Gees Posted July 27, 2013 Author Share Posted July 27, 2013 (edited) Gees, We, you and me, that is, I think, are in the same chapter, if not on the same page. Moontanman is also on the same chapter, but its in a different book on the subject. I think. I believe that you and I have accepted, or have come to a certain agreement or relationship with the world that we are in and of, that allows us to ask a question, or float a possible answer in a more informal, on our own authority basis. Not that we don't require evidence, or that we are not aware of the need for verification, but that we allow a little more wiggle room, in the particular book we are both reading, than is normally allowed in an official science text. Well, I think we are in the same book, but not in complete agreement. I think the thing that frustrates me is that people, who believe in cause and effect, will also believe that mental attributes are somewhat magical. People will argue that physical things can only work in specific ways for specific reasons, but mental things can be whatever we imagine. Nonsense. The mental works through cause and effect just as the physical does. The only real difference is that we have not bothered to learn the rules that regulate the different mental aspects--so it looks like magic. We have learned a great deal about the first division, knowledge, thought, and thinking, as is evidenced by our knowledge of computers. But we know almost nothing about the second division, awareness, feeling, and emotion, so this is where study is required. Mostly we have relegated the second division to religion and/or the supernatural, but until we understand both, we can not understand consciousness. But back to the topic and our different perspective on this. If consiousness is a thing, floating around, finding bodies to inhabit, it would be contrary to my take. In my take, life grabbed form and structure from a universe tending toward entropy. OK. But after life grabs form, then the form dies, then what happens? If we decide that consciousness is floating around, inhabits life, then leaves life--we end up with the "God" idea, or panpsychism (everything is alive). For people who do not buy into religion and think that rocks are not alive, this is a problem. If we believe that there is no consciousness except in life, then we have to explain how this magical thing happens and where knowledge and awareness comes from. We end up back with the "God" idea, or we deny the mental aspects and accept that only the physical exists--and there is no logical explanation for knowledge and awareness. In which case, we ignore the supernatural and pretend that it does not exist. If we go the solipsist route and deny the physical, stating that only the mental exists, we have a pretty logical argument. But there is no purpose for this theory, no why, no reason to even consider physical reality. No reason for evolution. No reason for life. So although the solipsist theory does make a good argument, there seems to be no point in it. This idea also tends to be somewhat magical. It is my opinion that each of these theories make the same mistake. They each choose one aspect of life and use it to explain all of the others, but it does not work. Many philosophers have debated this issue, and many ideas have been brought forth from Plato's forms to Panpsychism, but they each fall short of the explanation and philosophers have long noted that there seem to be at least two divisions. The first is knowledge (forms, matter, and the all-knowing God). This division is the beginning or source of knowledge and awareness, but it is static and has no will or ability to intervene--like a book that has no reader. It is knowledge that is there, but unknown until read. The second division is awareness (spirit, life, and the God of love). This division has will and can manipulate the environment. But it is either short lived, or supernatural. So it is my thought that consciousness is very complex and that each of these theories is only one perspective of consciousness. I think that there are degrees of conscious awareness, and that these degrees are regulated by cause and effect. That means life is a victory in and of itself. We are our own reward. We have already won. Just by being. And human life and consciousness is a especially nice thing, because we have come up with language, so that we can share the experience. So this would mean that when we die we have lost? Everyone of us will die, so what is it that we have won? Why is it necessary for all life to continue? Why reproduce? This is not the answer. Now, being universe material ourselves, we can also ascribe this victory to the universe, but there is nothing supernatural required in the transaction. Anything we can do, or think or feel is obviously something that the universe can accomplish. if this were not a fact, that matter and energy can be conscious, then we couldn't possibly be conscious. Since we are, then its not only possible, but obviously a fact. But why does the universe wish to accomplish this? What is the purpose? What does life give to the universe that is so important that all life has a mandate to continue? That we are matches to the Earth, and its pressure and it's chemical composition, and its temperature, and its cycles, is no mystery, because its from here that we emerged. Its here that we fit, because its here that we are fitting. True. But how did it happen? Could it happen somewhere else? Ghost story. I was about 18, so it was 1970 or 71. Sometime between spring and fall, because the green leaves were out. In rural PA, south of Allentown. I was living with my Aunt and Uncle and two cousins on a farm. My female cousin, slightly younger than I, was house sitting for a traveling family. Once a day she would go over to the house, a mile or two away and feed the dogs, and cats and make sure the place was intact, and the plants were watered and so on. Because you stated that you were examining this event for truth, I will give you my take on this. First, it was a long time ago, so unless you did something to record the events at that time, you can not trust your memory of them. (If I can find the video on memory, I will post it at the end.) It was probably summertime, which does not tell me a lot. But the age of your young cousin suggests that she would be hormonal, which fits. Now, this young lady was wired a little differently than my male cousin and I were. For instance, we had this electric can opener that would regulary shock her, that neither my cousin or I could ever get to shock us, no matter how hard we tried, sticking one hand in the sink and so on. Because sticking your hand in water caused no shock, it would be my guess that this was kinetic energy rather than electrical shock. So before deciding that she was "wired" differently, I would investigate whether or not she had a synthetic carpet in her room, or if she wore a lot of synthetic clothing, like hose, which caused friction and kinetic energy to build up. Well she came back from the house one day and told us she heard the piano playing in the other room, and nobody else was in the house. We didn't believe her. Then she came back and said the furniture by the piano was in a different orientation than how she had left it. We thought she was mistaken. Then she came home shaking, saying she was by the piano, and a man put his hand on her shoulder, and she was not going back. Well, hearing a piano is an experience, so this part makes sense. I would want verification on the furniture being rearranged, but the hand on the shoulder could be valid as this is part of awareness, and she was at the right age to be hormonal. I would also ask if she had heard about this "ghost" before. A group of brave, disbelieving male 18 year olds, my cousin and two or three friends and I escorted her over in our station wagon. Two went in the house with her as I and two others waited by the car, smoking cigarettes. The house group came rushing out saying "let's go". There was a definite feeling that we should go, in the air. We piled in the car, and it did not start. Too many kids. This looks like a group looking for trouble, and makes me wonder if the "new boy" was getting pranked. Feelings of hysteria at this point would be useless to consider because there were too many teenages with excited hormones. How could anyone track down where the emotions came from? On the hood of the car, was a rag doll. Mind you, we were leaning against said car, and none of us had put it there, nor noticed it getting there. We opened the hood and the distributor cap was off. Not loose. Off, laid upside down, next to the distributor. If you weren't getting pranked, where did the rag doll end up? Was there some significance to a rag doll and the "ghost"? Did any of the other kids have a younger sister, who may own a rag doll? As to the distributor cap, has it ever popped off before or since? Seems to me that I have heard of distributor caps popping off before, but I am not sure. Why would a "ghost" want to keep you there? This does not make sense, so I doubt this part of the event as being supernatural. We replaced it and proceeded directly down the quarter mile driveway to the road. Standing at the road, to the left of the driveway was a man dressed in southern garb, all in white, with a white southern plantation style hat. We did not know him, he was not from around there, and he looked out of place, yet we did not stop. I think I remember looking right in his eyes as we passed, and leaving remained the thing to do. Do you think you saw a ghost? How could you know? You should have stopped. We spent the next weeks trying to figure the event out, talking with neighbors and such. The house was visited and kept by my cousin, always accompanied, without further incident until the owners returned, and they too were told the story. In the telling of the story to a neighbor 3/4 of a mile in the other direction, an incident at her house was disclosed. A house guest of hers, sleeping downstairs had reported that a man, dressed all in white, with a white hat had come down the stairs in the morning, walked right passed her, through the kitchen and out the back door, across the field, toward our house. The hostess had insured the guest, that there was only one bedroom upstairs, and only her and her husband had been in it, and there was no man to have come down the stairs. Questions were asked, information was learned, and it turned out that a man, a real man used to live in farmhouse C, dress all in white, and take a path to church which passed through our farm. It also was learned that he later had owned and lived in the house where my cousin had house sat, and hung himself from the lamp post at the end of his driveway. Well, if I were investigating this, the first thing that I would do is track down the rumors and compare them to the facts. So check records regarding the ownership of the houses, and if/when you find the owner, check death certificates to see if he actually committed suicide in the way described. These things have a tendency to be exagerated over time. If you get that far, then you would have to try to give a description of the "ghost", a drawing would be nice, then search for a real photo or painting of the man. If all of these things pan out, and the description is valid, before seeing a picture, then you may have seen a ghost. But I am still not buying the rag doll. And I don't think (or feel) anybody is quivering. That was a private reference for someone else; I am no Socrates. Most people hear the word, "collaboration" and believe that Socratic discussion is "nice", "cooperative", or even "civilized"; it is anything but civilized. It could be more closely related to psychoanalysis and requires an openness and honesty that can be quite traumatic. Debate is much more civilized as a person is expected to cross their arms, squint their eyes, and hold a facade of their thoughts up for debate, while never really exposing their true selves. This is a very interesting video that explains why and when we can not trust our memories. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNuARPcb5FA G. Edited July 27, 2013 by Gees Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tar Posted July 27, 2013 Share Posted July 27, 2013 (edited) Gees, I am aware that the ghost story has been convoluted in my memory, and no doubt reenforced in incorrect manners by the retelling of it. For instance I personally did not remember the rag doll, because it was to difficult to make sense of, and I had rejected it, from my memory. It was years later, when recalling the event with others that had been there, that I was assured by the others that the rag doll was a fact of the case. So I put it back in for the telling. (my sister later married one of the 18 year olds, who is now my current brother in law). And over the years, we have recalled the event and the events and stories around it, to attempt to determine what of it was explainable, and what of it remains a mystery. For instance, my brother in law does not remember a man at the end of the driveway, although he remembers the rag doll and the distributor cap, and the rest of the story. So I do not know, "when" I put the man in the story, or if he actually stood at the corner that day, and whose memory has been adjusted by each of our own adjustments, and each of the adjustments we have made based on our trust of the other people's memory of the event, Mass hysteria theory works to explain it, only to a certain extent. There were too many reasonable people, looking for good explanations involved, for it to be a "prank" orchestrated by any subgroup of the mix. The saying "the truth will out" comes to mind. Someone involved would have unearthed the prank or confessed their complex orchestration of the events of that summer, by now, if it was a prank. So I think it was not. Something unexplanable by the application of normal sense and logic and accepted knowledge of how the world works, was afoot that summer. If we "fed" off each other, then it is an excellent example of how the "supernatural" comes into our awareness. We trust other people's take, as if it is our own. Thereby "sensing" something, we have never actually personally sensed. Pertinent to this discussions might be the idea of a collective consciousness. One example would be "the scientific community". A person can utter the phase "well, we know that such and such is true" without ever actually taking the measurement or witnessing the phenomena. There is a collective awareness, a "thing" we refer to, that does not actually exist, that we hold as a thing that actually exists. And upon inspection, the thing actually does exist in the collective personages of all the scientists that have witnessed and published and shared their findings over the years, and stored their validated notions in libraries, universities and the memories of others. I associate with my family and friends. I am going to an annual family reunion later today in PA, where, if I brought it up, there are others that have heard the ghost story, and my Aunt, female cousin, brother-in-law, and I, who were at the farm that summer, who actually witnessed first hand, the events and follow-up investigations, could rehash and reaffirm and correct any false impressions or faulty memories. We have attempted before to "explain" the thing. I associate also with "the scientific community" and would like to see a newspaper article about someone hanging themselves at that address, and see pictures of how that person dressed, and see the records of his ownership of house C, and the farmhouse with the piano...but if I had those things...it still would not explain the events. It would not make it less weird, it would make it more weird. If I