point of consciousness

bogwalrus

I am a great admirer of the great philosophers such as Kant, Nizche and Voltaire with Kant being my favourite. I think to myself somedays on how amazing it was for them to step so outside the box and try to answer some of the deepest questions on life and existence. Once you go so deep, reality is never the same.

In saying this, my point is that being an admirer of these philosophers i would love to be able to in my life ponder upon something that has some relativeness to humanity and philosophy i suppose. There is nothing more satisying to me than a few cans and a great in depth and deep chat with your mates about life and existence. So with this thread i would like to start on something that me and my mates were discussing in Belfast after a gig.

(i was drunk at the time so the very valid points are lost and this is an attempt to recover some of them with your help via discussion=)

It was 3am and we were in the middle of a house party and i'm telling you everyone was getting drawn into this one conversation on consciousness. We were basically trying to figure out at what point matter becomes conscious and why. When you think about it the universe in its earlier years was full of elementary particles. These gradually combined to form all sorts of elements with gases and so on. There eventually came a point where matter transformed into what we would describe as being a living organism or microbe-basically the first conscious, possibly self aware species (if that is correct terminology). We could say that the process that created this conscious organism was evolution but why would unconscious matter need to evolve? Does survival of the fittest come in to play with inanimate matter? is the hydrogen getting sick of being combusted and formed into helium? Surely it does not know its demise so cannot adapt so as to evolve. So in saying this evolution seems to me only related to conscious organisms and upwards. This i believe to be quite perplexing as i would think the natural order of the universe should be there from the start with all the small bits of matter transforming into other types of matter into living organisms and so on with some general purpose.

So if we were to look on a few points i made. I am taking for granted the following: Matter is not conscious until it comes to a point where it is animate (forms some kind of bacteria/microbe)>Evolution deals with survival of the fittest so seems irrelevant when dealing with the first stages of the universe>finally, conscious beings are not restricted to earth.

From the first two points it makes sense to me that the order of life seems to be related to things transforming not because it needs to survive but to just change from one thing to another. The way the earliest matter changes through combustion has to be related to the way life changes through what we call evolution. there has to be some synthesis to this no?

(Just on another note bacterias and microbes have been created from just gasses and other elements in lab experiments to prove life can be artificially created with the right environment.)

Maybe instead of evolution we can call the progression of things adaptation. Matter in the earlier stages of the universe adapted to their environment such as we humans adapt to our enviornment. The fact though that this matter had to become aware of itself is key i believe to understanding everything. Why did inanimate matter need to develop through time to create beings that could communicate and socialize?? This matter could have just happily floated around the vast expanding universe like any old explosion debris. But no, the big bang was no ordinary explosion.Could it be that the state the universe was in be4 the big bang, (the singularity) was this extremely complex and inteligent thing that had all the knowledge of the universe tightly compacted and arranged alphabetically in perfect chaotic order that when triggered by something it erupted trying to pick itself back up again so it can at least do its best to get back to the state it was in. Or maybe there was no state before the big bang. technically time did not exists so things must have been very still. Those millimillimilli seconds before the big bang werent really there as time was not there, or was time there, and whos time?

Joe1919

time was not there, or was time there, and whos time?

I have myself a particular interest in the "non-existence of time". This idea is written about by Augustine and the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna and Einstein to some extent. This reduces time to be a "measure" of change. Now "measures" in themselves have no existence. Word such as kilo, mile, inch, and acre are only adjectives and merely express a quantity value onto something that itself may have existence. So a kilo of nothing is meaningless. Time in itself has no existence except as a measure of change.

Indeed, all our time measurements are relative to something, the movement of the sun, sand in an hourglass, the swing of a pendulum or the vibration of a rock. Time is not absolute. Even the most accurate atomic clock has some measurable error.

If we take a subjective view of time, we also see that the past only exist as memory, the present as perceptions and sensations and the future exists as hopes and expectations.

Its better then to think in terms of change and cause of change when pondering on the beginning of the world.

bogwalrus

when i think of time joe i think of it as being a tool for humans to show cycles of things such as orbits, seasons, days and this is useful for us humans in everyday. But its hard to describe time outside of what us humans use it for. Such as if i was to say that the universe began and there was no conscious life whatsoever going to form in this universe then change is the only thing relevant to things in this universe. Time is our way of describing change in a kind of obscure way. This is a human thing (so it seems) and only a human way of looking at things. I think what i am trying to say is that our idea of time is only a very small part of the significance of time which is something far bigger again. Maybe it is that humans are not built to understand such things but can only ponder certain aspects of the great picture. The speed of light and physics of the universe are still relevant but conscious observation and perception are things which i think plays a big part in the universe. Thats why i start talking about the point at which a thing becomes Alive. why does it do this? the reason is the answer i believe to alot of questions on life and i believe with the right discussion on the topic some great conclusion will come.

Joe1919

I was reading lately where some of the earlier Greek Philosophers thought that magnets have a soul. This idea may sound daft but if one is materialist, then it may not be. Magnets display a type of consciousness or awareness to their environment. They also show intentionality in that when they become conscious, it is always of something else such as another magnet or piece of iron.
Molecules also show this consciousness and intentionality (at a primitive level). They are attracted and combine with only suitable complementary molecules.
It makes one wonder if life is really everywhere, in the mountains, rivers and all over, as some people, like the American Indians believe. Perhaps there is no real distinction between the animate and inanimate. Perhaps everything has a soul.

markyedison

Cool thread.

