stimuli than a plant and so on...until we get down to the simplest forms of matter, but even at the subatomic level there is still some ability for particles to act or react to an outside force even if it is in a seemingly non-conscious manner. My theory or idea is that as life evolved on Earth from simpler life forms, so too did consciousness evolve from simpler, less conscious forms. This simple redefining of consciousness would explain a lot about how life came about on our planet and how human awareness appeared/evolved without completely tearing apart what is already known through the sciences. It is in a way much like the "missing link" of life itself.
So maybe it is "crackpottery", I don't know...but it answers some questions and makes sense to me.
But can you replace your "ifs" with evidence?
I do not see any need for all this baroque decoration of reality. People are apt to be unnecessarily overawed by complexity. However, complexity can arise through the working of very simple rules. Consider the Mandelbrot set, for example. Why could not matter, behaving according to its properties, give rise to consciousness?
Only too true.
I believe (I hope) that I understand your definition/distinction for the most part. The issue I can't get past is "process under consideration can occur". Certainly, when we design some software, implement some feature based classification algorithm, or cause reactions given particular chemicals and particular amounts, we aim to ensure a process (or processes) occur. The issue is determining how this equates with living systems. Your very languages hints at this: "arranged so that..."
I don't believe in any "arranger". Consciousness is a process that would occur whether we consider it as a process or not and we have absolutely no say in its arrangement. Computers are designed based upon concepts that defined how they would work before they existed. There is no such parallel for living systems. Can we logically equate such thing?
Looncall
Well-Known Member
I partly agree but structures can happen without an arranger. That's what evolution is all about for one thing, and structures can arise simply due to properties of components, as in snowflakes.
I see no problem with a blind evolutionary process chancing on a conscious result.
I do have problems with treating consciousness as a force or substance. I think that shows premature curiosity satiation, a kind of wimping out, not much better than goddidit.
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Enai de a lukal
Well-Known Member
The problem is that the standard definition of "soul" often includes properties that are not properties of consciousness- for instance, immortality. Thus, you're offering a new definition of "soul"- that it be synonymous with "consciousness"... But then, if they are the same, why do we need another word for it? Especially since when most people hear the word "soul", they think of things other than mere consciousness- isn't this misleading as well as redundant?
The word you were looking for is "implausible", not "illogical". There is nothing logical or illogical about it- it is a contingent claim that logic tells us nothing about. Maybe you don't find it plausible or compelling, but that has nothing to do with logic.
Not more logical, but more plausible- and it's hard to see how it is so, since in order to think this, you have to disregard much of what we know about consciousness (for instance, that it is causally contingent upon neural activity).
More of an empty, pseudo-profound slogan than an explanation, really.
idea
Question Everything
The difference between the religious understanding of conscience, and the purely materialistic view, is free will... If there is no true free will, if all our actions can be traced back to outside influences (nature/nurture) - if it is a purely mechanical process.... or, if who we are does not come from our DNA (which is why most people think racism is wrong, that who we are is not about our DNA or the color of our skin), or that who we are is not about where we grew up (classism etc.) - for those who believe we have free will, and are not just a product of our skin color/neighborhood, if you think we can act - not because we were acted upon - but spontaneously of our own will despite what might be happening around u - to act instead of react - self-aware, self-caused (not laws of nature caused, or other caused) that's where you get religious ideas of something else there.
I run a volunteer science lab for 1st graders, we have a lab about living vs. non-living.... non-living things are identified as robots, rocks, houses, cars etc. etc. living things - plants, bugs, animals, people... why do our first graders say robots are not alive? a robot is what is left when you take away free will, when you define life as a purely mechanical thing.
I run a volunteer science lab for 1st graders, we have a lab about living vs. non-living.... non-living things are identified as robots, rocks, houses, cars etc. etc. living things - plants, bugs, animals, people... why do our first graders say robots are not alive? a robot is what is left when you take away free will, when you define life as a purely mechanical thing.
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FranklinMichaelV.3
Well-Known Member
Well how much of life is an action that isn't dependent on a non-living thing? Oxygen is not living for instance.
Runewolf1973
Materialism/Animism
Then what is it? What is this "phenomena" we call consciousness that is without substance, and is somehow "created" by some weird and complex alchemy in the brain?
As far as I'm concerned it is the ability for things to act, react, respond, or behave differently to stimuli or an outside force whether those things be subatomic particles, or whether they be complete energy systems like our brains.
Runewolf1973
Materialism/Animism
When I look around this world, I don't see any "life" necessarily, but I do see many forms and many different systems of energy behaving in a life-like manner, the human brain being one of those forms or systems. That is there are many actions and reactions going on all around us and some of those forms/systems appear more life-like than others based on how complex those actions/reactions are within that given form or system.