actually saw such records, it would give me a chill. At least now, with no such records infront of me, I can discount the event as mass hysteria, and faulty memory, and embellished or made up facts, that only were true because they fit the story. But back to your concern that it makes no sense to be conscious without a purpose or a reason. It has come to my attention, that things will be, for me, after I die, much as they were, for me, before I was born. Now, as I consider it rather inappropriate to die, since life is all that I have in the first place, I look for a consideration that will associate me with not only that which is the case currently, outside my awareness, but with that which was the case before I was born, and with that which will be the case after I die. For this, I look at other people, because it is with them that I can converse. Other people are a verification of existence outside of ones own consciousness. Because they can and do talk back, and can cooberate this "witnessing" thing we individually do. In this way, a "collective" consciousness is apparently real and existent. Awareness, not limited to ones own. I can not "know" what it is you are focusing on, what your history of experience and thought and emotion has been, or what memories you hold, but I can make a pretty good guess, based on the similarly constructed body/brain/heart group that you and I both have, that outside of the differences that female construction and hormornes and male construction and hormones might cause, there is a great deal of things we are aware of, that we have in common. These common things I can and do, with confidence, suggest are the reality that we share. A reality that is bigger and longer lived, than either one of us, but a reality that we each are completely constructed by and of, and which we each can reasonably consider "ours". I can die, and "it" will not end. So there is life after death and we each are still obligated to it, and can feel responsible for it, and a part of it. It is in this sense that one is aware of the all. As to your consideration that there are two divisions, thought and emotion, I am thinking that they are not separate things in themselves, but differents aspects of being human, based around a kind of timing of memories, and senses, and contingent upon the symbols we use to recall the state we are in at any moment. Language is important to thought, the meaning behind language exists regardless of the symbols used to describe it. So, I would propose that the supernatural is just a word we use to placehold for all that which we know has to be going on, that we also can not get our minds around, or put another way, that we cannot fit into our individual model housed in a rather tiny by comparison, brain. That we know therefore that the rest of the world is more aware, and smarter and more capable, more longlived and so much larger than we individually are, it is no wonder that their is some confusion and discussion about the nature of god and reality. You can't get close to understanding it, more clearly than it already understands itself. Here is where I would challenge your thought that dreams are as fitting as reality. Thoughts do not have to follow all the rules, and fit as snuggly to every consideration, as reality itself does. Regards, TAR2 Edited July 27, 2013 by tar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moontanman Posted July 27, 2013 Share Posted July 27, 2013 (edited) Ghost stories huh? Here's one and it is absolutely true... I used to have a house with a rather large attic and there was a rocking chair in the attic and one day as I went through some stuff in the attic I heard something move behind me, I looked back and the chair was rocking rather hard. Talk about hair standing up on your neck!!! A few days later it happened again and looked at the chair very closely but it was just a chair sitting on the floor. A few more days and I was up in the attic and again the chair began to rock when my back was turned, this time determined to find what was going on I stood in the steaming hot attic and watched the chair for several minutes, suddenly right in front of my eyes the chair started rocking furiously again but this time I saw my cat jump onto the chair then quickly jump off and leave the attic, after a few more times in the attic i figured out the cat was following me to the attic and jumping in the rocking chair but the rocking motion up set him and back down into the house he would go immediately. If I hadn't taken the time to investigate I would probably be telling this story as a real ghost the rest of my life.... Edited July 27, 2013 by Moontanman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tar Posted July 28, 2013 Share Posted July 28, 2013 Moontanman, Which brings up an interesting point. Or question. What is it, chemical wise, or comfort-wise, or evolutionarily wise, that causes the chill, or the hair standing up on our neck, when we experience something "weird"? I am thinking that this reaction we have to weird things, things we do not know the cause of, may well be a driving force, or create the desire within us, to find the cause. We do feel so much "better" when we see it was only the cat. Relieved, perhaps laugh at ourselves a bit, for being so frightened over something so understandable, and wonder why we let our imaginations run so far afield, when the "answer" was so mundane. Not that we "want" the answer to be fantastic, but that we entertain the fantastic, when the mundane causes are not apparent. And maybe it feels a little good to have the adreniline, and then find you are safe, after all. Personally I do not enjoy theme park rides, that cause adreniline to pump. My feeling is that adreniline is for running away from bears or for screaming and waving your hands so angrily that the bear runs away. Not appropriate use of the stuff, to have "fun". Some people like to have the stuff pumping around their bodies. It makes them feel "alive". But for me, you are either putting yourself in real danger, which is stupid and dangerous, or you are putting yourself in fake danger, which is foolish and false. When I find myself sitting on a chair on the end of a wire, swinging rapidly in a circle, high above the ground, I do not wish to be having the fears I am having. I sit rather still, not to upset any equilibriums or put any strains or imbalances into an already tenuous situation. Frozen in fear, if you will. I do not go on such rides, very often, I already know I will not enjoy them, and just partake to show myself that one can go on such a ride, and not die. But do you think some people "like" to be scared, when it comes to the supernatural? Sort of a game a person or group of people might come up with, to feel more alive? Just a thought. Regards, TAR2 As a young child, I remember seriously wondering what could be in my closet, that would come out and get me. I did not know for sure, and could not convince myself that there was nothing there of the sort. Only way to know, was to go look, but that would involve putting my foot on the floor, which would leave me open to anything under the bed that would want to reach out and grab my ankle. It took some courage, and several successful sorties, out of the bed, and into the closet, to calm such fears. As a further "aside", I, later in life once had an incident where I thought I heard someone go into my dad's study upstairs, when I thought my Dad was in his bedroom. Going up stairs, and knocking on the bedroom door, and getting a response from my dad, gave me a chill. I called him out, we opened the study door and peeked in, and the closet door behind the entry door, was ajar and its always closed. Further "chill". I reached around and touched the knob as to gently swing it closed, and their was resistence. Heavy chill. "Somebody is in there" was whispered and my dad and I burst in and put our full weight against the door. There WAS somebody in the closet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moontanman Posted July 28, 2013 Share Posted July 28, 2013 The hair standing up on your neck is a reflex that is used to make a animal look bigger when it is frightened, since we no longer have enough body hair for this to be useful it no longer serves it's original purpose but the reflex remains... I was thrill seeker when I was young, racing motorcycles was my fav thing to do... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gees Posted July 28, 2013 Author Share Posted July 28, 2013 I associate with my family and friends. I am going to an annual family reunion later today in PA, where, if I brought it up, there are others that have heard the ghost story, I associate also with "the scientific community" and would like to see a newspaper article about someone hanging themselves at that address, and see pictures of how that person dressed, and see the records of his ownership of house C, and the farmhouse with the piano...but if I had those things...it still would not explain the events. It would not make it less weird, it would make it more weird. But back to your concern that it makes no sense to be conscious without a purpose or a reason. It has come to my attention, that things will be, for me, after I die, much as they were, for me, before I was born. In this way, a "collective" consciousness is apparently real and existent. . . . . A reality that is bigger and longer lived, than either one of us, but a reality that we each are completely constructed by and of, and which we each can reasonably consider "ours". I can die, and "it" will not end. So there is life after death and we each are still obligated to it, and can feel responsible for it, and a part of it. It is in this sense that one is aware of the all. Tar; I hope you enjoyed your family reunion. Regarding your above statements (I cut some comments out to preserve space.) there is a clear pattern. You identify with society, community, and family, and are a very social person. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, but you also view consciousness from this perspective, so you see it from a "me" or "we" human perspective. This is where our difference begins and ends, because I see consciousness from an "it" perspective as an abstract concept. Now you may disagree, but consider: If a person that you know told you that they had just had a baby, you may ask how they felt about parenthood, you may ask about their feelings, plans, arrangements, and thoughts regarding the new life, but you would also ask about the baby. You would want to know about the sex, health, length, weight, etc. For eight pages now, I have been waiting to find someone who would ask the appropriate questions about consciousness. I have given out more than enough hints that I see it as a real thing, but there have been no takers. No one is asking about the "baby", so I know that they can not see consciousness as a reality except through personal perspective. Personal perspective is an important viewpoint of consciousness, but it is not the only viewpoint. It is my thought that examining consciousness from a personal perspective is about as wise as when the Ancients examined the Universe from the perspective of Earth. They saw Earth as being the center of all, so their viewpoint distorted the truth of the Universe. I understand that consciousness is intangible, so it is an abstract idea, and only about 3 percent of the population is capable of holding an abstract idea in their minds for examination. But this is what I need; one of the 3 percent, who has a strong interest in consciousness. As to your consideration that there are two divisions, thought and emotion, I am thinking that they are not separate things in themselves, but differents aspects of being human, I disagree. Your statement limits your considerations to humans. So, I would propose that the supernatural is just a word we use to placehold for all that which we know has to be going on, that we also can not get our minds around, or put another way, that we cannot fit into our individual model housed in a rather tiny by comparison, brain. The supernatural, including religion, is the explanation of how we interpret, or think about, what we feel. All of the things that I listed in my prior post as supernatural bear one similarity, in that they are all interpretations of feeling/emotions. i would like to bypass one step and examine what causes the feeling/emotion to happen, rather than examine why we feel the way we do about the supernatural. You can't get close to understanding it, more clearly than it already understands itself. To state that consciousness can "understand" itself is to give it a persona, or call it God. Not buying it. Here is where I would challenge your thought that dreams are as fitting as reality. Thoughts do not have to follow all the rules, and fit as snuggly to every consideration, as reality itself does. But I am a philosopher, and we study reality. I have enjoyed talking with you, but expect that I will get no answers at this forum. G Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tar Posted July 29, 2013 Share Posted July 29, 2013 (edited) So, if supernatural is that above and beyond this reality, and superstition is that above and beyond our logic and reason, are they both pretty much out of bounds, when attempting to determine that which is the case? If there are "connections" between us and "others", which there obviously are, does this not demand an acceptance of the metaphysical studies and determinations of Kant, who attempted to stay within the bounds of nature and reason in studying the judgements that human beings can and do make, and categorized the "types" of understandings that we can have, in terms of what we can say, in general, about a phenomena? It is important to me, in these discussions, that the goofy be separated from the actual. I believe there is a way, a path of understanding, that one can follow, that would describe the acent of man from hydrogen to heavier elements, to organized planets, and complex molecules, and crystals, to cells and membranes, and mitochondria, and genes, and the single celled plants and animals, through the various mammal forms to the human species, and reasonably dipict the development of language and art and technology, fantasy and religion...without ever requiring an outside magic, or a gap of logic. If my belief is true, that such a logical, real path has been taken, and can be reconstructed and understood, then it is also true that we never were and never will be "other than" reality. Our connections to it are real and logical. We cannot be other than what is not only possible, but manifest as well. Thus any study of consciousness is incomplete, or misdirected, if the possibility of it existing, and the natural and connected to reality nature of it, are not assumed, from the get go. Gees, seems to think that understanding emotion and hormones will lead us to a determination, that I believe we have to assume in the first place, since there is no other possibility, but that we are of and in the thing that we are attempting to understand. Regards, TAR2 Gees, We cross posted again...almost as if we have a connection, and post while the other is posting... Anyway, sorry to disappoint, I have to admit I don't measure up to the 3% requirement, but I would challenge your ability to hold and study an abstract thought is something that I am not capable of. Futhermore I will challenge your notion that thinking you are in possesion of an "objective" view, makes it so. I am rather sure, from a succession of insights and muses and logical takes on the matter, that although you could have thoughts and ideas and make descriptions of reality that are more complex and far reaching than I may be capable of, you are not capable of