LH Merlo

6 hours ago, Phi for All said:

If you think consciousness is a special human property, do you think we have any obligations in its use? The combination of high intelligence, tool use, opposable thumbs, cooking our food, agriculture and animal husbandry, a high degree of cooperation and communication, and bipedalism have made us the only species we know of that can voluntarily leave the planet. We could ultimately spread life to other parts of our galaxy. How important to our identity as humans do you think this consciousness is, and do you think it's something we need to understand better before we start exploring offworld?

I don't think consciousness is an exclusive human property, I think other living beings just have different levels of consciousness. Also, I think consciousness and sense of existence are different things.

I believe consciousness is one of the most powerful and important things in our world. Unfortunately our population lack self-awareness, critical thought, mental health and a bunch of other things that could make the world a lot better.

It's truly amazing that we as humans can explore the offworld, If you think about it, it looks like life itself is an extremely rare thing, we're like 'guardians of life' in such a huge and enigmatic universe, maybe we should look at it with more respect. But, as dimreepr said, we're destroying this one yet.

34 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

Take that mind-blowing feeling of wonder and awe and apply it where it will have the most meaning. You can call it spirituality or whatever you want, but you're right, life is quite simply amazing. Studying how it evolved on our planet is a a real journey. I'm happy you're taking advantage of the accumulated knowledge of humanity, and particularly science, where you'll get the most trustworthy explanations for various phenomena.

Personally, I think this feeling you have of "something more" is simply part of your brain recognizing that you don't have all the pieces of the puzzle yet. We're very focused on patterns as a species, and when a pattern is incomplete, it nags at us, bothers us until we find a solution. 

It may be, that's an interesting opinion. Your comment gave me some insight, thank you. Indeed, life is pretty amazing.

When I said something more I meant something that goes beyond our comprehension till now, but you're right, I gave it a little spiritual connotation, because the fact that we EXIST just blows my mind. Let me try again.

We can't prove that life emerged from abiogenesis or panspermia or whatever. I believe it has an explanation, but I just think it may go far beyond our current knowledge - and that's what I call something more -, there are much more possibilities than our main theories.

See, spirituality isn't a religious belief, it's just the refuse that life it's all about a matter state. What happened before the big bang? I can't assume there was nothing. It's just that we can't understand. Maybe there's a lot more when it comes to life as well, a lot more than matter, maybe science is just not there yet.

I think I expressed my opinion poorly. Yes it could be that we're all matter. I just don't believe it because we got no explanation for the very existence, we know in what conditions it could exist and we have some theories about how the first living being appeared but, still, we can't actually explain when and how did something inanimated became animated, we can't explain what is the sense of existence itself and how it emerged.

What is consciousness?

I'll start this with an example, let's suppose someone has Alzheimer, he can forget his name, he can forget where he lives or who he are, but he won't ever forget he's something, by the way he doesn't even have to remember it, he just is. It's like there is a sense of existence in each one of us that goes beyond our comprehension - which we can call life -. When and how something inanimated became an animated being? When it started to exists? What is it that we call existence?

IMO it makes more sense to believe there's "something more" we can't explain, it can't be just our brain and its impressions.

Life itself is transcedental.