Atheist Realism?

[Cris]

Ronan,

Just a little paper to read if you have time:
http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/....humphrey.html

Yes. Good. It shows we have a difficult problem to solve. It doesn't imply we will never be able to solve it. Neither does a current inability to solve a current difficult problem offer any basis to conclude an even more incredible bizarre assertion that a god is involved.

 

[Crunchy Cat]

Are you joking?
how can you say for sure that something is invalid if you say that logic is not working?
If logic is not working, proof have no meaning so you cannot say that I am wrong
and you cannot say that you are not dreaming
That was my only point, remember

Every word you just stated and every word I am stating now would be invalid. The concept of 'wrong' or 'right' are invalid. That path dead ends before it begins.

But I don't need logic because I am not claiming anything, it is you the one who claim that you are not dreaming

You are claiming a possibility... i.e. something that has a probability of being true... i.e. something that turns up true in every (n) samples.

 

[Myles]

Let's get serious here for a change ! Batman knows wht it's like to be a bat and Robin knows what it's like to be a bird. Don't tell Nagel, you'll only upset him.

 

[Cortex_Colossus]

did you ever experiences unconsciousness?

Of course not because death is nothing but an illusion of the physical body being mistaken as the originator of an extremely complex creative network that is consciousness (in which the mind/reality equilibrium is percieved). We percieve both inside and outside the body through the mind.

No because you cannot experience it (you can experience that a feeling of having been like unconscious, but you cannot experience unconsciousness itself!)

Thus, the illusion of death and the ultimate reality that is immortality.

Now you can ASSUME that there exists some unconscious matter existing in reality.
But with that you cannot explain consciousness for the simple reason that by all your knowledge about this unconscious matter you will have to be conscious to fell what is to be conscious!!
In other words, unconsciousness cannot explain consciousness.

Because unconsciousness is a paradox. Consciousness is collective so in order to die there must be a parallel reality in which the consciousness must live to see its own death. Thus the physical body is not "your own". You are the consciousness in which the physical bodies appear. And so death of the physical body is not a death at all. And so immortality must be real because Schrodinger said so and because at best it has been known by enlightened masters such as Ramana Maharishi that which is the death of the physical body cannot be the death of you. And so one can be immortal. You are perceiving by creating reality. You are the universe creating itself by observing itself. The physical body and matter appears to you (where physical laws act as restrictions on state from the nothing of which things are) and it is created by your conscious viewing and perceiving.

 

[Myles]

Consciousness is brain-dependent; no brain, no consciousness. That's it !

 

[Cris]

Cortex,

… death is nothing but an illusion of the physical body being mistaken as the originator of an extremely complex creative network that is consciousness (in which the mind/reality equilibrium is percieved). We percieve both inside and outside the body through the mind.

Except that death appears to be no illusion and is in every sense very real. And for those who die there appears to be a 100% success rate of zero appearance after death. The overwhelmingly obvious correlation is that consciousness is entirely dependent on the physical body, specifically the brain, for its survival. I.e. consciousness is simply an emergent property of neural network complexity that ceases to exist upon physical death of the brain.

Thus, the illusion of death and the ultimate reality that is immortality.

And totally without any factual basis.

Consciousness is collective so in order to die there must be a parallel reality in which the consciousness must live to see its own death.

Pure baseless fantasy.

Thus the physical body is not "your own". You are the consciousness in which the physical bodies appear.

Pity about the direct one to one relationship and that there is no evidence that consciousness survives beyond the death of the body.

And so death of the physical body is not a death at all.

Of course if they could speak I suspect the billions of people who have already died would tend to disagree with you.

And so immortality must be real because Schrodinger said so and because at best it has been known by enlightened masters such as Ramana Maharishi that which is the death of the physical body cannot be the death of you. And so one can be immortal.

Riiight! Crackpots spouting baseless fantasy.

You are perceiving by creating reality.

Uh huh – reality is now dependent on your personal perception? Don’t insane asylums deal with people like that?

You are the universe creating itself by observing itself. The physical body and matter appears to you (where physical laws act as restrictions on state from the nothing of which things are) and it is created by your conscious viewing and perceiving.

I guess I should delete this post for being off topic. The subject was about reality and this post seems to be at the other extreme.

 

[ronan]

Ronan,

And why assume that is impossible? The argument is fundamentally flawed because of an assumption of a “never” condition placed on an unknown future.

If science is able to reverse engineer the mechanism of consciousness then that allows the potential possibility of creating the condition that would permit experiencing and knowing what it would be like to be a bat.