stepping outside yourself to have the thought. If you have a thought, then the thought can be had by an intelligent human, but that does not make you any smarter then the thing which you are having the thought about, and it does not put you in position where you can trump its size, and complexity, longlived nature, and power. In other words, you can be smarter than me, but that does not excuse you from reality, and it does not put you in control of it. You in actuality are looking at the world, and sensing the world, and feeling the world, and understanding the world from a human vantage point, and you cannot, under any circumstances, look at it from a different point of view, because this one, is the only one in your possesion. You cannot pretend otherwise, without a false claim of supernatural power. Regards, TAR2 Which brings up another thought I have had, considering thoughts and determinations had in the threads I have participated in, which ties in with this thread and your recent disapointment at not finding an intellectual equal. If the majority of highly intelligent, capable people at the higher end of the intelligence scale, do not believe in God, and they are the same ones in control of the artistic, political, business, educational, entertainment, military, medical, industrial, and scientific estabishments that we have, does this not mean there must be a certain assumption of superiorty, or control of the situation, similar to your false claims, undertaken by this intelligencia? That is, does being smarter than the next, give one the right to feel they are "correct" about the world, and their model of reality is superior in some way, to reality itself? That things would be "better" if only people understood what they understood? You yourself talked of respecting the other. I allign myself with this notion and consider my dependence on, and recognition of the value and power of another's "human judgement" a realistic conclusion to draw about the world, and a realistic sounding board to use to base oneself correctly. This makes me neither social, nor a believer in god. Just a believer in the reality of the situation, that we are all in this together, and none of us, can trump it, and none of us can deny it. Regards, TAR2 Gees, Besides, in searching for someone smart enough to benefit from your contributions, you reveal a fault in your own determinations. If they were to be true and actual and existant in an objective way, you would have no difficulty pointing them out to even the dullards, like myself. The fact that you are running into difficulty means you have not yet honed the thoughts into complete agreement with objective reality. They fit your thinking exactly, but the goal is not to bring everybody else to your way of thinking, but to come to determinations that nobody would have any reason to deny. For me, this is more readily achieved by assuming a preexisting objective reality that I am witnessing from the particular vantage point, the particular place and time, the here and now of TAR at this moment, which is one of a succession of moments that TAR has witnessed since his birth, and will continue to witness til his death. That there are "others" partaking in this same reality is evident. That my take is the only take, is therefore nonsense. That it will stop when I die, is nonsense. That it has any reason to cease, or start or change its nature based on a mere "thought" or feeling of mine, is not likely, past my influence on my family and friends and company and state, and any continuation of a notion that might proceed from my mention of such, to somebody listening. I am insulated quite well, from the beginning and end of the universe, by time, and am insulated quite well from the happenings at an atomic level, on a planet in a distant galaxy. These things I can imagine, but I cannot witness nor control. Neither can you witness or control things that you are so thouroughly insulated from, by time and space. No matter how smart you are. Regards, TAR2 Edited July 29, 2013 by tar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gees Posted July 29, 2013 Author Share Posted July 29, 2013 Tars; After reading your last post, I must assume that I tweaked you, but that was not my intent. Because I do not wish to leave this misunderstanding between us, I will try to explain my thoughts in this matter of intelligence. Please note that I should probably be offended by your attitudes about the differences in people's intelligence, as I have never in all eight pages of this thread, stated or implied that my ideas were more important than anyone elses--only that they were different and just as important. People, who state that very high intelligence is superior, are in my opinion idiots. I suspect that most of the people who state this are actually people who are pretending higher intelligence. People who actually experience higher intelligence understand that with every gift given, something is also taken away. There are no superior people, only people who know their own strengths and weaknesses and have learned to use them correctly. In the fourth grade, I was given my first IQ test; it was the most fun I had ever had in school. But afterward was terrible because the school called in social workers and tried to imply that I was being abused at home. I did not understand the problem at that time, but in the seventh grade, I was again given an IQ test by the school. When they called in a psychologist to examine me, I was old enough to figure out the problem. I had tested way too high, and my grades did not match my abilities, hence the shrink. I never took another IQ test because it made other people kind of nuts, and have no idea of my scores. But I can assure you that I have seen my MRI films and that the scars on my brain from MS have reduced whatever abilities I once had. In the fifth grade, my teacher had a plaque on the wall that stated; Complex minds understand ideas, average minds understand society and events, simpler minds understand people. I have found this to be true and spent most of my childhood alone, because I could not relate to my peers. When I was not reading, I was playing my favorite game where I would take ideas, thoughts, and observations and put them in my mind just to see what would come out. My mind was my favorite toy. I have played this game for most of my life, and this is how I learned about consciousness. So now, I am trying, with my MS scarred up brain, to remember what caused me to have the ideas that I have, where I got them, if they are valid, and when and how, over the last 40 years, I put them together. So do I need help? In a word, yes. You may have noticed, with my two warnings, that I am still not very good with people. I was always intelligent, but never very smart. G Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tar Posted July 29, 2013 Share Posted July 29, 2013 Gees, I am in the same boat, sort of, but for completely different reasons. And I was never so smart that people thought it a handicap. Well maybe, in some ways at some times, but I was always aware that there were people more intelligent, more capable and more accomplished and knowledgable than I was. This has never stopped me from discovering things on my own, having my own insights, finding explanations for things that seem to not be fully understood yet in the literature, and generally, being rather comfortable, and "enjoying" my own mind, and its abilities. I think that intelligence allows one to discern the difference between crap and fact. And in this sense one can be their own editor, and not rely on the findings of others, which may or may not be based on the same insights. But there is a certain deference one must make to others. Sometimes reasonably and correctly made, and sometimes misplaced trust, if the other has alterior motives, or is themselves stuck in a mindset that is incompatible with your own thinking. Such is my thinking, when talking to people smarter than me. I honor their abilities, a look for the sense in what they say, I weave the good stuff into my own thinking, and I remain open to, by distrustful of the parts of what they say that make no sense to me, and cannot be woven into the cloth I am fabricating. But also have come to the conclusion that my cloth is only as good as it would give another warm and would be recognized as their fabric as well. Hence science is the best way we have come up with, to check our thoughts against reality, and to discard the imaginations that do no fit the case, and to use in our weavings, the threads which hold up to inspection, and will be there, anytime we reach for them. Supernatural help appears to be available only to the person who thinks it is. It carries no wheight on its own. Every catholic school kid knows the situation, the first time they sin, and are not struck by lightning. At least that is what I have been told. Our consciouness, and our conscience are internal things. Made of the external, and belonging to each of us, and with some very good reasons and connections to the rest of the world, but made of our obligations to, and responsibilities to other entities. I do not think, as I have stated before, that consciousness floats around and settles in things. You need the thing being conscious and the thing that the consciousness is conscious of. You can raise your own consciousness, and be more aware, but the transaction is not the result of more consciousness being poured into your vessel from the outside. It is you, yourself, becoming more aware of what already is the case, and realizing your connections to, responsibilities toward, and your belonging to, what is. I have not read much Hegel nor do I remember overtly much that I did read, but I have an Aunt, very smart, no doubt in your 3% who I lived with for a while, and learned some stuff from. Talked with her at the family reunion. She would tell you something about an acending spiral, and no doubt suggest that its all about raising your own consciousness. If you need a mind to converse with on the subject, equal to your own, I would therefore suggest Hegel. Regards, TAR2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gees Posted July 29, 2013 Author Share Posted July 29, 2013 Gees, I am in the same boat, sort of, but for completely different reasons. And I was never so smart that people thought it a handicap. Well maybe, in some ways at some times, but I was always aware that there were people more intelligent, more capable and more accomplished and knowledgable than I was. Agreed. There are always people more intelligent, capable, accomplished, and knowledgable, but most importantly, people have different experiences, perspectives, and ideas to share. I think that intelligence allows one to discern the difference between crap and fact. And in this sense one can be their own editor, and not rely on the findings of others, which may or may not be based on the same insights. It is true that intelligent people tend to trust their own judgment, but it is also true that any person can have only one perspective of any issue. Such is my thinking, when talking to people smarter than me. I honor their abilities, a look for the sense in what they say, I weave the good stuff into my own thinking, and I remain open to, by distrustful of the parts of what they say that make no sense to me, and cannot be woven into the cloth I am fabricating. But also have come to the conclusion that my cloth is only as good as it would give another warm and would be recognized as their fabric as well. Hence science is the best way we have come up with, to check our thoughts against reality, and to discard the imaginations that do no fit the case, and to use in our weavings, the threads which hold up to inspection, and will be there, anytime we reach for them. Agreed. I think that this is the way most people view these things. But it might be worth noting that historically we have a tendency to ridicule and destroy some of our greatest thinkers, and then value them a few hundred years after they are dead. If I am even close to correct and the supernatural is in fact consciousness that is poorly understood, and that consciousness works, not by magic, but by cause and effect, then we may greatly regret some of the things that we are doing now with chemistry. I have grandchildren and expect to have great grandchildren. Supernatural help appears to be available only to the person who thinks it is. It carries no wheight on its own. Every catholic school kid knows the situation, the first time they sin, and are not struck by lightning. At least that is what I have been told. Here you are confusing the supernatural with religious interpretations of the supernatural. When religion stated, "Ask and you shall receive.", it would have been better interpreted as, "Don't ask, and you will get nothing." All life and consciousness are motivated by "want" in my opinion. Our consciouness, and our conscience are internal things. Made of the external, and belonging to each of us, and with some very good reasons and connections to the rest of the world, but made of our obligations to, and responsibilities to other entities. "Our consciousness", yes. But what source in the "external" made up our consciousness? Why are we connected? How does it work? What causes these obligations and responsibilities? If it is not God, then what is it? I do not think, as I have stated before, that consciousness floats around and settles in things. You need the thing being conscious and the thing that the consciousness is conscious of. You can raise your own consciousness, and be more aware, but the transaction is not the result of more consciousness being poured into your vessel from the outside. It is you, yourself, becoming more aware of what already is the case, and realizing your connections to, responsibilities toward, and your belonging to, what is. We have two different concept ideas that cause us to disagree here. The first is that people can not wrap their brains around the idea that conscious awareness is real, complex, and has degrees. Try to think of conscious awareness like I do--I see it as being comparable to water. Water is everywhere, in the air, in the ground, in us, in a rock--much like the "God is everywhere" concept--but water does not look like or feel like water when it is in the air or in a rock. Only when water is concentrated, liquid, and held in some kind of a container, is it recognizable as water. I see conscious awareness in the same way, in that it is everywhere in the Universe, but only when it is concentrated in a life form does it have "will" and the ability to direct and know itself. Just as water that has evaporated, frozen, or is mixed too thinly in matter has no ability to flow, self level, or move. The second difference is this "poured into your vessel from the outside" nonsense that is distributed by religion. Nothing is poured in. Conscious awareness works off of cause and effect just like everything else, so if one thinks of this like water, it is easy to see that rain pours down for reasons that science can understand. Conscious awareness is also influenced by cause and effect so what causes it to "pour" into life? This is what I have been studying and I think that chemistry, actual water, temperature, and probably something to do with electro magnetic fields creates this cause and effect. I have not read much Hegel nor do I remember overtly much that I did read, but I have an Aunt, very smart, no doubt in your 3% who I lived with for a while, and learned some stuff from. Talked with her at the family reunion. She would tell you something about an acending spiral, and no doubt suggest that its all about raising your own consciousness. If you need a mind to converse with on the subject, equal to