I see it more as an understanding than an ideology because each individual experiences it in a different way. To be idological there would have to be a set structure to which everyone could agree. Since it is uniquely personal, it is more a mode of being, an intuition, an understanding that goes beyond the empirical. It is one of those things that cannot be adequately explained, it must be experienced

But for morals, one needs a culture and inter-subjective meaning in which to frame them.

yeah I can agree on the word understanding..I think that comes first..the way one individually understands the world eventually leads one into a certain ideology I guess.

Reality can never ever ever explained by science, because YOU are the perceiver of reality.
Without you, there is no world for YOU.

So forget it.

People are saying i'm dogmatic..
I'm not. U are. With your science crap.

Science is just a tool of the mind.
And the mind should be a tool of YOU.

But i guess the mind has taken over control..

I'm interested in what people here think of consiousness..thats one thing I am not at all decided on..what the hell is it and where does it's boundries lie?..are there boundries?

I am open to the fact that everything has some level of conciousness..but that there are definatily more complex levels of it that arise out of certain states of complexity, like with humans for instance..obviously this whole thing is limited to ones defintion of conciousness, I understand that.

But can the universe itself as a whole be consious?..can we even begin to answer a question like that?

Everything fits together so damn well..everything leads in to something..simply because it must, or so it seems anyway..it's almost as if reality itself knows what it is doing..and it does it so well without a "second thought" that it is impossible to ever catch it "doing" it..it just happens..and the expression of that is the laws of physics..

I guess what I am getting at is communication..the universe at least has communication..becasue for something to lead into something else a certain way..it requires parametres..so either the chain of events themselves exist within those parametres, or those parametres are transferred..or both?

"Reality can never ever ever explained by science, because YOU are the perceiver of reality.
Without you, there is no world for YOU."

Yes this is why we have social sciences..things like cultural anthropology and sociology..
I feel that these fields are downplayed often in topics like this though..

Could you please explain to me why?

Lot's of folk on this forum have been posting about this as their own conclusion, but when I question folk about it they never give a justifiable explaination.



Consciousness to me is the amalgamation of all systems (known and unknown) that are attached to an individual which give them the ability to be, no matter in what state.

"Consciousness to me is the amalgamation of all systems (known and unknown) that are attached to an individual which give them the ability to be, no matter in what state."

Thanks soulfood!..thats a great description..

so under that definition..would you say that plants can hold some level of conciousness..however distinct from out own that may be?

I mean..plants are the sum of many smaller systems working together, and the plant itself grows and thrives as a whole..

or what about an entire ecosystem?

Yeah, I'm certainly not in any position to rule out the ability of any form of vegetation to be conscious on some level. They're after all the result of a chemical reaction, as are we and everything that continues to feed off of something else independently.

The fact is life only evolves to cater for its own needs in it's environment and until someone tells me any better that's how it is for me. Obviously plants seem to have gotten by just fine without waving at each other and having a verbal conversation. But take carnivorous plants for example. They grow to the best of my knowledge in areas with low soil nutrients and have adapted to take their nutrients from other creatures. They physically move to hold onto their prey which to me shows some level of consciousness which until someone with limitless knowledge on quantum biology tells me any different, I will continue to believe.

As for entire ecosystems... it'd certainly be interesting.

haha yes venus fly traps!..I was thinking about that myself! They grow in the bog down the street from my home..it's crazy how quickly they respond!

So...

Going one step further, would molecules be conscious? Since after all they are the result of a chemical reaction, as are plants and higher life formes, everything continues to feed off something else independently.

What prey tell is feeding upon us?

sure I concider molecules a species of sorts..I mean they are animate..they have molecular movement...they interact with other molecules in specific and distinct ways..so I guess we could say that they at least have "communication"..

I dont really have a problem with this stuff becasue i believe in analogy..you know the whole "as above, so below thing"..I wish I knew more about holographics..but the way that I see it is that all that there is that seperates us from other things is scale..as you move up in scale systems become more complex..so for things like humans maybe we have a broader range of experience due to our complexity, and that manifests as what we call "conciousness"..but it's all relative..molecules could have the sclaed down version of that same thing..less complex from where we stand bcause microscopic things seem so miniscule in comparison.. obviousily I am not talking about conciousnes as in the way most people think of it..

What about Atoms then? They are animate, distinct and interact with others of their level of manifestation in specific and distinct ways. Do they have a form of communication? Are they conscious?

yeah it's all relative..at some level..

honestly I personally think of the cosmos as one big organism..it changes and evolves just like every smaller componet of it does..I cant really picture it any other way..

Is it self aware?..well I dunno..it's a damn good question.

On the subject of consciousness I like to associate it with the word "life" which to me is not characteristic in a single molecule. However when we start talking in terms of cells, there occurs an intentional relationship beyond that of electromagnetism. I also know that one single cell has the ability to at least feed and reproduce.

Exactly.

It's all relative to what level consciousness has attained. No right, no wrong. Just where I/you/It are at any particular moment.

Yeah that's kind of how I'm thinking.

I can't see consciousness appearing during one evolutionary upgrade that's for sure.

