If I have a belief, the last thing I ever want to do is fortify it :-). For amusement, I'm always trying to wreck any beliefs I have. Even if I don't succeed, I take them as only having relative meaning which means none at all.
No. I was asking because if you had another plausible explanation for consciousness I wanted to hear it. After all, consciousness is the whole ballgame really. Remove it and there's nothing left… Unless of course something that's left is conscious. This is true whether you believe that consciousness is generated by the brain, is existence itself, or any other reason. Without it, there is nothing at all.
The only useful place any of these conversations can lead is to understanding, which serves our need for freedom, security, and contentment. In order to lead there, it would have to cause someone to change the way they look at things, and the only reason that would be of any import is if the way they were looking at things shifted from distorted to not distorted.
As for science, I am no expert at all so I may be wrong on this, but when I hear what scientists have discovered on a quantum level it boils down to "the observed" not even existing until it is observed. That said, I am open to the idea that consciousness is a biological phenomenon, I just don't see or hear anything that backs that up in a way that makes sense yet.
The quantum level is paradoxical and does not seem to have much or anything to do with events on the scale of ordinary objects.
If you have ever experienced total anesthesia, you would not doubt that consciousness is a biological phenomenon. That still does not resolve the question of its ultimate source, to be clear, but it certainly suggests that brains are required for awareness to occur.
That is very true about the quantum level. What it really says to me is that reality isn't remotely close to what we think, especially as regards the nature of matter. That's the realm of the unknowable for sure! Of course, all science is about how things behave, not what they are. Even backing up a hundred plus years to the idea that there are protons and electrons. That is taken for granted as true, but really what true means here is that reality behaves *as if* that is how matter is comprised.
In our subjective reality, which is all there really is, neither electrons, protons, nor quantum physics have anything at all to do with it. Those things are ideas about reality, they are not reality itself. This is where I think your concept of splitting (which is a very accurate description most of the time) doesn't apply well. Meaning, if one can see that those aforementioned scientific ideas don't apply to you as a conscious being, then one can also see that making a separation between that conscious being and the material world - FOR THE PURPOSE OF understanding the whole picture only - can have benefit. It is a temporary, but necessary , splitting.
Funny, I was also going to mention anesthesia as an argument the other way :). When you suddenly appear from total anesthesia your consciousness is *exactly* the same as it was before anesthesia. At least, it was for me. Does it make more sense that that is because "it" never disappeared, or because the brain began generating (so to speak) consciousness again perfectly without there (ever) being the slightest difference in it? The question is rhetorical of course, and I think the answer depends a lot on how one wants to see it.
When I watched the suffering of my mother, a woman born into a weird world of Vaudevillian parents, Irish mother, Ukrainian Jewish father, both disowned & then divorced, I saw a woman who was, at the same time, abused, abandoned, powerful, brave, soulful and fragmented.
I get it now—the fragmented psyche. No resources, very little help. Fun, smart, a singer, but painfully fragmented. Is this description something like the splitting you describe?
Those are different matters than what I asked though. I agree, a human being can't be one without a body/mind that works. I don't know what you're definition of soul is, but it isn't a word or concept I subscribe to either.
But, wherever one sees it coming from, we are undeniably conscious. The question is where that comes from, if indeed it comes. I'm wondering if you subscribe to it coming from the brain or if you have another option - or if it doesn't matter to your thinking?
All living animals are aware (conscious) of their surroundings to one degree or another. Humans, and quite likely other higher animals, are also SELF-conscious, meaning not just aware, but aware of being aware.
The ultimate source of awareness, including self-awareness, has no fact-based answers, but only philosophical or religious speculation. Even if science were able to demonstrate the exact neurons throughout the human body (not just in the brain, but distributed through many organs) that account for consciousness, which may be possible sooner or later, that would still not satisfy those who would regard such science as “materialism.”
If you see that, you will understand that a discussion about where consciousness comes from serves merely as a platform for aimless speculation that leads nowhere useful. Indeed, it’s not even a serious question unless the person asking it is open to the idea that consciousness may be a biological phenomenon; however, in my experience, most people who ask that question already have a preferred answer and their reason for asking the question is to fortify their anti-naturalistic world view with an “argument from ignorance,” as this cognitive bias is known.
Since you ask, I don’t spend a minute thinking about such matters. The point of my reply to the question about splitting was to indicate that those who pontificate about a “myself” that is not dependent on physical processes are only blowing smoke, and that those who listen to them are asking for their psychological splitting to be intensified, not healed.
Isn't the idea that without a body and a brain there is no "you" based on an assumption (which is also an idea) that consciousness emerges from matter? Or, is that idea based on something else?
It seems like this presumption is core to the viewpoint being presented, that's why I ask.
There is a great deal of evidence that "oneself" cannot exist without a fully functioning nervous system, and no evidence that I know of to suggest that "oneself" can exist without a fully functioning nervous system. The argument that brains are merely objects "in" consciousness is pure speculation.
Obviously, no one has a definitive answer to such a question, but to speak of "souls" wearing "meat suits" is, in my view, a form of religious falderal.