your own, I would therefore suggest Hegel. Well, I doubt that I will be studying Hegel. I expected that when I retired, I would spend 20 years studying the "greats" of philosophy. What I did not expect is to retire early, have a scarred up brain, lose my vision in my dominant eye and when it returned be dyslexic. I spent two years learning to read again, found that my vocabulary was easily cut in half, and that I could not learn some new terms/concepts. I had never before had the experience of not being able to learn anything that I wanted to learn. I think that I would enjoy your Aunt and have had some thoughts about an "ascending spiral", but I am a systems thinker. Did you know that at least ten different types of thinking have been identified? I didn't. Most people would call me a "holistic" thinker as I see things from a whole perspective. Systems thinkers are people who see the relationship between things better than they see the individual things, so they are used rather extensively in environmental studies. When I state that I believe conscious awareness is a self-balancing chaos motivated by want, I am not talking about your consciousness or my consciousness--I am talking about all of it from the Universe to grass to us. So my idea of "want" is the will that different life form possess that cause them to act the way they do and to survive, but I am also talking about the laws of physics that explain the attraction and repulsion that causes matter to move--it is all "want" to me. When I talk about a self-balancing chaos, I am not considering the balance of a scale or a teeter-totter, because when these things are in balance--they stop. I am instead considering the balance of a perpetual motion machine, where constant movement and balance are required to maintain that constant momentum. So this balance requires more than two forces working to influence the others--not like a scale. From my perspective it looks like the Universe, an ecosystem, and life all work to maintain these balances, so balance is more a matter of influence and change, rather than any one power and constance, as that would create a stopage and death. If you look through our history, it is easy to see that when one concept or power becomes too dominant, life performs a correction that is not always pleasant, to correct this unbalance. This correction is also made when life becomes too constant, so balance is not something that we ever achieve, it is something that we strive for. The supernatural is part of this. imo G Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tar Posted July 30, 2013 Share Posted July 30, 2013 Gees, Often, you correlate consciousness and life. I think this central. Thus, around my thought that life grabbed organisation from a universe tending toward entropy, there is a distinction between life, and that which has not grabbed life. That life "wants" to be alive is therefore an evident fact of the case. Its mere existence proves its stubborn persistence against entropy. That there must therefore be an organising constant influencing life's emergence, is not a requirement, nor even logical or sensible. Life justifies itself, in the face of a universe that seems to be quite indifferent, if not contrary, to life. In terms of movement, this "contrary to entropy" thought is consistent, in that life is fleeting and fragile and quite temporary, given the actual influences of the rest of the universe tending in the other direction. Its not like evidence shows that the universe is in favor of life, nor that the universe is against it. The universe really has nothing to say on the matter, and everything to do with it. Consider what an electron "wants" to do, or tends to do. Loose energy. Emit a photon, attempting to relax to a lower energy level. An atom has these electrons spinning about, giving it a form and structure, electrical characteristics, valence and charge, and ascribes to the atom certain tendencies to attract and repel, stand alone or grab another. If a single atom existed, by itself, its electrons would want to emit photons, until there was no lower state they could fall to. Except there is, in reality, a universe full of atoms, ALL trying to accomplish the same feat, and come to rest, but none can do it, because of all the photons it RECIEVES from the rest of the universe. A bit outnumbered a single atom is. Every time it emits a photon, to satisfy its "wants", in a small moment, some other photon, emitted by a neighbor, bumps an electron back up to a higher energy state, and the atom has to release a photon AGAIN to try and get back to a desireable state. So, water is just a intermediary consideration in this dance. it is not a cause of it, but an effect of it. Life and consciouness is not a cause either. But an effect. An emergence. A result of the complex interplay of enities that make up entities and are made up of entities. And each lifeform has its own unique pattern, its own form and structure, its own DNA, that it holds on to, and copies and "gives" to its children. You asked before, if life could emerge elsewhere in the universe. Maybe it is not liquid water required, but just the dance, the electron, trying to lose its energy, and perhaps "life" could emerge in other ways than it did here. And there are other planets that may have liquid water, even if that condition is required. So I would say, "probably so". Anywhere where there is a dance, there is likely to be a dancer. Regards, TAR2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gees Posted July 30, 2013 Author Share Posted July 30, 2013 Tar; Before answering your post, I will need some help from you. Do you remember when I said that I lost the ability to learn some terms? Well, "entropy" is one of those terms. I have had 4 or 5 people try to explain it to me, have looked it up at least 20 times, but am still not clear enough on this concept to be sure that I understand your meaning. There are ten or fifteen terms that I have this problem with regularly, and it is very frustrating. I looked up "solipsism" about 15 times before I realized, while reading the definition, that a person would have to be narcissistic in order to believe that concept. Since I knew what a narcissist was, I could then comprehend solipsism. So what I need is a term that I can relate "entropy" to that I understood prior to the brain damage. All part of my new MS experiences. If you can not think of a specific term that has a very similar meaning, maybe you could think of a phrase that would mean the same thing as "entropy", and I can substitute it in your post. Thanks for your help in advance. G Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tar Posted July 31, 2013 Share Posted July 31, 2013 (edited) Gees, Disorganized. Or tending toward a situation where energy is not organized enough to where work can be done. Heat tends to disapate, or equal out. It generally does not, on its own, want to clump or gather in a spot. Life seems to collect and store energy, contrary to the normal direction of loosing energy and burning out. The normal direction, or the direction the universe seems to want to go, is toward a state of greater entropy, or disorganisation. My personal opinion, looking for an organizing "principle", that would counteract or balance this tendency, leads me in the direction that gravity might be a "clumping", or anti entropy influence. Not that I know what gravity is, or why it does what it does, but as it seems that atoms can't get rid of their energy for all the other atoms pumping photons in their direction, they also find it hard to distance themselves from one another, as their very mass attracts them to the rest of the universe in all directions, and the rest of the universe likewise is attracted to it. Seems to have evolved into a sitation where everything is falling toward everything else, and has caused the whole thing to spin on various levels an at various scales. Another place we might use the words, dance, and dancer. Anyway, there seems to be enough going on in "this" universe, that we can account for consciousness, on the basis of it, and not require a "supernatural" realm to ochestrate the dance. Besides, a supernatural instigator, would have no bearing on "this" universe. If its influence could not be noticed, or measured, or amount to anything substantial, then it is not real, not existent, not part of this universe, and has no business in it, or any relation to it. I have entertained the idea of a reality greater than "this one", but have pretty much discounted the need for such, and pretty much discounted the possibility of such, having any bearing on "this" reality. If it did have a bearing on this one, then it would be real, and natural, and "supernatural" would not fit it, as a description of it. The only place I know of, that "supernatural" things can be considered, is in our dreams and imagination. Not that they are not there, and not that we don't have some powerful rights to have any ideas we might come up with, but a Monk reaching Nirvana on a mountaintop, does not cause the universe to collapse into a black hole, around him/her. It rather does not DO a darn thing, for the rest of us. Its all in his/her mind. Same with superstition. Illogical, non existent, causes, assigned to events, that might be fun, or might allow one to pretend they see a pattern, but where the only home for the pattern is in the mind that recognized it. Projecting it on the rest of the world, as if it really existed. Perhaps some superstitions have some "real" causes or sense to them, like you say there is some truth in the Koran. But in the case of superstition, and in the case of the supernatural, the "substance" of the thought, is in the thought. It does not exist "out here" where the rest of us can see it. If it did, it would not be an illogical cause and effect situation, it would be real and natural. Which puts superstition, and the supernatural, out of bounds. At least when it comes to having something upon which one can apply the scientific method. We can fantasize and have "fun", and "play" and pretend. But such things as fairies are not required for there to be a "dance" we are witnessing, and a dance we ourselves are performing. Regards, TAR2 My cousin died of bone cancer at a young age. Shortly after his Dad died. We, at the memorial service understood that he was with his Dad, playing golf. Even though we knew that really was not the case. It still was. And it still is, however, the image of the two we wish to hold. It fits just fine, in our collective imaginations. One more P.S. I just recalled. At that same Uncle's funeral, I remember speaking with one of the bone cancer victim's brothers (also my cousin), and making an interesting comment, that is both fantastic, and scientifically acurate, which allows me to feel a little immortal and present for a long time in the universe, in a real way. I picked the age of his Dad when he died, and noted that on a planet that many lightyears away, they would just that day, (with a extremely powerful telescope) be witnessing the BIRTH of his father. Edited July 31, 2013 by tar 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gees Posted July 31, 2013 Author Share Posted July 31, 2013 Gees, Disorganized. Or tending toward a situation where energy is not organized enough to where work can be done. Tar; Damned you're good! You should be a teacher. Prior to this, the best I could understand is that entropy seemed to be a word that explained a natural tendency for matter and/or energy to evaporate, but I knew that was not really the full, or correct, explanation. This makes so much more sense. The Ancients thought that chaos was outside of the Universe, or maybe that the Universe sat within chaos; I see this chaos as the Aether. My first thought is that entropy is a term that explains a natural tendency for everything to return to the chaos from whence it came. This looks like a natural next step to me like breathing out after breathing in, but I believe that I will give it more thought. Heat tends to disapate, or equal out. It generally does not, on its own, want to clump or gather in a spot. Life seems to collect and store energy, contrary to the normal direction of loosing energy and burning out. The normal direction, or the direction the universe seems to want to go, is toward a state of greater entropy, or disorganisation. I agree that life seems to collect energy, but not that it stores it. My investigations into the supernatural tend to support the idea that life changes this energy into something that we call consciousness, or spirit, and disperses this energy. My personal opinion, looking for an organizing "principle", that would counteract or balance this tendency, leads me in the direction that gravity might be a "clumping", or anti entropy influence.Not that I know what gravity is, or why it does what it does, but as it seems that atoms can't get rid of their energy for all the other atoms pumping photons in their direction, they also find it hard to distance themselves from one another, as their very mass attracts them to the rest of the universe in all directions, and the rest of the universe likewise is attracted to it. Seems to have evolved into a sitation where everything is falling toward everything else, and has caused the whole thing to spin on various levels an at various scales. And in various balances, some known and some unknown. Anyway, there seems to be enough going on in "this" universe, that we can account for consciousness, on the basis of it, and not require a "supernatural" realm to ochestrate the dance. Besides, a supernatural instigator, would have no bearing on "this" universe. If its influence could not be noticed, or measured, or amount to anything substantial, then it is not real, not existent, not part of this universe, and has no business in it, or any relation to it. One of the most difficult things that I have had to do in this study is to remove the religious training from my thinking. It was difficult and led to a great deal of soul searching, sometimes leaving me in a position where I did not know what to believe in, but it is also necessary if one wants to see these issues clearly. People keep talking about an "orchestrator" or "instigator" or intelligent designer or God, but that is not what I am talking about. I am talking about natural laws of physics and reality, so what we call the supernatural is not a leader on high that guides us, it is simply a step in the development and natural processes of reality. So rather than the "supernatural" being a guide, I think that it is more likely a product of life, so it and life are both dancers, but they also help to make the music. I have entertained the idea of a reality greater than "this one", but have pretty much discounted the need for such, and pretty much discounted the possibility of such, having any bearing on "this" reality. If it did have a bearing on this one, then it would be real, and natural, and "supernatural" would not fit it, as a description of it. Well, if I understood your explanation of entropy, then there clearly is a greater, or at least different, reality that exists. The word, supernatural, is a lousy description of a natural process. Same with superstition. Illogical, non existent, causes, assigned to events, that might be fun, or might allow one to pretend they see a pattern, but where the only home for the pattern is in the mind that recognized it. Projecting it on the rest of the world, as if it really existed. Are you picking on my pattern finding? This is one of the few skills that I was always really really good at, that I have not lost. Perhaps some superstitions have some "real" causes or sense to them, like you say there is some truth in the Koran. But in the case of superstition, and