Wooly Speculations on Consciousness and Time (for BarrelofM)

[_Mary]

Ray, you shoot off the 'eat drink and be merry thing' with (and it shouldn't necessarily be so) the religious baggage that comes with it and implications for moral depravity. (I think Mercury, Vegas or it might even have been pp quipped back at me once when they thought I had done the same thing..)

If we examine the eat, drink and be merry (outside of images of boozy orgies in 18th century England or France) thing, without the baggage then all it's saying is to eat (which we all need to do), drink (yep we need to do that one too) and be happy, and yes tomorrow we really will die.....

Make the most of life while we have it, I took that from pp's post, not an excuse to down copious amounts of Bacardi Rum, and sleep with the whole of the English football team!

Mary

[_Polygamy Porter]

Ray, you shoot off the 'eat drink and be merry thing' with (and it shouldn't necessarily be so) the religious baggage that comes with it and implications for moral depravity. (I think Mercury, Vegas or it might even have been pp quipped back at me once when they thought I had done the same thing..)

If we examine the eat, drink and be merry (outside of images of boozy orgies in 18th century England or France) thing, without the baggage then all it's saying is to eat (which we all need to do), drink (yep we need to do that one too) and be happy, and yes tomorrow we really will die.....

Make the most of life while we have it, I took that from pp's post, not an excuse to down copious amounts of Bacardi Rum, and sleep with the whole of the English football team!

Mary

Mmmmm Captian Morgan's spiced rum...... yummy

[_Tarski]

Tarski,

Is our consciousness separate from our physical body or is it some inexticable way wound up with it?

Well, I was just speculating on some ideas that I myself don't put at lot of credence in.
I have to keep repeating this.

In my mind, consciousness in one tractable sense is just a certain contellation of physical activities for survival.
Certain information content in the brain is considered conscious if it plays a big enough role at any given moment in what's going on in the ecology of the brains cognition.
Read Dennet's book "Consiousness Explained" to get a better idea of a view of consiousness that is physicalistic and is close to my working assumptions.

On the other hand, there is the remaining possibility that there is more to it--something basic and irreducible (but what??).
But, even if that is the case, then I would not expect that consciousness exists as a ghostlike something that exists independent of any physical activity --i.e. not as an independent ontological realm. But perhaps it might be an aspect of physical existence in general that pervades wherever matter does its active dance. Some have proposed that this aspect should be identified with information. But again, I was proposing a mere speculation wherein individual egos do not survive death anymore than a tree survives a forest fire---but that as matter changes form and new patterns of activity emerge, one might wonder if this supposed extra basic aspect of consciousness pervades and survives too. I guess this is a "dual aspect" view of reality, a view that is hard to make good sense out of even if it has a certain intuitive apeal.

You know, the difficulty of making good sense out of such speculations is one reason I usualy stick to a physicalist and moderately behaviorist view of consciousness as described in Dennett's book.

Do we imagine and ask questions of our 'continued' existence (in some form) simply as a coping mechanism for why we experience the poignance of death,
or
do we ask questions of our existence because of some 'intuitive' sense that a part of us is and has lived outside of this reality?

Something like the former probably- but I guess one can't be completely sure.

[_amantha]

Tarski,

Is our consciousness separate from our physical body or is it some inexticable way wound up with it?

Well, I was just speculating on some ideas that I myself don't put at lot of credence in.
I have to keep repeating this.

In my mind, consciousness in one tractable sense is just a certain contellation of physical activities for survival.
Certain information content in the brain is considered conscious if it plays a big enough role at any given moment in what's going on in the ecology of the brains cognition.
Read Dennet's book "Consiousness Explained" to get a better idea of a view of consiousness that is physicalistic and is close to my working assumptions.

On the other hand, there is the remaining possibility that there is more to it--something basic and irreducible (but what??).
But, even if that is the case, then I would not expect that consciousness exists as a ghostlike something that exists independent of any physical activity --I.e. not as an independent ontological realm. But perhaps it might be an aspect of physical existence in general that pervades wherever matter does its active dance. Some have proposed that this aspect should be identified with information. But again, I was proposing a mere speculation wherein individual egos do not survive death anymore than a tree survives a forest fire---but that as matter changes form and new patterns of activity emerge, one might wonder if this supposed extra basic aspect of consciousness pervades and survives too. I guess this is a "dual aspect" view of reality, a view that is hard to make good sense out of even if it has a certain intuitive apeal.