Right! let imagine that you have studied all correlation possible between mental state VERBAL report and neurophysical state. And that the verbal reports are accurate and permit you to build a "virtual" world as it would be seen by a bat and inject in the neural pathway of a human.

Note: here we have to ASSSUME that induction is working !
Which is not logically perfect (you know my point is to avoid assumptions and that's why I said we can only say that consciousness/god exist, nothing else)

But let's continue and admit that we know the perfect correlations to show again another flaw :

Only people having experienced the "virtual"reality would know what is like to be a bat, other which have access only to correlations + bat data cannot know because they have to feel it. It is thus not an explanation.

It is in fact the argument from Jackson where Mary will always learn something new by experiencing something instead of facts alone

There is the flaw again of attempting to predict the future.

I don’t see any relevance to the issue of unconsciousness here. This appears to an error in confusing different terminology. Being unconscious is akin to being asleep, while being conscious is akin to being awake and aware. The issue here is consciousness, i.e. what it means to be “I”, and how is it possible for me to be self-aware.

We make assumptions all the time, some are fundamental to any meaningful progress and we generally call these axioms. E.g. existence exists, reality exists, there is cause and effect. These are universally accepted starting points that provide a frame of reference for future discussion.

Assumptions are fine if they are appropriately substantiated.

Assumption are at issue here, my point was to show you that the only valid statement that we can do is god/consciousness exist. all other are assumptions!

And if you accept assumption, then of course you can say whatever you want if you don't want even to justify them.

You did not understand my point about unconsciousness which is crucial:
The existence of unconsciousness is an ASSUMPTION
why?
because we cannot experience it (again I am not talking of the feeling (which is conscious) of waking up or having been what we call unconscious in everyday language)

It is a flawed argument since he is indeed attempting to limit what science can do in the future. He is making unsubstantiated assumptions based on his opinion on what consciousness is and then drawing flawed conclusions.

Please refer to above

You have yet to make a meaningful case that consciousness is inside another consciousness.

You did not get the point:

The study of brain relies on the study of the content of your consciousness: neurons, theories... are part of consciousness.
How from a content of consciousness can we explain consciousness itself?

There is no reason yet to conclude that consciousness is not a physical phenomenon and hence not able to be explained by science.

The funny thing with physicalists is that they don't even realize that they make the ASSUMPTION that there is an unconscious physical world.

But this is not justified!

This is irrelevant to a scientific study of the mechanism of consciousness.

irrelevant for a scientific study because science make the ASSUMPTION that we are not dreaming but here it is important because we discuss the issue of assumptions

Whatever variation you choose is fine, the issue is you have introduced a conclusion, that a god is involved that has no basis.

God is consciousness so god is involved

 

[ronan]

Let's get serious here for a change ! Batman knows wht it's like to be a bat and Robin knows what it's like to be a bird. Don't tell Nagel, you'll only upset him.

But do you know what is like to be batman?
and robin?

 

[Cris]

Ronan,

God is consciousness so god is involved

The concept of a god is an imaginative fantasy and has no relevance to this discussion.

 

[ronan]

Ronan,

The concept of a god is an imaginative fantasy and has no relevance to this discussion.

Cris, now you avoid again the discussion by arguing about words.
I call consciousness "god" to make references to many mystic writings.

I told you that many times, there are many believes in the world about god, one of them is that god is consciousness.
If you said that god is not that, then it is your personal opinion and I would pleased to hear your arguments for postulating the existence of your god.
Then if you say, no consciousness is not "god" because nobody refers to consciousness when they talk about "god", I invite you to read advaita mystic, Maister Eckhart and many Sufi for example.


Anyway, if you don't want to use this foreign (foreign for you) language, please use the word consciousness and prove my mistake if you see one.

But please keep in mind that consciousness I am talking is not your egocentric consciousness neither mine. It is the phenomena by which we can have this egocentric perspective, namely consciousness itself

 

[Cris]

Ronan,

If you said that god is not that, then it is your personal opinion and I would pleased to hear your arguments for postulating the existence of your god.

I have yet to see a credible argument that supports a casefor a god. Calling consciousness a god is yet another fantasy perspective.

Then if you say, no consciousness is not "god" because nobody refers to consciousness when they talk about "god", I invite you to read advaita mystic, Maister Eckhart and many Sufi for example.

I have no problem believing there are those who hold that fantasy.

Anyway, if you don't want to use this foreign (foreign for you) language, please use the word consciousness and prove my mistake if you see one.