Conciousness, or at least the way I define it (the ability to act/react or respond to stimuli or an outside force) is as far as I am concerned a mechanical function, property, or quality of matter.
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Runewolf1973
Materialism/Animism
Logical, plausible, whatever... Obviously you understood what I meant, so it really doesn't matter.
The high level of human awareness we experience is absolutely contingent upon neural activity and my theory or idea does not disregard this. It is contingent upon that complex symphony of actions/reactions or responses to stimuli which our brains have evolved the capacity to perform out of much simpler, less complex responses like those found in lesser evolved creatures.
The simple fact that we even have lesser evolved creatures with smaller brains and more limited (not necessarily though) levels of awareness or conscious ability shows us that consciousness/awareness evolved just like everything else lifelike did. It evolved long ago out of those simple actions/reactions (responses to stimuli) found in plants and simple cells. Early plant life and simple cells evolved or appeared out of the even simpler actions/reactions found in molecules, amino acids, and other forms of matter that came together to form the building blocks of life. See how easily the Origins of Life and our own human awareness can be explained by simply redefining what we think of as “consciousness”?
The evidence for this presents itself almost effortlessly, through the observable universe and through science, so long as we are willing to take that step back and look at what we call consciousness from a slightly different perspective.
Consciousness is not limited to our brains... It is everywhere around us.
Sometimes I call it the “animating factor” or “animate force”, but it's all the same.
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Of course. I misunderstood. You compared the brain to the arrangement of silicon chips in a computer, but that is of course not an evolutionary process, so I thought you were comparing the organization of neural structures not as they were "arranged" over epochs through evolution but as an explanatory analogy to the way the organization of the brain gives rise to consciousness. In other words, I didn't realize that you were comparing evolution as "arranger" in your analogy to a computer's arrangement.
I spend a while not that long ago on the physics behind sandpiles. You'd think this would be not particularly problematic and yet our current approach to the configurational (or phase) space of the organization of sandpiles relies on descriptions like the way some final configuration possesses a "memory" of the initial configuration as we are incapable of understanding such self-organization other than through possible results given particular starting conditions (i.e., the end result is consistent with known physics but we cannot predict what it will be, and more importantly the reasons we are limited are largely internal rather than the inability to control for some multitude of external causal variables).
I have trouble treating consciousness as anything. Of all the complex systems to focus on...oh well. At least I will not lack for research questions.
Looncall
Well-Known Member
You are still ignoring the idea of process.
In my professional life I often create computer programs that can make decisions. Those programs run as processes in hardware. I see no reason not to suppose that consciousness is a complex process running in what some folk colourfully call wetware.
A corollary is that it makes no sense to suppose that consciousness can occur in objects that lack any organization that could support it, such as subatomic particles.
Enai de a lukal
Well-Known Member
Yep.
Wait, where have we redefined what we think of as consciousness? I'm afraid I missed a step here. And then this next claim seems to come out of left field, and almost contradict what you've said already-
Unless you mean that consciousness is not limited to our brains, as in our brain as an individual, and is everywhere around us in that there are other brains and other consciousnesses- sure. But that's trivial. What reason is there to suppose there is anything that has consciousness that does not have a brain?
Contemplative Cat
energy formation
Meditation retracts the senses, so one can percieve reality, rather than a mental interpretation of reality.
Runewolf must have seen such to have this knowledge.
The experience itself is so validating that any ammount if scientific evidence extremely reinforces those experiences, hense why quantum theory is so exciting to many meditation practitioner.
Runewolf must have seen such to have this knowledge.
The experience itself is so validating that any ammount if scientific evidence extremely reinforces those experiences, hense why quantum theory is so exciting to many meditation practitioner.
Contemplative Cat
energy formation
Consciousness is an infinite feild, it exists in all material like how sweetness exists in all sugar.
It has nothing to do with the brain, the brain arises as a form of conscious energy in an infinite consciousness.
It has nothing to do with the brain, the brain arises as a form of conscious energy in an infinite consciousness.
Enai de a lukal
Well-Known Member
Once again, merely a pseudo-profound slogan than anything; it sort of sounds nice, but there's no reason for supposing it to be true.
So basically the entirely of cognitive science is false, then? Clearly consciousness has more than a little to do with the brain, since we do not find consciousness where we do not find neural activity, and there appears to be a correspondence, if not outright supervenience, between consciousness and brain states.
Contemplative Cat
energy formation
Via OBE one can look inside minds and non minds like rocks. ...
the consciosness inside a rock is formless black, on account of having no brain. But in animals their is unique perspectives similar to our own.
But ultimately the consciousness is the same in rocks and animals
the consciosness inside a rock is formless black, on account of having no brain. But in animals their is unique perspectives similar to our own.
But ultimately the consciousness is the same in rocks and animals