in the case of the supernatural, the "substance" of the thought, is in the thought. It does not exist "out here" where the rest of us can see it.If it did, it would not be an illogical cause and effect situation, it would be real and natural. So what you are saying here is that if you can not see the logic in something, then it can not exist? I think this is the same argument that men have used for centuries to prove that women don't have minds. Women use this same tactic on men. No logic equals no reality. (chuckle chuckle) Which puts superstition, and the supernatural, out of bounds. At least when it comes to having something upon which one can apply the scientific method. We can fantasize and have "fun", and "play" and pretend. But such things as fairies are not required for there to be a "dance" we are witnessing, and a dance we ourselves are performing. I think that "fairies" are also part of anthropomorphism, but can not explain it to people who have not been able to remove "religion" and "superstition" from their thinking. But I disagree with your statements. I can answer your post now. Look for it tomorrow. G Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gees Posted August 1, 2013 Author Share Posted August 1, 2013 Gees, Often, you correlate consciousness and life. I think this central. Thus, around my thought that life grabbed organisation from a universe tending toward entropy, there is a distinction between life, and that which has not grabbed life. Agreed, but what causes that distinction? When is awareness truly awareness? A lot of philosophers have struggled with this concept because something causes that awareness--something natural. What is it? Some philosophers have tried to define and name this "thing" that causes awareness, the term "monads" comes to mind and reminds me of "bosons", but I have no right or authority to try to make up terms to describe this phenomenon. Instead, I try to see where awareness comes from and how it works. My studies, experiences, and observations tell me that premonitions do exist, but that would put thought outside of the bounds of time and space. I know that emotion is primary in premonitions and that emotion rules the unconscious mind, so when I read Dr. Blanco's explanation of the logic of the unconscious mind, I turned to the Aether for the source of awareness. Dr. Blanco discovered that the unconscious part of our minds has absolutely no concept of time and space, and this is accepted by psychology. So if it has no concept of time and space, it has no understanding of matter. This makes the Aether the only reasonable logical choice when looking for potential awareness, or the raw material that causes awareness. Many philosophers have also come to this conclusion that awareness is beyond, above, or distinct from matter, which explains Plato's cave example, dream realities, solipsism, and the God concept. But in my studies, I found that emotion was the mechanism for premonitions, and emotion is controlled by chemistry, so this is not simply a matter of the "mysterious" Aether. This is more a combination of matter and the "in between" of the Aether. This thinking led to a consideration of the Aether and the idea that there could be no real ability for awareness of anything in the Aether. Because there is no matter in the Aether, there is no point to focus from in order to focus on a single thought, so the Aether can not have the ability to actually be aware of any single thing, as it would require a point to focus from. So only when the Aether and matter activate each other, is actually awareness possible. Matter supplies the identity point of focus, per Panpsychism, that prompts Aether's potential awareness to be known--we call this life. This also explains why all life has a "me" awareness that exhibits itself in it's instinct to survive. That life "wants" to be alive is therefore an evident fact of the case. Its mere existence proves its stubborn persistence against entropy. That there must therefore be an organising constant influencing life's emergence, is not a requirement, nor even logical or sensible. I disagree. How can life "want" to be alive before it is alive? There has to be an organising constant influencing life's emergence. A cause for the effect. Life justifies itself, in the face of a universe that seems to be quite indifferent, if not contrary, to life. Life needs no justification. It is simply part of the process. The romantics would say that we are simply pieces of stardust. In terms of movement, this "contrary to entropy" thought is consistent, in that life is fleeting and fragile and quite temporary, given the actual influences of the rest of the universe tending in the other direction. Its not like evidence shows that the universe is in favor of life, nor that the universe is against it. The universe really has nothing to say on the matter, and everything to do with it. Butterflies are fleeting, fragile, and quite temporary, but are still part of the process. The simple fact that the Universe has everything to do with life is enough explanation that it is in favor of life. Consider what an electron "wants" to do, or tends to do. Loose energy. Emit a photon, attempting to relax to a lower energy level. An atom has these electrons spinning about, giving it a form and structure, electrical characteristics, valence and charge, and ascribes to the atom certain tendencies to attract and repel, stand alone or grab another. If a single atom existed, by itself, its electrons would want to emit photons, until there was no lower state they could fall to. Except there is, in reality, a universe full of atoms, ALL trying to accomplish the same feat, and come to rest, but none can do it, because of all the photons it RECIEVES from the rest of the universe. A bit outnumbered a single atom is. Every time it emits a photon, to satisfy its "wants", in a small moment, some other photon, emitted by a neighbor, bumps an electron back up to a higher energy state, and the atom has to release a photon AGAIN to try and get back to a desireable state. To me, this looks like a good explanation of a self-balancing chaos motivated by want. So, water is just a intermediary consideration in this dance. it is not a cause of it, but an effect of it. Life and consciouness is not a cause either. But an effect. An emergence. A result of the complex interplay of enities that make up entities and are made up of entities. And each lifeform has its own unique pattern, its own form and structure, its own DNA, that it holds on to, and copies and "gives" to its children. We are close to agreement here, but I see water as a cause and an effect; life is a cause and an effect; consciousness is a cause and an effect. Just because something emerges, that does not mean that it is at an end, as it can also cause effects. It is all a process, a perpetual motion machine that continues it's own momentum. imo You asked before, if life could emerge elsewhere in the universe. Maybe it is not liquid water required, but just the dance, the electron, trying to lose its energy, and perhaps "life" could emerge in other ways than it did here. And there are other planets that may have liquid water, even if that condition is required. So I would say, "probably so". Agreed. Actually it is my opinion that the processes that start life are active all over the Universe all of the time. The reality that life seems to be very rare does not dissuade me from this thinking. If you have ever been a Boy/Girl Scout, then you may understand how difficult it is to start a fire without matches or a lighter. One must be able to produce a spark or enough heat to start a small flame, then be able to protect and encourage that flame while ensuring the right amount of air and burnable material. Even then, the fire may burn itself out and have to be started again. So I think that this is how life starts with the correct combination of energies, forces, matter, and a little luck. There are some people who believe that "a little luck" means God, but I don't agree. Consider how vast the Universe is, and what that means to our perception of it. If we broke that idea down to something that we could comprehend, we could say that the Earth represents the Universe, countries represent galaxies, and cities represent solar systems. Then we could say that barns represent planets. How many barn fires have you ever heard of? We know that barns do catch on fire and that this is a natural phenomenon caused by damp hay stacked in the barn, but how often does it happen? I can't think of one. I think of life starting in the same way, and just as a barn fire will promote and expand and encourage more fire; life promotes, expands, and encourages more life. As to water, I used to think that water attracted life, like it attracts lightening, but have since revised my thinking. I think that chemistry activates potential awareness and water insulates this process so that it can develop; much like we would cup our hands around a smal flame to protect it so it can grow. So I think that water, or something very like it, would have to be present for life to start and continue. But I agree that the electrons, photons, and all of the things that I don't understand are probably trying to start life's dance all of the time. Anywhere where there is a dance, there is likely to be a dancer. I love this quote. G Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iwonderaboutthings Posted August 1, 2013 Share Posted August 1, 2013 Hello Everyone; The words "supernatural" and "superstition" seem to be unacceptable topics in most forums, and I was wondering why, so I thought that I would ask for some clarity. I study consciousness, not the medical definition of the conscious or unconscious rational mind, but rather the philosophical definition of conscious awareness and all of the mental aspects that come under the umbrella of conscious awareness. So I look at what science has discovered, what religion has interpreted, what philosophy thinks, and also the paranormal in my investigations. But if I mention the paranormal, people state that it is "supernatural", "superstition", and spit out denials like a terrified and unwilling virgin bride in a third-rate Dracula horror movie. Why is this? I wanted to know, so I went to Wiki and found that the word 'supernatural' was first used in the early 1,500s. This makes sense if you remember that 2,000 years ago, a bunch of pagans got together with the idea of an invisible God, and declared all things invisible to be of that God. For a time, even our personal thoughts were supposed to be put in our minds by either God or the devil, so for 1,000 years all that was invisible was God's. The Dark Ages. Then philosophers and scientists started to prove that some things were natural laws, so they fought religion with debate and logic, sometimes winning and sometimes losing, until Aquinas finally threw open the doors to science and the Enlightenment. (This is a very simplified version of a tremendous struggle by many great scientists and philosophers.) By the 1,500s all of the intangibles were being divided, some were left in the care of religion, some were proven to belong to science, but what to do with the others? Well, whatever religion did not want and science could not prove became the supernatural. Simple The word "superstition" came a few hundred years later and represents an ignorant belief, so "heaven and hell" are Christian superstitions, "reincarnation" is a superstition from Eastern religions/philosophies, there are Voodoo superstitions, Pagan superstitions, and probably even folklore superstitions. But all superstitions represent the same thing, a belief that is different, and therefore ignorant, that involves the supernatural. For a person like me, who has no religious beliefs, it appears that "God", who is arguably the President of the Paranormal Club, and beliefs that are "authorized" by religions, are allowed--but unauthorized beliefs are not. So it appears that when a person states that the paranormal/supernatural is not accepted because of science, they are not being honest--as it is religion and beliefs that dictate the acceptability of the supernatural/paranormal. This appears to be a false dichotomy. When studying consciousness (God), I threw out the artificial divisions that were given to us by religion. My reasoning in this is that it is impossible to get an answer to a question, if the question is not asked, and artificial divisions prevent questions from being asked. For example: Religion states that each of us has a soul that is within us, and God is everywhere else. This means that we can have hunches, gut feelings, instincts, intuition, and the idea that something "rings true" because these things are all within us--like our soul. But we can not have knowledge that is outside of us without a physical cause, because that is where God rules, so obviously ESP can not be real. But it is. So the question becomes, how is this knowledge acquired? Another example is that souls are deposited in our bodies by God; therefore, reincarnation can not be possible, as souls are supposed to stay where God puts them and not go flitting about. But Dr. Ian Stevenson's work seems to find that this may not be true. So I have been working on more valid divisions of what is, what we can know, and how we know it, using what we now understand about the different aspects of mind as taught by Freud, rather than religious beliefs. It is working. When people state that the supernatural does not exist because science has not proven it, they are actually following the dictates of religion, because the supernatural is just something that has not yet been explained and understood. The Ancients did not have to deal with this nonsense, so they could examine all parts of life and learn. But science did not know what it does today, and Freud had not yet broken down and defined the Ego, SuperEgo, and Id, so the Ancients did not understand how the different aspects of mind work together and independently. We have that advantage, if we have the sense to use it. Is there some problem with my logic here? Something that I am missing? G In order to understand the mind in all its mysteries, questions, doubts, fears and etc, you must question the very 1st interactions of where these mysteries, questions, doubts, fears and etc " came from. Doing this will allow "you" the space in your mind to understand what defines " you" and what "you" perceive as true consciousness. This will then rid you of : your 1st interactions of where these mysteries, questions, doubts, fears and etc " came from. You then enjoy " bliss" never wrong nor right just being you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gees Posted August 1, 2013 Author Share Posted August 1, 2013 In order to understand the mind in all its mysteries, questions, doubts, fears and etc, you must question the very 1st interactions of where these mysteries, questions, doubts, fears and etc " came from. Doing this will allow "you" the space in your mind to understand what defines " you" and what "you" perceive as true consciousness. This will then rid you of : your 1st interactions of where these mysteries, questions, doubts, fears and etc " came from. You then enjoy " bliss" never wrong nor right just being you. Iwonderaboutthings; Thank you for your advice. This sounds like introspective study as taught by Eastern religions, and although a valid way to study consciousness, it is not the path that I have chosen. If, in fact, I were a teacher, who could guide other people with my understandings, then this might be a valid way for me to study, but I am not a teacher, and that is not my circumstance. So if I chose to study my mind in order to obtain "bliss", then it would be a selfish study for