Galileo - Descartes - Newton - Darwin - The Quantum mechanics - Bohr/Einstein - ?

[Pete Tar]

Blimey! Never saw that post. Site's very fractious again.

Despite that I don't agree with it, a decent effort to smoosh two things together. Almost conceivable.

But, P - that's not right - is electricity 'matter'? Is heat matter? Is music matter? No!

Yes!
Electrons, atoms, spin, vibration, conduction, all properties of matter.

Quantum is still 'matter' - because everything is either matter or not matter, the point is, P, it has no mass! So how can you build mass from no mass?

Positive and negative charges attract?
Not real informed on this subject though.

But what about the Big Bang, P? That's a pretty big one.

Not real up on my cosmology, but I know that mind-boggling amounts of time can give rise to mind-boggling amounts of diverse phenomena from a simple starting point. Also, chaos tends to self-organize into patterns.

Subsets of a much bigger picture?

Dunno, religion is just a human response to the universe, not an integral part of it - I can't imagine how our psychological response to the universe ends up being part of its structure.

 

[lee h oswald]

yes? Well, something seems like it does.
I have not experienced consciousness as anything other than myself in this body, therefore I have no reason to assume it exists beyond that.

I might be persuaded there's a field of awareness in an eco-system that is the sum of all the individual living things within it.
But I have no reason to assume it's anything like the consciousness I experience as a human being.

Ok.

Ok then, in every way possible we have of knowing - we can 'know' that consciousness exists. I think that's a fairish way of putting it. Now my point is in the form of a question:

Can you think of anything in the universe which, at some point in time, exists, and which subsequently disappears, without trace?

 

[Mick West]

Ok.

Ok then, in every way possible we have of knowing - we can 'know' that consciousness exists. I think that's a fairish way of putting it. Now my point is in the form of a question:

Can you think of anything in the universe which, at some point in time, exists, and which subsequently disappears, without trace?

That depends on what you mean by "anything", "exists" and "trace".

Sugar lumps and computer games are things that spring to mind. But any physical thing can vanish in such a way that its information content is zero. Let's say you toss anything into the sun, then wait ten billion years until the sun explodes. Can you argue there is a "trace" of that object still in the universe? Sure you could, technically there's slightly more of some types of particles in the general vicinity than there would have been, but that's just semantic nonsense. The object has been reduced to un-measurable noise. The traces are just noise, indistinguishable for randomness.

When humans die, they leave quite a lot of actual information behind. But eventually, for most sooner than some, it's reduced to un-measurable noise. Even Seneca and Aristotle are but ripples in the river of time.

Ripples, that's another good example.

 

[lee h oswald]

That depends on what you mean by "anything", "exists" and "trace".

Sugar lumps and computer games are things that spring to mind. But any physical thing can vanish in such a way that its information content is zero. Let's say you toss anything into the sun, then wait ten billion years until the sun explodes. Can you argue there is a "trace" of that object still in the universe? Sure you could, technically there's slightly more of some types of particles in the general vicinity than there would have been, but that's just semantic nonsense. The object has been reduced to un-measurable noise. The traces are just noise, indistinguishable for randomness.

When humans die, they leave quite a lot of actual information behind. But eventually, for most sooner than some, it's reduced to un-measurable noise. Even Seneca and Aristotle are but ripples in the river of time.

Ripples, that's another good example.

Anything? Yes. Ripples have effects - they 'end' somewhere - at the bank? and dislodge soil, matter, matter descends through the water column, settles, evolves into something else, fish food, fish fart, and on and on - - - and ripples are almost nothing. Consciousness is a powerful thing, no? It would be the only thing in the universe that isn't recycled, if it just disappears. Everything is in a constant state of flux, transferring from this to that and back to this....forever - once you're in the system - you're in. Nothing just disappears. Consciousness should probably not be excluded from that, given that it's what we are.

Edit: and sugar dissolving? are you sure? it's not disappearing, in the same way that water doesn't 'disappear' when it vaporizes.

 

[RolandD]

Ok.

Ok then, in every way possible we have of knowing - we can 'know' that consciousness exists. I think that's a fairish way of putting it. Now my point is in the form of a question:

Can you think of anything in the universe which, at some point in time, exists, and which subsequently disappears, without trace?