I posted this in another thread, but I see now this is pretty much what you guys are getting into. Let's continue =)

Then with this in mind one could come to discuss the whole consciousness thingy. I mean, when some of the matter in the universe (us and other mammals) is conscious someway, has a consciousness of some sort, and when we look closer our bodies are just like everything else in existence. Then how big a jump would it be to suggest that everything is as well? Obviously not the way we are, because we are limited to this spesific form in time and space, with this particular consciousness. I refer again to the post I quoted myself with.

This is why religion persists. If a kind of personal spirituality fills the void left by leaving faith based religious view points I am totally fine with it. I think lots of people in modern times have this kind of spirituality and much less of blind religious faith. It makes sense to me why because many religions are being shown to be wrong about many things and rational people see through it because we know so much more now.

I guess I should say I am rather anti religious and I think the world would be better off without it. But its not that I don't not like religious people I have many friends family and co workers who are very religious. I just don't like the irrationality and sheer blood shed caused by religion. Also its just simply not true most of the time which bothers me from a moral honesty perspective.

A world without religion I think would require some kind of personal sense of meaning for people to not be depressed and unhappy and feel like life is pointless. If that importance and meaning comes from something that is called spiritual I am ok with that even if it turned out not to be true. As long as it didn't become another religion...



I wouldn't say your dogmatic just deeply confused about how science works. I tried offering you explanations for things that you clearly were missing the point about but you never replied or even acknowledged anything being said (and it took a while to write). But you just kept repeating the same phrases over and over again. Debating in that way is a waste of peoples time and that can create frustration (thats only reason some peoples responses toward you have been more hostile then normal plus the whole cancer thing is a touchy subject). Although I choose to ignore it now...

Are you MOP again?? Thats a joke and if your not MOP you won't get it but others will



Sorry to pick out your phrases Saidin but you summed it up nicely and briefly the point where I begin to diverge from more spiritual mindsets. We've discussed this many times before so I am mainly replying to everyone else who agreed with you

What I am specifically diverging from is this universal consciousness type reasoning. Maybe later I can explain why but first lets get into it (again )

Consciousness certainly is the big when spiritual issues get brought up and the meaning of life etc. I am not going to claim that science understands how consciousness comes about because it doesn't. What science has shown us however is that aspects of the state of our brain functioning are involved in creating some of our conscious experiences. We know there is a connection.

People with brain injury are proof of this, people with mental illness are proof of this, psychedelic drugs are proof of this connection. There could be more to consciousness then our brain activity don't get me wrong I simply don't know. We can speculate about what that might be too and people should I think because it creates hypothesis that can be ruled out or proved correct. But what I think I know is that there must be a connection. There is no other acceptable and meaningful explanation for the data.

I think it works something like this...Consciousness is an emergent property of organized matter. I am sure that matter could take a form anatomically and biochemically different and still be conscious if the conditions are right. If we meet another intelligent species from another planet they will probably be different physiologically. But none of the individual parts are conscious. If we cut out neurons and throw them into a nutrient medium and do experiments on them they aren't conscious. They are responding the way they always do chemically (except that the environment has changed and this can give incorrect results but this is only one method people use to study this stuff). But my point is that no individual cells are conscious. No atom is conscious. No plant is conscious. No fungal network is conscious.

So then what is consciousness? I hate to use a computer analogy because they are often missing some major things although AI people will say they aren't but I think they are wrong for reasons I don't know enough about thats just my opinion right now. Consciounsess is kind of like the software of the brain. It depends intimately on the hardware (matter). So then all consciousness is is matter organized temporarily in a particular way. This is why non conscious individual cells can come together to make something that is conscious. This is why a rock is not conscious. This is why an atom is not conscious. Because it doesn't have the hardware arranged properly to be conscious.

Evolutionarily we can thus explain how aspects of consciousness slowly evolved. We can explain why other animals have aspects of consciousness like us and see the differences too. I think consciousness requires a certain kind of hardware although we don't know the details about what that hardware needs to do. We do see these anatomical differences too and the evolutionary relationships among them. Its quite clear then to me the difference between an unconscious organism like a plant and a conscious organisms like a human or monkey is all in the biochemical machinery and what it evolved to do. I think we will find more and more organisms are conscious and self aware in many unique and interesting ways but they need a certain kind of hardware that organisms that are definitely unconscious don't have.

"think it works something like this...Consciousness is an emergent property of organized matter."

I would agree with that..
But what I keep thinking is that everything that comes into being seems to build off of other things..things sort of exist and then combine to extend themselves to other things..they become more complex..and eventually something as complex as "conciousness" the way you are referring to it immerges..

But thinking in terms of holographics, I get the idea that something that immerges in a higher state of order is sort of a more complex holographic from of what preceeded it..so there must be a direct link that goes all the way back to even something as singualar as a molecule or even atoms, that can be seen as the analogy(on that level) of what we today call "conciousness"..

I am not saying that it would present itself the same way becasue it is something of lesser complexity..maybe not as self organizing..but there is still information transer..and that really is what seems to be going on with higher levels of order like in humans as well..the more complex the information tansfer the more self organizing things seem to become..thats is why I said that these things(molecules, atoms etc) seem to at least have communication..I dont know what else to call it..

I would just call it conciousness, but I think I would then be extending the word to describe a system that you might not extend it to..