my own purposes and my own satisfaction. You will forgive me for "just being" me and choosing another way. G Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tar Posted August 1, 2013 Share Posted August 1, 2013 Gees, I will mostly agree with your post previous to Iwonderaboutthings, and also have more or less the same reaction to his/her advice. I have pretty much discounted the "secrets of the Vedas" after lengthy discussions and debates with the now banned "Immortal". Reaching Nirvana, as I have suggested, is a rather unitary, selfish thing to do. It does not properly account for the rest of us. All this "listen to the silence" stuff, and "know the world with no feeling or thought of self" is basically bull poo poo. I think you and me are in agreement on the fact that to be a self, you need a point of focus, from which you are operating. Not that you can not know or associate with the "other" components of reality, but you would not know of it, or be aware of it, unless you were experiencing it "1st hand", and this, in my understanding, can only be accomplished by "being" at a particular place, at the current moment. The very thing that I believe creates consciousness and awareness in the first place, is the exact thing that the Vedic folk are trying to ignore, downplay and make illusionary. While at the same time promoting the imaginations of the the self, and the projection of such upon the greater reality, as "the real reality". Seems a rather goofy philosophy, with some internal contradictions, and I would suggest that you indeed can find out about the world and truth by introspection, but that is only because you have already internalized, and built an analog model of the thing, and in that way, do contain it. But as Plato and his cave and shadows on the wall, point out, the thing casting the shadow, is more real than the shadow that it casts, and because of this, one should not get the situation backward, and consider their thoughts more real than the thing about which they are having the thoughts, and the thing which they sense and feel and are made out of, in the first place. But the worst thing about The Secrets of the Vedas, is that in reality, life and consciousness is not a secret, anybody who has it, knows the secret is already out of the bag. Its standing right before them, and they are completely and 100% part and parcel of the thing. Anybody claiming to know a secret about it, that others are not aware of, is rather fooling themselves, and their "students". Besides which, "they" cannot learn or feel or think or know a damn thing, unless it is "themselves" doing the learning or the feeling or the thinking or the knowing or the forgetting or the emptying, or the not thinking or the not knowing or whatever else it might be that would "tune oneself" properly to the alledged "truth" of the universe. Its rather obvious to me that every human alive has already picked up on the fact that they are here, experiencing the place. --- "I disagree. How can life "want" to be alive before it is alive? There has to be an organising constant influencing life's emergence. A cause for the effect." Well, yes and no. There are emergent things that have an identity, a "personality", a form and structure and characteristics, that their component parts do not possess. Take water and air and the heat from the Sun, and "Sandy" wanders up the East Coast and fells trees and floods seacoast towns, and plunges millions in to darkness and cold. Or take a flock of birds that make a pattern, a huge shape in the sky, different than the shape and size of any single bird. Or take the United States of America, that has a purpose, and a character and personality, far in excess of the personality and characteristics of a single person, even a president. Must there be a flockness, before there is a bird? Or does the flock emerge at the exact moment that a group of birds fly in the same direction? There does need to be precursors of, and components of consciousness, but counsciousness does not have to, come before its apparent. It rather more or less has to come the moment it happens. Regards, TAR2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gees Posted August 3, 2013 Author Share Posted August 3, 2013 Gees, I will mostly agree with your post previous to Iwonderaboutthings, and also have more or less the same reaction to his/her advice. Thank you for this confirmation. It is difficult for me to keep spilling my thoughts onto this page when all I receive in return is criticism. Discussion is nice, and helps me to learn. I have pretty much discounted the "secrets of the Vedas" after lengthy discussions and debates with the now banned "Immortal". Reaching Nirvana, as I have suggested, is a rather unitary, selfish thing to do. It does not properly account for the rest of us. I agree, and your post gave me quite a few chuckles in this regard. Sometimes, being a woman has it's advantages, in that I was never encouraged to reach for "enlightenment". Although there are some sects that do encourage women, most do not, so I was spared this experience. But neither can I completely discount the philosophy, as I do see value in it. Of course, I can see value in every philosophy, philosopher, religion, and science, because there is always some truth there. Religion is about faith and science is about facts, but that does not change the reality that they both reveal some truth. I suspect that the reason most western thinkers have problems with eastern philosophy is that we miss the point--eastern religion/philosophy is about acceptance of what is real and true. Most western religions are based on reward; the Jews are "chosen", the Islamists have their "virgins", and the Christians have their "heaven", so when we look to the eastern religions/philosophies, we hone in on "Nirvana" and "bliss"--seeking the reward. We really are kind of paganistic from a certain perspective. Since I have never really studied these philosophies, please correct me if I am wrong, but I think that Nirvana and bliss are simply terms that describe the feeling that one experiences when they reach enlightenment--so the purpose is enlightenment. To learn. So learning for the purpose of sharing a truth would be that of a teacher or monk, but learning for self satisfaction would be self serving. All this "listen to the silence" stuff, and "know the world with no feeling or thought of self" is basically bull poo poo. I think you and me are in agreement on the fact that to be a self, you need a point of focus, from which you are operating. Not that you can not know or associate with the "other" components of reality, but you would not know of it, or be aware of it, unless you were experiencing it "1st hand", and this, in my understanding, can only be accomplished by "being" at a particular place, at the current moment. Yes, a point of focus is required. On the other hand, "being" has been long studied because where, who, and what we actually are is in question. Some believe that we are the actual body of ourselves, some believe that we are the thoughts of ourselves, some believe that we are the soul, or spirit, of ourselves, so "being" is not really answered. And then there is the question of whether or not "being" still exists when there is no longer a body, so I can see the interest in this type of introspective study. The very thing that I believe creates consciousness and awareness in the first place, is the exact thing that the Vedic folk are trying to ignore, downplay and make illusionary. While at the same time promoting the imaginations of the the self, and the projection of such upon the greater reality, as "the real reality". While I see your point and agree with it, it seems to me that what these people are actually trying to accomplish is to remove their awareness from the Ego, the self or rational mind, and place their awareness in the SuperEgo, the unconscious mind. This would be very difficult to accomplish and would take years of practice and meditation, but I think that some people have accomplished it. I base my opinions on the similarities between Dr. Blanco's studies, what is known about the Aether, statements about the Vedas, understandings from psychology, and my own studies. So I see their "loss of self" as terminology that explains this foray into the unconscious mind, but I am not at all convinced that this is the "real reality", just another perspective of reality. Seems a rather goofy philosophy, with some internal contradictions, and I would suggest that you indeed can find out about the world and truth by introspection, but that is only because you have already internalized, and built an analog model of the thing, and in that way, do contain it. Agreed. Prior to life, this is a moot argument as there would be no containment of the information. But as Plato and his cave and shadows on the wall, point out, the thing casting the shadow, is more real than the shadow that it casts, and because of this, one should not get the situation backward, and consider their thoughts more real than the thing about which they are having the thoughts, and the thing which they sense and feel and are made out of, in the first place. Agreed and a wonderful argument for validating what we call the supernatural. We should not let our imaginings assume that they are a greater reality than our feelings and observations. Its rather obvious to me that every human alive has already picked up on the fact that they are here, experiencing the place. But what happens when they die? Are they still here? This is the ultimate question in all minds, so a foray into the unconscious is not out of bounds with regard to these questions. There are emergent things that have an identity, a "personality", a form and structure and characteristics, that their component parts do not possess. Take water and air and the heat from the Sun, and "Sandy" wanders up the East Coast and fells trees and floods seacoast towns, and plunges millions in to darkness and cold. Or take a flock of birds that make a pattern, a huge shape in the sky, different than the shape and size of any single bird. Or take the United States of America, that has a purpose, and a character and personality, far in excess of the personality and characteristics of a single person, even a president. Must there be a flockness, before there is a bird? Or does the flock emerge at the exact moment that a group of birds fly in the same direction? There does need to be precursors of, and components of consciousness, but counsciousness does not have to, come before its apparent. It rather more or less has to come the moment it happens. I think there is a process that regulates and refines the growing complexities of consciousness. I was not going to do this, but at the moment people seem to be less obstructive and adversarial about my thoughts, so below I will post my latest attempt at defining the levels of consciousness in species for your review and thoughts. (As soon as I find it.) G Awareness In Species (copied from a post that I made in another forum) This is my second attempt, after studying consciousness in the on-line SEP (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), to interpret the levels of awareness in species. It is a little long for a post, but I could not find a way to shorten it. If anyone has the patience and interest to review it, please bear in mind that this is only one aspect of consciousness, and not meant to interpret more than simple awareness. I have numbered the levels for ease of discussion, and your comments are, of course, welcome. 1. The first level would be a classification of non-awareness, or things that can give the appearance of being aware, but do not really qualify as aware. This is where Dennett's computers belong, as they can only give the appearance of being aware if someone remembers to change the batteries. It is my understanding that viruses would also be in this category, as they are not really a life form, but will take up the qualities of a life form when in a parasitic relationship with an actual life form. In both of these cases, the "source" of awareness comes from other matter, so it is my opinion that a virus is probably the only form that is actually representative of the idea that lower species are more mechanical and robotic, than aware. 2. This level, and on, would be true life, so it would represent an activation of the "universal (potential) awareness" and matter. As was previously discussed, universal awareness is theoretically aware of all knowledge, but is actually aware of nothing, because it has no ability to focus. So the first life forms would be at the microbial level, or more probably below that level, and would give universal awareness a focus point. Does that mean that a small piece of nothing chemical compound now has access to all knowledge? No. It would have no ability to hold the knowledge, sort the knowledge, or use the knowledge, so it would only be aware of awareness. Like a spark that starts and quickly dies, this first life would be fragile and short lived, but it would possess an awareness of the need to continue. All life needs to continue, so it would access any knowledge that supported that goal. So one of the first things that life would do is learn how to reproduce, or duplicate itself. This means that the first two instincts of all life forms would be to continue and to reproduce toward that end. This first life form would not be able to distinguish between matter and non-matter, or self and other, and would have only a focus point, or identity, for universal awareness. 3. This level would be "communal", and it should be noted that this level precedes the division of plant life from animal life, as the "communal" aspect is prevalent in both plant and other life. This "communal" level would be the result of life forms duplicating themselves repeatedly until they have formed a mass of identical life forms; such as, clumps of grass, sponges, cells, or microbes. Not being a biologist, I don't know for sure, but I have never heard of microbes being cannibalistic, and suggest that it would not be conducive to survival, so I think they work together. This would also be where hormones/pheromones come into play to create a communication between cells which turn individual cells into a single unit. I do know that trees will communicate with trees of the same kind, and will even merge with other trees, if they are the same kind. So this leads me to suppose that communal species experience a "oneness" or communal awareness that helps them to survive. This "oneness" is compatible with Dr. Blanco's understanding of the sub/unconscious mind, and I believe that Jung had ideas on this "oneness", and this may be the root of the sub/unconscious mind, and like the sub/unconscious mind, it would be more aware of non-matter than of matter. 4. This level is where plant life forks away from other life forms, and shows an awareness of matter for the first time. Of course, we are not really talking about plants and animals because this is a very primitive level, but there is a distinct difference in the way food is acquired. Some life forms begin to move within their environment in order to find food, and these will evolve into many different species of animal, fish, and fowl. But others, instead of moving within the environment, actually manipulate themselves in order to acquire food, and these life forms will eventually evolve into plants, as plants are the only life forms that can actually grow in a direction that will provide them with food, water, sunshine, etc. Although this level exhibits an awareness of matter, it does not, in my opinion, exhibit an awareness of itself as being distinct from that matter. This is where the evolution of awareness in plant life seems to come to a halt, as plant life does not seem capable of seeing itself as being separate from, or distinct from, other life, the environment, or even matter and non-matter. Rather it seems to be aware only of it's 'oneness', the need to continue, and the need to reproduce. 