I can. Like back in the days when we would spend hours typing code into the old Apple IIe at school and play a game until someone shut of the computer because we had no hard drive.

When we die our consciousness dissipates as heat, just like shutting off a computer.

 

[lee h oswald]

I can. Like back in the days when we would spend hours typing code into the old Apple IIe at school and play a game until someone shut of the computer because we had no hard drive.

When we die our consciousness dissipates as heat, just like shutting off a computer.

But, R, you just gave up your hostage, hands up! The ripples are dislodging your post into existence. The code you wrote can never 'die' - it's been written, it can never 'not exist', can it? Now the question is - does it have any meaning without a consciousness to process it ever again?

 

[Mick West]

Information can be lost in the sense that it cannot be reconstructed.

Let's say I type something. I then delete it. It's gone. Unless it's still in the undo buffer then it's quite literally gone from the universe.

A sugar cube is a specific structure of sugar molecules. When I put it into a cup of tea then the sugar cube is literally gone.

Your problem here Lee is one of language. You are not defining terms. You might quite reasonably say that everything that could possibly exist actually exists in 11 dimensional space. But that's no more significant that saying that everything I type exists as an ASCII string in the digits of PI. While it might literally be true, it's of no practical significance.

 

[RolandD]

But, R, you just gave up your hostage, hands up! The ripples are dislodging your post into existence. The code you wrote can never 'die' - it's been written, it can never 'not exist', can it? Now the question is - does it have any meaning without a consciousness to process it ever again?

What Mick said.

 

[Pete Tar]

Can you think of anything in the universe which, at some point in time, exists, and which subsequently disappears, without trace?

It's a good question and I see what you're implying.
But, it does come down to semantic definitions of whether consciousness is even a 'thing' in the same sense as a thermo-dynamic force, or matter is...
I see it as the end result of a number of processes, all of which are hidden from experiential view behind the scenes. What I call being conscious is an abstraction, understandable as a common experience but not *actually* understood in a scientific sense; it's still debated what it actually is.
(I must recomend Susan Blackmore's textbook, Consciousness. It explores quite a few scenarios.)
Anyway, as I think consciousness is a synthesis of a number of things, then if those things cease to function the temporary entity that exists because of them will disappear without a trace. The same way what we would call an Empire can cease to exist.
The effects of what I have done while conscious can persist, as they are writ in stone or through others remembrance of me, but, my consciousness, which is really a semantic designation of an end-process, will not. (IMO)

What is the hypothesised medium for a non-local consciousness to persist in?
Are emotions, the result of physical chemical processes, possible without a body?
I know it's possible to experience a non-local consciousness, but it still takes place while in a body, and cannot be known to have been possible without it and not only the result of conditions in that body.

If this (non-local consciousness) could be tested and shown, it would be awesome, and everyone would be thrilled to know about it I'm sure. I'm pretty sure it has yet to be though.

 

[Jazzy]

I might be persuaded there's a field of awareness in an eco-system that is the sum of all the individual living things within it.
But I have no reason to assume it's anything like the consciousness I experience as a human being.

I agree. "A field"? What would the units be measured in?

Instead of a "field" I would go for a mental construction by your mind. It can imagine and construct anything, and your conscious will can sometimes take no part.

It's how religion works, being parasitic upon our social conformity behavior (which must have frequently saved our bacon in the past, possibly before we were human, or even ape).

Materialism is. Imagination emerges. It emerges in matter. Not from it. When your living matter dies, there's no place to emerge from.

This is a grievously-challenged world full of the fear of death. But it's the only place we've got. Temporarily.

 

[Pete Tar]

A field is a clumsy word for communication and relationships between various things within the whole - the field.
It would be measured as the area of effective communication and feedback.
But with clever sophistry (edit - or just changes in perspective and scale) it could be made to encompass the entire universe.

I guess it's just a semantic category that ceases when its parts break down or migrate or arise elsewhere.
I'm not trying to engage in magical thinking, but I am trying to acknowledge there's something that contains us, which we create by being part of?
I dunno.