You know, the difficulty of making good sense out of such speculations is one reason I usualy stick to a physicalist and moderately behaviorist view of consciousness as described in Dennett's book.

Do we imagine and ask questions of our 'continued' existence (in some form) simply as a coping mechanism for why we experience the poignance of death,
or
do we ask questions of our existence because of some 'intuitive' sense that a part of us is and has lived outside of this reality?

Something like the former probably- but I guess one can't be completely sure.

Tarski,

Just to add some more speculation, if consciousness may be equated with information is it possible that the individual personality is "stored," and can be accessed by "The Self." If so, then the experience we are having now may simply be a projection of that information and what we are calling life is simply a holographic projection that has an apparent linearity. In other words, and again I am having fun speculating, in the eternal NOW, we can pop anywhere into our linear timelines and "matierialize" a permutation of the infinite possibiliites.

The personality never really dies because it never really lived. It is simply an information pattern which appears to evolve in time and space. How's that for specuation?

[_Tarski]

Tarski,

Is our consciousness separate from our physical body or is it some inexticable way wound up with it?

Well, I was just speculating on some ideas that I myself don't put at lot of credence in.
I have to keep repeating this.

In my mind, consciousness in one tractable sense is just a certain contellation of physical activities for survival.
Certain information content in the brain is considered conscious if it plays a big enough role at any given moment in what's going on in the ecology of the brains cognition.
Read Dennet's book "Consiousness Explained" to get a better idea of a view of consiousness that is physicalistic and is close to my working assumptions.

On the other hand, there is the remaining possibility that there is more to it--something basic and irreducible (but what??).
But, even if that is the case, then I would not expect that consciousness exists as a ghostlike something that exists independent of any physical activity --I.e. not as an independent ontological realm. But perhaps it might be an aspect of physical existence in general that pervades wherever matter does its active dance. Some have proposed that this aspect should be identified with information. But again, I was proposing a mere speculation wherein individual egos do not survive death anymore than a tree survives a forest fire---but that as matter changes form and new patterns of activity emerge, one might wonder if this supposed extra basic aspect of consciousness pervades and survives too. I guess this is a "dual aspect" view of reality, a view that is hard to make good sense out of even if it has a certain intuitive apeal.

You know, the difficulty of making good sense out of such speculations is one reason I usualy stick to a physicalist and moderately behaviorist view of consciousness as described in Dennett's book.

Do we imagine and ask questions of our 'continued' existence (in some form) simply as a coping mechanism for why we experience the poignance of death,
or
do we ask questions of our existence because of some 'intuitive' sense that a part of us is and has lived outside of this reality?

Something like the former probably- but I guess one can't be completely sure.

Tarski,

Just to add some more speculation, if consciousness may be equated with information is it possible that the individual personality is "stored," and can be accessed by "The Self." If so, then the experience we are having now may simply be a projection of that information and what we are calling life is simply a holographic projection that has an apparent linearity. In other words, and again I am having fun speculating, in the eternal NOW, we can pop anywhere into our linear timelines and "matierialize" a permutation of the infinite possibiliites.

The personality never really dies because it never really lived. It is simply an information pattern which appears to evolve in time and space. How's that for specuation?

Ya I have though that before. Also, go back and look at some of Hawking's attempts at quantum cosmology and see it the whole self time thing does get demolished.
More soberly, since in any incarnation we would only have the memories we do, I can't tell what the cash value of the crazy view would be. I.e. it doesn't seem like its happening so it might as well not be.

[_Gadianton]

Tarski,

Just to add some more speculation, if consciousness may be equated with information is it possible that the individual personality is "stored," and can be accessed by "The Self." If so, then the experience we are having now may simply be a projection of that information and what we are calling life is simply a holographic projection that has an apparent linearity. In other words, and again I am having fun speculating, in the eternal NOW, we can pop anywhere into our linear timelines and "matierialize" a permutation of the infinite possibiliites.

The personality never really dies because it never really lived. It is simply an information pattern which appears to evolve in time and space. How's that for specuation?

What do you mean that consciousness is "information"? If I write a bunch of really complicated stuff down on a piece of paper, that's information, could that be conscious?

[_Tarski]

Tarski,

Just to add some more speculation, if consciousness may be equated with information is it possible that the individual personality is "stored," and can be accessed by "The Self." If so, then the experience we are having now may simply be a projection of that information and what we are calling life is simply a holographic projection that has an apparent linearity. In other words, and again I am having fun speculating, in the eternal NOW, we can pop anywhere into our linear timelines and "matierialize" a permutation of the infinite possibiliites.