5. This level is where life develops senses and can distinguish between itself and other. Through sight, smell, taste, sound, etc., life begins to be able to discern what is itself, and what is not itself, and exhibits this awareness by moving within its environment, seeking food, and fleeing danger. Once senses are developed, the species becomes more ensconced in material awareness, and less in non-material awareness, and I suspect that this is also where we start to find a "brain" or something similar within the bodies of these species. The rational conscious mind is designed to absorb information from the senses and use that information to support the bodily needs, so I think that this is where the rational mind, or actual consciousness, starts. So the development of senses is what causes the individual life form to be aware of itself as an individual; and although, I could not call this level "self-aware", it does learn what is and what is not part of itself. This level seems to also develop a whole fresh batch of instincts and is knowledgeable about many dangers, what is good to eat and what is not, what environment it does well in, and even develops self protections, such as camouflage. 6. This is not really a "level" per se, but should be acknowledged as a separate division of awareness in species. This is the "communal" species which is a throw back, or carry over from (3) above, and involves the herding, flocking, swarming, schooling species. These species have a number of things in common and, with few exceptions, are not known for intelligence, are often considered emotional, will share their offspring, make very good snacks for other species, and seem to move as if they are of one mind. Although well along the path of evolution, communal species, like sheep, do not exhibit the individualized independent natures of other species and do not really manipulate their environment. Instead, they seem to move or migrate within the environment as do the species noted in (3) above. Although individual, their awareness seems to come mostly from instinct, emotion, and a sort of "oneness" that choreographs their actions, which puts me in mind of the sub/unconscious mind. So could they have a communal mind or awareness? It is certainly possible, and I don't believe that I am the first person to come to this conclusion. If you check in the Old Testament of the Bible, I believe in Genesis, you will find a reference to foods that are allowed and not allowed. If I remember correctly, it was told that prior to the flood, meat was not eaten, but now it was necessary to eat meat, so specific animals would be allowed as a food source. Most, if not all, of the species allowed are herding, flocking, schooling, and swarming species--with a few exceptions thrown in or out for specific reasons. When I first read Genesis, 40 years ago, I did not understand the significance of communal species, but now believe that people were trying to find a way to eat meat, while still obeying the commandment of "Thou shalt not kill." It occurs to me that "culling" a sheep from the flock for dinner could be considered the same as picking an apple from a tree, as you are not really killing the life force. So I suspect that someone considered that communal species were of one mind, one awareness, one life force; so culling a sheep from the flock would be like pruning a tree for the health of the tree. 7. This level may be self-aware, but it is disputable. A distinct level should be made for species that can and will manipulate their environment for their own purposes. This level would include animals like beavers or birds or insects that make a home in the environment, but would also include any species that will use a stick or shell or leaf as a tool. Even a rabbit that digs in the ground to create a home would be included, but a species that moves into an already dug or formed hole, would not be included, nor would something like worms that dig instinctively as a way to survive. This level shows increased intelligence, but also an awareness that it's environment can be manipulated and is at the disposal of the species. This gives some indication of an awareness of "self". 8. This level is self-aware and exhibits that self-awareness with the concept of "mine". I understand that many people do not think that other species are self-aware, but hope to change those minds with the following examples. In each of the categories below, the species in question exhibit an ownership of something, and will fight to retain that ownership, so it is my thought that one can not have ownership without also having a self. a. Family Species: From mice to whales, there are many species that raise their young in a family unit. It does not matter how long it takes to raise the young, or even if there is a continuing relationship after the babies have grown, as that is more to do with memory than self-awareness. What matters is that the parents believe that the young belong to them--this is possession, ownership, and denotes a sense of self. In family species, the parent(s) will protect the young, nurture the young, and often defend the young from attack, like birds that will dive-bomb us because we are too close to their nest, or whales that will shadow or attack a ship when a young one is caught in a net, or a cat that will scratch because someone picked up her new kitten. Now it has been argued that this is simply instinct, and I agree, it is instinct--just like ours--which is irrelevant to self-awareness. It is also instinct for a sea turtle to lay her eggs in the sand and swim away leaving her young to make a mad dash for the sea to avoid predators when they hatch. And it is also instinct for a black widow spider to paralyze her mate and lay her eggs on his body to feed her young, and walk away. In these last two examples, instinct was involved, but there was no "mine" concept regarding the young. Species that raise young in a family unit are self-aware. b. Territorial Species: In order for a species to be territorial, it must choose a territory that is "mine", then it must defend that territory. From eagles to lions to dogs defending their homes, these species are all staking a claim on some property and defending that property from all comers. To claim any property for themselves, they must first have a self, so it is my opinion that all territorial species are indeed self-aware. c. Pack Species: Pack species go beyond self-awareness, as they also have to be aware of others within the pack. In a pack, each animal has a position, or rank, and it has to maintain that position, improve that position, or lose that position and possibly be exiled from the pack. There is a hierarchy within a pack, so if the leader dies, then others will challenge for the position of leader and a new leader is found, then the others will fall behind the leader in order of rank and authority. Instinct can provide the concept of "pack" and most of the behavior, but it can not account for the desire of one animal to lead the pack, and for the other animals to accept that leadership, only to challenge it at some future point. Instinct also does not explain an animal's ability to maintain its position within the pack, as that is a social skill. Pack animals are most definitely aware of themselves and their position. 9. This level of awareness is about species that are more than simply self-aware, as they are also aware of other selves within other species on a personal level. These species can form attachments to other species and even adapt to life with other species, and would include horses, dogs, elephants, pigs, some apes, etc. An animal, let's say a horse, that can live in it's own environment, then adapt to a human environment and even bond with a human exhibiting loyalty and friendship, shows tremendous intelligence, emotional and social maturity, and awareness beyond it's own self and the limits of its species. We often refer to these species as being "tame" and assume that we have some magical ability to make them aware of our wants, but this is not so. This is an awareness that is part of the species' abilities, and if anyone does not think so, please explain why we can not really "tame" a house cat. 10. This level of awareness involves a species' ability to understand the abstract. Much has been made of the "mirror" test, and it has been stated that this test shows that an animal is self-aware. But I think that it shows much more than that, because in order for an animal to understand that the image in the mirror is actually him/her self, then that animal has to be able to conceive of, and identify with, a third-party abstract of him/her self. This is awareness of the abstract, the intangible, and it is awareness that understands the tangible material world and the intangible idea world--just like us. So is there anyone else who has studied species' awareness in this way? Can anyone see where I have made major mistakes in my understandings? Any comments? G Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tar Posted August 3, 2013 Share Posted August 3, 2013 Gees, Well, thanks for the breakdown. It is mostly consistent with such a breakdown that I might attempt, and includes many of the components that I would seek to incorporate and study and such, but I would shy away from a level boundry between one species and the next, since there may be overlaps, and would argue that you might accidentally discount required components, if you assign possessions that you have not fully explained to one species, that might be included or required or apparent in another species, on a different level or in a different way, or to a different extent, that would belong to the species you have denied the component inorder to establish the boundry. For instance, the distinction you make between a species that makes its own hole, or uses another's, can be interpreted either way, in terms of which species is more aware of their enviroment, or uses it more wisely. And the level on which a species is operating, may not be apparent to, or important to us, beyond its use to us, as food or labor, or in consideration of its tendency to compete for the same resources as us, or to use us as a resource. So we probably should not consider us at level 10 or 11, on the way to 12, or we might exibit a confirmation bias, as in "this" is the top of the food chain, and therefore the most "aware" of the species, and thereby where all species should be heading, and any failure on their part to be completely human in all their characteristics, is thereby a measure of their unawareness. For instance, a string of DNA, or a mitochondria, would by human definition, be less aware, and more an unthinking chemical lump, than another thinking, caring human that you may be communicating your thoughts and plans and desires to, but that string of DNA knows how to put a human together, knows how to metabolise, knows how to be what it is, and by definition already knows, has to know, how to do what it does. In this light, I do not think you can demote a virus to the rank on the consciousness scale, that you demote it to. I think instead there is something in a virus that is very much required for life, and it already exhibits the "grabbing from" characteristic. And in addition, I would watch out for demoting a thing, based upon its "fleeting" nature. This primarily based upon my understanding that even a species of tree, taken from beginning to end, has spanned but a fleeting moment and a tiny space in the expanse of space and time. The relative nature of "fleeting" should be considered, and should not be considered a characterist that we don't already have, as one of our strengths, or that is not already an important part of our nature. One of the Vedic insights that I adhere to, is the concept of the "middle way". I probably define it differently than intended, but I look at it from the position I appear to be in. Much larger and more long lived than the spark, and much smaller and more momentary than the Sun. But no "better than" nor "other than" either. Regards, TAR2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gees Posted August 3, 2013 Author Share Posted August 3, 2013 Tars; I agree with your assessment, and many of your concerns were also mine. At the time I wrote that post, there were a large number of people at that forum, who were denying that other species possessed any kind of awareness, so my idea was to present logical proof that species were aware and why I thought so. Yes, many of the levels would conflict with others and may even be skipped, or duplicated in one species. They also would not necessarily be in that order. But I think that I made my point that species are aware. The truth is that we can not know for sure that all species are not as aware as we are--they may be. How could we know? But we can logically prove some of it. The other point that I was interesting in making is the difference between the conscious and unconscous aspects, as I am not sure that all species would be aware on a conscious level, and was interested in starting to define where the dividing line might be. There is a kind of oneness that is present in the unconscious aspect of mind, and I suspect that this oneness is a feature of herding, flocking, schooling, swarming types of species, so this is interesting also. I had no choice but to put people at ten, or I would have had to deal with the arrogant denials of humans, and I put viruses in nonlife because this is what biology has decreed and I have no authority to dispute this. G Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tar Posted August 3, 2013 Share Posted August 3, 2013 Gees, Well good. I think we are after filling in the same blanks. Let me add a notion, or aspect of this that I think is required. The ability to learn. This is something we humans have, and something that seems to happen in different ways in different life forms, and at different levels or in different modes. For instance an ant colony can "learn" where a fallen large bug is, and send a rather large contingent out to disassemble it and carry it back to the hill. Does this require that the queen knows the location of the bug? That is, does she hold a map in her head, as we do, and cause her minnions to excercise the plan to retreive the thing by means of chemical signals? Or are the army ants an extention of or organs of an organism that just happens to have developed with the organs attached by tempory chemical trails, and not by sinew and bone? There is an aspect to this as well, in terms of human awareness, where some of our learning is done outside the body, or knowledge, important to our survival, retained in the brains and awareness of others of our species. We learn from our parents, our schools, our churches, our companies and institutions, our friends and our relatives. Part of our awareness is therefore borrowed from our enviroment, not only what we experience of it ourselves, but what others of like mind and purpose have witnessed. This added feature, moves the boundries out, from the skin that envelopes a person, and each and every aspect of awareness can not be solely defined by the genes that are housed within the skin. Thus, when it come to raising consciousness one could consider at least two meanings. That which the collective consciousness (or at least an other member) is already aware of, instilled into a member. And those "insights" that a particular member might have of their own volition, which may or may not be shared by the body politic, but which makes the member more aware, non-the-less. In this light, or along these lines, an earlier question of yours might be answered. What happens to your consciousness, when you die? My suggestion is, that it depends on who you told about it, or shared it with, and whether or not they are still alive and hold the thing in their memory. Regards, TAR2 Two additional thoughts. One on memory, and one on reproduction. An old vinyl record has a memory. The record of a series of vibrations existant at the time of recording exists in an analog representational way, in the sides of the grooves. Crystals reproduce their form. