Consciousness, A Discussion

I guess I'm saying that one characteristic of matter is how it seems in relationship to its environment. So although inflation doesn't effect the way matter behaves, it effects what it actually is. I don't think there's any saying what it actually is unless you understand its relationship to its environment.

 

I see in your philosophy you have respect for interconnectedness . This would be an abstraction for fullness , wholeness . It is
you intersected with otherness - and to experience this with simplicity is a very special feeling to hold and wonder at .

Extension into/through interconnectedness is a willful action and the stronger the better . In doing (interconnecting), one may
come to know one's own conciousness may have been repressed . Quesyion asise . Yet self-awareness sees the mind pro-
ceeding toward fullness through action , and then with power conciousness may extend more and more with sophistication -
in peace .

A repressed conciousness ? Some philosophies promote individual repression of conciousness as good for society .
A person reasoning exclusively with social language is an example of diminished conciousness , and such a person
may even pose as the ideal of normalcy . The poser shouts ... always standing still ... cannot jump ... may not advance .
Still , it's a life . One can work , get a pension , then be dead .

 

off topic but what do you guys think this is? https://www.************/innerstand/videos/1114811791863136/?pnref=story

 

did you LOOK at it?

 

I posted the wrong link, look at it now.

 

..

 

Theoretically. But also theoretically,

From Wiki:

In any case, I think the size of the universe has a great impact on how matter ought to seem to us here on Earth, though admittedly I am not sure how it ought to seem. What is it like in relationship to its environment? We just don't know. I guess what I'm really getting at is I don't know how to distinguish reality from a dream, by which I mean something fleeting and uncertain. Not to imply that everything should just be "dreamy" in some fantastical sense, but that waking reality may have no more or less significance than a dream.

 

It is all a matter of time. If you were so large that the universe would be the size of a basketball, than we could imagine that galaxies would spin like gears on a clock for your perspective. In such a case, there would be sufficient time for the light to reach you. Of course your gedankenexperiment involves other paradoxes as well---such as, is there even an end to the universe? Or can anything exist outside of the universe, and if so, would it be able to perceive anything within the universe. and so forth.

The size of matter is interesting because it is almost entirely empty space---as should be clear from one of my previous posts---that if you squeezed all that empty space out of all the matter on earth it would shrink to a size a bit smaller than a golf ball--and maintain the same weight as all of the earth now, and then any smaller, would become a black hole.

It seems to me that you are trying to come up with a structuralist philosophy. Sturcturalists were all about the relationship of existents. Structuralism came out as a reaction to existentialism, and one of their points was that consciousness does not exist. I think there is something to relationships, but I disagree with the structuralist conclusions.

On the other hand, based on decoherence, and taking out the effect of the observer---physical mass exists entirely because of its interaction with its environment at the quantum level (based on my definition which holds that probability waves are of the 4th dimension and not physical). In any given Quantum Now (using my philosophy), the only physically manifesting portion of a thing are those particles which are interacting with other particles (both internally--within the object, and externally (the object with its environment) such that the positions of those particles are determined.

Photons striking atoms would be one example of decoherence--so, for example, when you shine a light on an object in the dark, you are causing more particles to manifest in any given quantum now (while the light is shining on it) than otherwise (decoherence), and because you are also observing the object (observation).

You also might check out the God Theory---which is a theory about light, not God. I referred to this briefly when I gave a summary of how my philosophy applies here. In short, the God theory which examines the very puzzling paradox of mass as inertia----using Newton's Law of Motion (f=ma) and replacing light with mass (or actually inertia) demonstrates with an extremely high degree of mathematical accuracy that mass is light trapped in place by the zero-point energy field of the universe. The zero point energy field is the latent light (energy) field that exists through out the universe and is at an energy level from which we measure zero. This means that a square shaped object is square shaped because the zero point energy field within and around that object holds light in place in such a way that it exists as square-shaped mass.

This is strangely similar to Platonic form, and even moreso in the way Aristotle saw form---hylomorphic form.

This also suggests that, assuming the zero-point energy field ends at the boundary of the universe, nothing can exist outside of the universe. If we tried to leave the universe, we would just dissapate back into the universe as light energy---never even protruding out of the boundary.

 

Well I'm just using the basketball analogy to try and conceive of how significant or insignificant we actually are. The real question being "What is the universe like?" and if we can't know what it is like, how can we really know what anything it contains is really like?

Why would they argue that consciousness doesn't exist? I've never wanted to argue that.

That is awesome!

I hope to get a chance to read the God Theory. I wasn't really trying to say that I could physically exist outside of the universe. Just that, I think in comparison, the Earth is beyond small. I don't think small is the right word.

 

Actually---my mistake----it is actually the subjective that they had trouble with. But there is an aspect of Structuralism you might be interested in: the noted Anthropologist and Structuralist, Claude Levi Strauss felt that since the mind is a part of the universe, it must somehow reflect the universe. He also felt that myths reveal the structure of the mind because through myth it can imitate itself as an object, and follow its own laws.