The personality never really dies because it never really lived. It is simply an information pattern which appears to evolve in time and space. How's that for specuation?

What do you mean that consciousness is "information"? If I write a bunch of really complicated stuff down on a piece of paper, that's information, could that be conscious?

LOL
Gad, has just pointed at one of the wool fibers in this wooly speculation.
answer:
No.

1. For human consciouness, that is the consciousness of a person at some moment, the infomation must satisfy certain conditions such as relating to the interation of the person with his or her environment. It must be contentful and active information in the persons brain that is sufficiently salient at the moment in question. Salient in what sense is a tough question but something like being able to hinge policies for action on that content might be an important component (I am think of the blind sight discusion in Dennett).

2. As for conscious in some panpsychic sense (Like Chalmers?) well all I can say is that your point is well taken.
What does Chalmers say?
Frankly, it seems to me that what counts as information depends on a perspective or a context and where do perspectives come from? LOL

Gad has popped the bubble.

[_Gadianton]

1. For human consciouness, that is the consciousness of a person at some moment, the infomation must satisfy certain conditions such as relating to the interation of the person with his or her environment. It must be contentful and active information in the persons brain that is sufficiently salient at the moment in question. Salient in what sense is a tough question but something like being able to hinge policies for action on that content might be an important component (I am think of the blind sight discusion in Dennett).

One of the things implicit in all those points about the computational model is that, a blueprint isn't the same thing as the thing being built. So consciousness might have something to do with information processing where there are actual physical tokens involved.

What does Chalmers say?
Frankly, it seems to me that what counts as information depends on a perspective or a context and where do perspectives come from? LOL

Chalmers's position is really, really weird. You won't be able to say too much about what that information is since it's nonreducible. But there will be be, according to him, dependency laws between that information and the functional workings of physical systems. In fact, his property dualism holds the "principle of organizational invariance" which allows for silicon life etc. But analogous to token physicalism, that still depends on a "causal microstructure". You couldn't just store consciousness in memory (like they do all the time on Stargate SG-1)

http://consc.net/papers/facing.html

Another thing about him is that it's important to note he isn't a dualist in the sense that the brain plays some kind of limited role in our actions. He believes the physical universe is causally closed and that our minds arise entirely out of the brain. In his technical jargon, the mind nomically supervenes on physics. He doesn't believe in fact, that you could be duplicated without conscious experience. He only believes the mind doesn't logically (and metaphysically) supervene on physics. So, it's only in his thought experiment that we can imagine duplicates without consciousness - he doesn't really believe it's viable! So why would it matter what logically supervenes? Maybe it doesn't, but he's working within the framework physicalists themselves have defined with supervenience physicalism and two-dimensional semantics. (which both exist to save realism, truth, and commensurability).

For the interpretive framework, yeah, there's a lot that could be said on that. This is already a long post so the only thing for now is that information processing can't be absolutely relativised as Searle tries to show it can be because he hates functionalism (Putnam and Block), so we can't literally interpret a system however we want. But then it also might be true as you say that to some degree it is a matter of interpretation and all intentions are secondary.

[_Mary]

Tarski, I take it as given that all this is speculative...fun anyway!

For me, the continuation of 'something' is intuitive because of the experiences I had when my father died. If I intuit anything I suppose it is that there is more to life than I appreciate or understand (by far). I recognise my own limitations in trying to work out why I exist and why I know I exist in this reality.

My 9yr old son is opening up the world of physics to me. I am learning that there are at least 7 (not 3 as I would teach at primary school - solid, liquid, gas) states of matter, including superfluid and the Bose Einstein Condensate. I am thrilled by the thought that the same atom can appear in two places at the same time. I'm also kind of thrilled by what happens to light and atoms at the Bose Einstein Condensate, and wonder if there are any 'meta-physical' applications there.

I wonder what happens at absolute zero (very naïvely I'm sure), is it a place at rest and peace, no noise, just calm at the atomic level, and I wonder what happens the hotter and hotter it gets. I wonder what happens when you can have a star that explodes in on itself and where that matter goes? And of course, I wonder what my part (and the part of 'God' is in all this). Are we really at rest, when we die, returning to a type of existence that is everywhere but nowhere? And will we remember this part of our journey?

Any answers?
Mary