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cladking Posted August 3, 2013 Share Posted August 3, 2013 This is a very interesting discussion and doubly so since I'm in general agreement with it. I don't believe there are so many sorts of consciousness though but the difference is more a degree of consciousness. I doubt there is so much difference between any two animals as is being suggested. Certainly bacterial, plant and small animal conmsciousness is probably pretty limited in scope but other animals experience life pretty similarly. Even something like a toad might have some limitations to his awareness and if you look in its eyes it appears no one's home but I wouldstill imagine he'd express life in much the same way as other animals were he capable of such expression. My largest disagreement might be with the differentiation of "flocking" animals. All social animals tend to flock and this applies to humans as well when they share a destination. Watch the cars turning left at a green light; if the first car makes an illegal turn there's a nearly 90% probability that they will all make the turn illegally. If the first car makes a legal turn there's about a 75% chance they all will. Some people will follow the car in front of them across a railroad track on the assumption that it must have been safe for him. Every year millions of college students congregate in Florida or whereever the current hot spot happens to be. Everytime Notre Dame plays a football game at home South Bend becomes impassable even if you're notgoing to the "big game". There are numerous natural advantages to flocking and recent research shows that the individual in front isn't necessarily the leader and that almost any individual in some species can become the leader. We tend to anthropomorphize them even when their actions are dissimilar to humans. What sets humans apart is language and it is language the allows the huge "unconscious" that we possess. We not only learn through language but we uuse it to think. While language is "confused" as a medium of communication it is somewhat more effective as medium of thought since we know the exact definition of intended words, each referent, and the meaning of any grammar. To a very real extent it is the massive amount of learning and logic that allows formation of the unconscious which can provide us with relevant or important input on a just in time basis. The unconscious of other animals is not only smaller (usually very smaller) but it contains information they've learned on their own and is only of value to that individiual or to other members of their own species. The real difference between consciousness in life forms is nominal and apparent rather than real. The apparent difference between humans and termites is primarily the result of language. We tend to downplay the accomplishments of other species but they are just as real and require theory just as much as brain surgery or rocket science. Beavers didn't stumble on dam building any more than Neil Armstrong just stumbled onto the moon. It's a matter of degree and not intelligence and not consciousness. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tar Posted August 4, 2013 Share Posted August 4, 2013 Cladking, Language and the "meaning" behind it, is my central theme over the last two or three years. It is a differentiator when it comes to humans, or maybe when it comes to mammals. We humans seem to have it well documented and honed pretty well. Interesting though, that when people are speaking Hindi to each other, I have no clue what is being expressed and shared, past the circumstance, tone of voice, body language and expression. Its a learned thing. The ability to symbolize, have one sound or groups of sounds or symbols in a certain order, stand for something else, is innate, but the particular content, the particular mapping is a learned thing. But as to the meaning, a cloud is still a cloud, a pidgeon is still a pidgeon, and friendship is still friendship, and known to a person whatever language they speak, or if they are deaf and mute and illiterate. So when it comes to the supernatural and superstition, and the "feelings" and connections that Gees is talking about, there is an area of unspoken understanding, that I surmise must already be understood, and accepted as given, obvious, plainly true and real, that not only does not require an utterance to express, but that is nearly falsified by any utterance, or at least diminished severly. "you don't understand what I mean" raises an odd group of misunderstandings. Is it even possible, that everybody, wouldn't already know reality? Is it even possible that one of us could somehow have a closer relationship to it, or "understand" it better than another human, or a termite for that matter? Particular facts about it, certainly can be known by one and not another. ALL of it, cannot be known by a peice of it, any better, than it is already known, by default. In reading the Koran, I noticed that Mohammed ascribed characteristics to Allah, that I knew were not reasonable and true. They did not fit the thing I already know is the case. Yet, as Gees points out, there is some truth to it. Some of it fits, and the "meaning" behind the words is understood, understood already, without the words. I just don't go along with the words that diminish and falsify the thing. So, supernatural, that which is beyond the natural, evident, speakable world around us, might be just that which we can't properly put words to, but we really don't have the need to. This may be why the phrase "one nation under God" does not bother me, as an Atheist, because I already understand the meaning behind. As clearly as I know what a pidgeon is. Regards, TAR2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gees Posted August 4, 2013 Author Share Posted August 4, 2013 Tar and Cladking; There are so many interesting responses in your posts, and I would like to address all of them, but can't. For the past six weeks, I have been fluxuating between too much pain and too much codine, so I am not at my best. If I do not respond immediately, don't give up on me--I am thinking about it. Next week a procedure is scheduled that may help. In the meantime, I would like to address a few points. Let me add a notion, or aspect of this that I think is required. The ability to learn. If you consider this point from the perspective of Panpsychism, which theorizes that all matter has a mental aspect, then the question is answered. When two different chemicals mix to make a new more complex substance, then that new substance is a different thing. If you then assume that all matter knows it's own identity, then it is easy to see that this combining caused the matter to "learn" what it now is. So just as the "want" of attraction and repulsion in matter becomes the "want" of awareness in life, I suspect that all matter and life are capable of learning. Matter can only "learn" what it is, but that is still change and learning. Life can learn what it is, but can also learn about things outside of it, because it is aware. imo Thus, when it come to raising consciousness one could consider at least two meanings. That which the collective consciousness (or at least an other member) is already aware of, instilled into a member. And those "insights" that a particular member might have of their own volition, which may or may not be shared by the body politic, but which makes the member more aware, non-the-less. I suspect that there is a collective consciousness, and that it is shared rather intimately by all of the individuals in any species through the unconscious aspect of mind. Jung, Dr. Blanco, and many others have considered this oneness, and suspect that it is something we share unconsciously and probably through our dreams. It is my thought that this is one of the reasons that dreams are so important, and why we can actually lose our mental control when we can't dream, much like the way we lose our control when put into isolation. I think that dreaming is just another connection, like a computer that downloads into a mainframe at night, without this connection we go a little nuts, and sometimes die. This also helps to explain why we make these leaps into new ideas, where historically we seem to be able to "leap" into whole new concepts as a species. I think that we are sharing much more than we know, so many different minds begin to ask similar questions causing the answer to be found. More on this when I can explain it better. An old vinyl record has a memory. The record of a series of vibrations existant at the time of recording exists in an analog representational way, in the sides of the grooves. Just as a book has memory, but no reader, so no awareness. Crystals reproduce their form. There are a lot of people, who study the paranormal, that have an interest in crystals--but I know nothing about them. This is a very interesting discussion and doubly so since I'm in general agreement with it. I don't believe there are so many sorts of consciousness though but the difference is more a degree of consciousness. I doubt there is so much difference between any two animals as is being suggested. Certainly bacterial, plant and small animal conmsciousness is probably pretty limited in scope but other animals experience life pretty similarly. Well, I am glad you find it interesting. Your comments are also interesting and stimulating. We agree just enough to find common ground, but disagree just enough to promote discussion. This is good for learning. Although I agree that consciousness is more a matter of degree, there are different aspects of consciousness, so this makes it more a case of degree(s) which can complicate the mix. Bear in mind that when we are discussing consciousness, what we are really discussing is what a species can be, or is, aware of. Take the comparison of a pack animal like a wolf and a territorial animal like a leopard. Pack animals tend to keep their young within the pack and create a larger pack, but territorial animals like the leopard tend to push their off-spring away when they are grown. Why? It is my thought that a pack animal is more aware of social memory, but a territorial animal is more aware of property memory, so the pack animal can afford to keep it's young around because they can remember who the young belong to. But a territorial animal would not remember that social connection, would see the young as just another of the species, so this would promote too much inbreeding. Species that do not have a strong social memory would therefore push their young away by the time mating is required. So I suspect that it is a distinct difference in awareness that causes this instinctive behavior--part of the balance. imo Please note that I agree that there is more similarity in species' awareness than difference, but was just trying to provide logical proof that they are in fact aware. My largest disagreement might be with the differentiation of "flocking" animals. All social animals tend to flock and this applies to humans as well when they share a destination. It is not my thought that "flocking species" are different as much as it is my thought that their development seems to have stopped. It is my belief that flocking, or group-think, behavior is an aspect of the unconscious mind, just as individual thinking is an aspect of the rational conscious mind--or the emergence that science identifies as consciousness. Since the unconscious mind came first, it seems to me that all species have the capacity for "group-think", but some seem to function by group-think behavior more than by individual behavior. These species tend to also not be very bright individually and tend to be very emotional. The unconscious aspect of mind is ruled by emotion. I remember stories told by cowboys that they used to sing to the cattle to prevent stampedes. The thinking was scare a cow, scare them all; calm a cow, calm them all--group think. There are numerous natural advantages to flocking and recent research shows that the individual in front isn't necessarily the leader and that almost any individual in some species can become the leader. Because I am not a very social person, myself, I have trouble seeing those "advantages", but will take your word for it. (chuckle) I agree that there is no real leader and that this is more a matter of a flowing group behavior. There are a lot of people who will deny ESP and state that any "awareness" comes from body language and other observations. I do not agree. I can see where a running, bawling cow could make the others run, as in the example above, but I fail to see how a calm cow could make the others calm. Of course, these observations come from cowboys, so what could a bunch of wisened old cowboys know? (chuckle chuckle) What sets humans apart is language and it is language the allows the huge "unconscious" that we possess. We not only learn through language but we use it to think. While language is "confused" as a medium of communication it is somewhat more effective as medium of thought since we know the exact definition of intended words, each referent, and the meaning of any grammar. To a very real extent it is the massive amount of learning and logic that allows formation of the unconscious which can provide us with relevant or important input on a just in time basis. While I agree with most of this, I think that you may not appreciate all of the layers of the unconscious aspect of mind. While thought can influence and "allow" growth in the unconscious, it is just as important to remember that the unconscious came before the conscious, so there is more going on there than you imply. The unconscious of other animals is not only smaller (usually very smaller) but it contains information they've learned on their own and is only of value to that individual or to other members of their own species. The real difference between consciousness in life forms is nominal and apparent rather than real. I agree. Sometimes I tend to think of the various unconscious collectives of different species as a kind of area, or country code, that connects them, or dials into their oneness. There has to be something that causes a connection between individuals in a specie, but limits it to that specie, much like pheromones seem able to communicate with a specific specie. Although pheromones can give some information to other species, most of the information is limited for the use and prosperity of the intended specie. The apparent difference between humans and termites is primarily the result of language. We tend to downplay the accomplishments of other species but they are just as real and require theory just as much as brain surgery or rocket science. Beavers didn't stumble on dam building any more than Neil Armstrong just stumbled onto the moon. I remember reading a quote once that said, "What makes mankind so superior to other life?" My answer was, "Mankind's opinion." (chuckle chuckle) It's a matter of degree and not intelligence and not consciousness. Degree(s). G Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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