If I have a belief, the last thing I ever want to do is fortify it :-). For amusement, I'm always trying to wreck any beliefs I have. Even if I don't succeed, I take them as only having relative meaning which means none at all.
No. I was asking because if you had another plausible explanation for consciousness I wanted to hear it. After all, consciousness is the whole ballgame really. Remove it and there's nothing left… Unless of course something that's left is conscious. This is true whether you believe that consciousness is generated by the brain, is existence itself, or any other reason. Without it, there is nothing at all.
The only useful place any of these conversations can lead is to understanding, which serves our need for freedom, security, and contentment. In order to lead there, it would have to cause someone to change the way they look at things, and the only reason that would be of any import is if the way they were looking at things shifted from distorted to not distorted.
As for science, I am no expert at all so I may be wrong on this, but when I hear what scientists have discovered on a quantum level it boils down to "the observed" not even existing until it is observed. That said, I am open to the idea that consciousness is a biological phenomenon, I just don't see or hear anything that backs that up in a way that makes sense yet.
The quantum level is paradoxical and does not seem to have much or anything to do with events on the scale of ordinary objects.
If you have ever experienced total anesthesia, you would not doubt that consciousness is a biological phenomenon. That still does not resolve the question of its ultimate source, to be clear, but it certainly suggests that brains are required for awareness to occur.
That is very true about the quantum level. What it really says to me is that reality isn't remotely close to what we think, especially as regards the nature of matter. That's the realm of the unknowable for sure! Of course, all science is about how things behave, not what they are. Even backing up a hundred plus years to the idea that there are protons and electrons. That is taken for granted as true, but really what true means here is that reality behaves *as if* that is how matter is comprised.
In our subjective reality, which is all there really is, neither electrons, protons, nor quantum physics have anything at all to do with it. Those things are ideas about reality, they are not reality itself. This is where I think your concept of splitting (which is a very accurate description most of the time) doesn't apply well. Meaning, if one can see that those aforementioned scientific ideas don't apply to you as a conscious being, then one can also see that making a separation between that conscious being and the material world - FOR THE PURPOSE OF understanding the whole picture only - can have benefit. It is a temporary, but necessary , splitting.
Funny, I was also going to mention anesthesia as an argument the other way :). When you suddenly appear from total anesthesia your consciousness is *exactly* the same as it was before anesthesia. At least, it was for me. Does it make more sense that that is because "it" never disappeared, or because the brain began generating (so to speak) consciousness again perfectly without there (ever) being the slightest difference in it? The question is rhetorical of course, and I think the answer depends a lot on how one wants to see it.
Thank you for the engagement.
When I watched the suffering of my mother, a woman born into a weird world of Vaudevillian parents, Irish mother, Ukrainian Jewish father, both disowned & then divorced, I saw a woman who was, at the same time, abused, abandoned, powerful, brave, soulful and fragmented.
I get it now—the fragmented psyche. No resources, very little help. Fun, smart, a singer, but painfully fragmented. Is this description something like the splitting you describe?
Those are different matters than what I asked though. I agree, a human being can't be one without a body/mind that works. I don't know what you're definition of soul is, but it isn't a word or concept I subscribe to either.
But, wherever one sees it coming from, we are undeniably conscious. The question is where that comes from, if indeed it comes. I'm wondering if you subscribe to it coming from the brain or if you have another option - or if it doesn't matter to your thinking?
All living animals are aware (conscious) of their surroundings to one degree or another. Humans, and quite likely other higher animals, are also SELF-conscious, meaning not just aware, but aware of being aware.
The ultimate source of awareness, including self-awareness, has no fact-based answers, but only philosophical or religious speculation. Even if science were able to demonstrate the exact neurons throughout the human body (not just in the brain, but distributed through many organs) that account for consciousness, which may be possible sooner or later, that would still not satisfy those who would regard such science as “materialism.”
If you see that, you will understand that a discussion about where consciousness comes from serves merely as a platform for aimless speculation that leads nowhere useful. Indeed, it’s not even a serious question unless the person asking it is open to the idea that consciousness may be a biological phenomenon; however, in my experience, most people who ask that question already have a preferred answer and their reason for asking the question is to fortify their anti-naturalistic world view with an “argument from ignorance,” as this cognitive bias is known.
Since you ask, I don’t spend a minute thinking about such matters. The point of my reply to the question about splitting was to indicate that those who pontificate about a “myself” that is not dependent on physical processes are only blowing smoke, and that those who listen to them are asking for their psychological splitting to be intensified, not healed.
Isn't the idea that without a body and a brain there is no "you" based on an assumption (which is also an idea) that consciousness emerges from matter? Or, is that idea based on something else?
It seems like this presumption is core to the viewpoint being presented, that's why I ask.
There is a great deal of evidence that "oneself" cannot exist without a fully functioning nervous system, and no evidence that I know of to suggest that "oneself" can exist without a fully functioning nervous system. The argument that brains are merely objects "in" consciousness is pure speculation.
Obviously, no one has a definitive answer to such a question, but to speak of "souls" wearing "meat suits" is, in my view, a form of religious falderal.
Muchas Gracias Señor... Amazing and inspired pointers... for moments that’s very clear...