Yes, I understand you just meant it in a metaphorical manner, or as a gedankenexperiment. I just think it is fascinating that if the God Theory is right, then there is a boundary beyond which is truly an absolute nothingness. What is funny is that I once spent a good three weeks or so on this site, arguing with someone whether absolute nothingness could exist. I thought it was rather funny and at the end of the argument, I told him that now he can use this to impress and try to pick up girls: "I once spent three weeks arguing over nothing."

 

Fixed...

 

That is totally up my alley and I've had these thoughts before. I don't think you can even ultimately distinguish mind from the universe. But I believe that the universe mirrors us. I believe myths are inescapable parts of our own psychology.

haha Well I don't know how I feel about the existence of a nothingness. I don't know what nothing could possibly be. We are probably getting way off track of what this thread is supposed to be about, though.

 

Are you talking about The God Theory, the book by astrophysicist Bernard Haisch? Interesting book, but it includes some really questionable assumptions. Before I go further, I just want to make sure that's what you're talking about. Then we might consider whether it belongs on this thread or should be moved to the Does God Exist? thread.

 

Yes it is the same Haisch, and he is the one who probably named it the God Theory as he used it to validate his own religious beliefs. But that is not why I bring it up. If you look at just the theory of Haisch and Rueda it is pretty amazing, especially in regards to how predictive the math is.

In fact, I think Haisch may even miss the full implication of his theory by using it to validate his own beliefs---but as I recall in that book, he did not specifically define god as the god of any one religion or interpretation. His own beliefs were a mixture of Christian and Buddhist beliefs, but did he really push that? He was interested in the Biblical Statement, 'Let there be light,' but that was pretty insightful in ways the authors of the Bible did not know. The Big Bang was, for example, started as all light. I certainly agree with his comments on the reductionist objectivism of science. But like I said, I think the science of it is the most important part.

But there are other ways to approach the question of mass as light. For example, the only difference between light energy and physical particles is a phase transition of the Higgs Field from a warmer to a cooler state. In a warmer Higgs Field, all particles have zero mass. And all mass began as light in the Big Bang.

But the nature of matter may be going to far off topic anyway. What is important to the discussion is that our awareness of a specific state of matter, causes that state of matter, as demonstrated by the double slit experiment and the Zeno Effect. It is not the only way that physical particles manifest as a particle in space-time, but it is certainly significant, which is brought home even moreso by the Zeno Effect.

 

It's been years since I read that book, but what stuck with me were the paradoxes. As I recall, Haisch is not only a respectable astrophysicist but an ex-Catholic seminarian who now goes to the Unity Church, bastion of New Age Christianity. I remember him being troubled about M-theory and the notion of parallel universes as an alternative to Intelligent Design of the Cosmos. He was also convinced that atheism leads inevitably to immorality and a sense of meaninglessness. What he gives instead is a God whose main preoccupation is exploring different combinations and permutations of Himself--alternate universes with an Ego (or should I say Superego?)--and not much into human morality or anything in particular involving humans. This seems to be a variant of deism. It's an interesting concept--who knows? But I don't remember anything profound or compelling about it. As I said, it's been awhile. I might revisit the book, if I can find it in my library.

 

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28444-leading-theory-of-consciousness-rocked-by-oddball-study/?utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=SOC&utm_campaign=hoot&cmpid=SOC%257CNSNS%257C2015-GLOBAL-hoot

Hey hey. Maybe someone here will understand this better than I have. EXPLAIN YOURSELVES!

 

Conscious processing of stimuli was thought to be the only type of processing to give a longer sustained "P3B" EEG signal, which broadcasts to neural correlates over the entire brain, as where unconscious brain activity was thought to register in one particular area before quickly losing signal.


The study shows that an oddly/rare timed unconscious stimuli paired to a regularly timed unconscious stimuli creates a P3B signal, which was thought to only occur during conscious processing.

The results suggest that for processing conscious stimuli, there is a more complex neural process going on than just the sustained P3B signal.

 

I wonder if a more complex neural process will be discovered, or if the difference between a conscious brain and an unconscious brain will just remain inexplicable. I must admit I am hoping for the latter. Maybe I just have a sinister sense of humor.

 

I think the results suggest a Jungian concept of the subconscious where the subconscious is just as active as the conscious, even during conscious experience---as the ego acts as a filter filtering out all phenomena and stimulus that is not connected to the gestalt of the conscious mind (i.e. what the conscious mind is focused on).

I believe that the subconscious records the whole experience, not just what the mind is focused on at the time. I say this because in hypnotic regression, the subject appears to relive the past experience in its entirety, not just what they were focused on at the time.

There are also plenty of documented cases of experiences that are not of this lifetime. Dr. Stanislav Grof, has some very interesting case histories and not all of them are connected with LSD experiences. Though it is not documented, there is the case of my mother that I related in a previous post. I believe that the mind is multidimensional, and that the subconscious is our connection to the greater dimensional aspect of the mind, and for these reasons I believe that the experience in its entirety is recorded in this greater dimension, which is why it can survive death.

But the mind is our subjective center, and just as it sits in our own center of the three physical dimensions, it is the same center across the higher dimensions as well. Therefore the P3B signal may be the physical side of something that is happening not only in the physical dimensions as a conscious and subconscious dynamic, but is something also happening in higher dimensions as well.