I see no onus on me to prove anything. I cannot yet see that you have made anything like a convincing case that there is an all encompassing consciousness. All you have is your opinions that have no factual basis.

But please keep in mind that consciousness I am talking is not your egocentric consciousness neither mine. It is the phenomena by which we can have this egocentric perspective, namely consciousness itself

Which is a concept without factual merit, i.e. an imaginative fantasy, as I said.

 

[Myles]

I have been down this road with ronan.He has made his mind up about god, consciousness and reality, so he is not open to change.

 

[ronan]

Can you not see the evidence ?
How can you perceive something without there being consciousness?

All encompassing consciousness is misleading here.
You don't need to add all-encompassing.
consciousness itself is god.

You don't seem to make the distinction between ego (individual consciousness is in fact a misleading word) (its existence is an assumption) and consciousness that permit to have a consciousness of an ego. Consciousness cannot be you because else you woudl not be able to have consciousness of you.

God and consciousness are not fantasy, they are two words referring to the same thing!
Why you keep calling it fantasy?
Are you unconscious?
If not why you call it a fantasy ?
Why do you not call unconsciousness a fantasy ? (remember its existence is an assumption, the existence of consciousness is not)

Please give argument, to call it a fantasy is not an argument.

 

[Myles]

Adios

 

[ronan]

I have been down this road with ronan.He has made his mind up about god, consciousness and reality, so he is not open to change.

strange road.

a road that go nowhere: you say god is a fantasy and you conclude we cannot know it is existing or not. (self-evident)

I say to you my (and many other) god IS consciousness
you again say that it is a fantasy.
Why so?
Are you also unconscious?

Is it the path of the zombies?

 

[Myles]

I see you are now adding zombies to your list. That will advance your argument. See you!

 

[ronan]

think one minute (maybe more ):
Do what Descartes did: doubt everything! (but do not make his mistakes)
what is left => consciousness alone!
consciousness exist (it is not you, this was one of Descartes mistake)
god exist!

so simple

THEN from that you can ASSUME that there is an unconscious realtiy which are in fact generating consciousness
but the problem it is that it is only an assumption which encounter impossible problem for explaining consciousness

 

[synthesizer-patel]

I have been down this road with ronan.He has made his mind up about god, consciousness and reality, so he is not open to change.

That's not the problem - he has his opinions, that's fine - he's entitled to them.

Its the way he continues to bang on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on that his opinions are somehow more than just opinion, make connections that aren't there, and get frustrated when we can see connections that aren't there.

here's a great example:

Think one minute (maybe more ):

Ok - tick tock

Do what Descartes did: doubt everything!

Ok - doubting mode engaged......bzzzzz!....hummmmm!

what is left => consciousness alone!

Do I disengage doubting mode to agree? - just for the sake of argument I will and I'll agree with this.

consciousness exist (it is not you, this was one of Descartes mistake)

Do I disengage doubting mode to agree? - just for the sake of argument I will and I'll agree with this.

But then wait for it, wait for it, were about to see something important happen here.....

god exist!

BOOM! there is is - a MASSIVE leap from something that might be construed as a valid philosphical argument, to something entirely unconnected with the previous premise - and requires not only disengagement of the doubting mode we were instructed to engage, but also the engagement of the "Agree with Ronan's Wild Assuptions Module" V3.11

Clearly my version has a bug

 

[ronan]

synthesizer-patel,

Ok so you agree FINNALY with me that the only thing that we can say is that consciousness exist,

ok?

now as I told you god is a misleading word because many people use it to refer to many things, but there is a tradition by many mystics that consciousness is what god is!

I told you many times to look at the work of mystics.

But if you don't want, that is your problem but to say that I jump, this is false because I said to you that my definition of god is shared by long tradition.


Note:
of course there is people who believe in a god external to a unconscious physical world and to us, but as I told you that is not the only kind of definition people give of god.

so now if you agree with me that consciousness exist, then you are also part of the people who believe in the god thus described (consciousness = god which is a definition shared by many mystics).

If you feel that is not matching what you expected to be a god, it is probably because for you this kind of god, namely consciousness is nothing special?

That's fine if indeed you believe that consciousness is not something special.
But do not say that I jump,

=> just say that my god is not FOR YOU something special and if this is your feeling, you should not worry in believing in this god.

 

[Crunchy Cat]

'God' is a projection of human qualities onto something else. In your case, you are projecting consciousness upon reality and you have no idea why you are doing that... which is the really entertaining part .