On the perception of time as a measure of change, there is a tribe in sub-saharan africa (the name escapes me at the mo) who view time in a linear fashion like we do but in reverse.

What we call the past, they call the future because the past can be seen (in memory) therefore it is ahead of them. And what we call the future is their past, it cannot be seen because it is behind them.

Dunno if i've explained that right but it does suggest something about the perception and discussion of time.

marky

SASQUATCH

Trolls do that too, in, um, discworld. Pratchett probably got the idea from that tribe though, but it could just as easily have been spawned in his strange head.

bogwalrus

Thats pretty cool about that tribe. Had to get the oal head around it though=)
My memories are the future cause they can be seen. They dont get looked at with my eyes which is normally the tool used to perceive time and where we see something it is usually in front of us or ahead. Memories get looked at through the mind and an internal process, they are reflected upon when focused at but are also unconsciously looked at as we go through our every day lives. A memory is ones persepctive and opinion of an event that gets stored away at a particular time. That memory may trigger different emotions and new characteristics in a person when looked upon in later years. Your memories are what are used to make the you, your personality and the way you are in society (are they not?) The present gets recorded, becomes the past as a memory that then effects the future.

bogwalrus

I find that buddhism ideoligies help me to breach certain barriers so that i can further in depth thought on certain topics like this. I was listening to that richard gere dalai llama audio book last night and my my is it interesting. Its very scientific and stuff (which i love). he was describing the significance of a world based on causality. Now i would not do the dalai llama justice in trying to replicate any of his points so i wont. But if any one wants to get a very deep thing to listen to by all means get this audio book. I dont know the name but it is read by richard gere the actor and is about 20hrs long.

Anyone have a nice walk today?? i was up the mountains cause it was so nice=) Take Care

Joe1919

Your memories are what are used to make the you, your personality and the way you are in society (are they not?)"

This is probably one of the oldest arguments around. Aristotle believed our minds were a blank slate at birth. Plato, on the other hand believed in intuition, which came from our re-incarnated souls and recollection of previous lives.
Its good to see that this argument in the form of the 'nature versus nurture' is still active, with philosophers, such as Naom Chomsky arguing that we come pre-wired with a certain amount of language and conditioning, as part of the animal instinctive nature. ( Animals don't have to go to school to learn how to navigate or build.)

But you are right. We are, our self, is probably, for the most part, the sum of our memories plus our original 'prewiring' or instinctive characteristics. Our original instinctive drives are something that hard to rationalise and may vary from person to person. Perhaps this is why people have different opinions. People are different.

bogwalrus

I suppose it comes to a point where science can say that, yes your mind and its mechanical functions are what is the cause for you being a conscious being. While on another level people could argue that it is only part of the picture where our brain and its functions are related to a physical world of things that science can show but something else that is not physical is also infering on our lives (us being sentient and not just physically conscious beings). I remember hearing a point made by the dalai lama to a brain surgeon once. (ill just dig it up now)

"it seems very evident that due to changes in the chemical processes of the brain, many of our subjective experiences like perception and sensation occur. Can one invision the reversal of this causal process,can one postulate that pure thought itself can affect a change in the chemical processes in the brain?"

So basically he was asking could one allow for the possibility of upward and downward causation. can effect bring about cause. Can thought bring about physical change only through the act of thought and concentration.

The scientist said "since all mental states arise from physical states. It is not possible for downward causation to occur"

But since it is not scientific fact that all mental states do arise from physical states the scientists reply is more of a metaphysical assumption not factual.

imo i really dont see how one can assume that all the physical interactions of the brain are what bring about a conscious being. It seems very cold to me. Its very "survival of the fittest" and Darwinian. One point that might be proof against this idea is that of our emotions. True compassion and altruism maybe? where one can sacrifice his/her life for the good of others.i dunno

Joe1919

I suppose its reasonable to think that there is some physical process behind our mental processes and memory. After all, when we want to remember something we write it down. A diary contains our thoughts, feelings and emotions in the form of paper and ink. If i pick up a diary in my hand and asked a chemist what it contained from a material point of view, he would say it just contained paper and ink. Yet the diary may contain many of the mental thoughts and emotions of the person. The writer of the diary may be dead yet his spirit may live on, to some extent, in the paper and ink.
Our consciousness and memory is a delicate thing. When we sleep or drink to much, it dissappears. People who suffer strokes loose memory. So its resonable to assume that there is some underlying material cause to all mental states.

Seloth

Imagine being the first cosciouse oerson,the fear they probably suffered.

As for time,it is mearly a idea man has greated to grasp as said above something even greater than our understanding.Take example of the universe,energy can neighter be created nor destroyed so the Universe had to exist before the big g,or something like it before hand,or else God or a God like being created it but even then they had to begin somewhere,but what I am saying is that if this is true then the universe or what ever it is in its self or so fort has an inifit time of being,something which we cannot grasp and probablly will not be able to grasp our minds around it for a long time.

bogwalrus

seloth above makes a very good point. the big bang, god creating the big bang and who created god (proboably the most asked question amongst agnostics and atheists). If i am to take for granted that the first conscious being that came about on our planet was not in fact the first conscious being that came about in the existence of everything then i am really putting things in to a perspective which is; conscious life came to be on earth through a mechanism that had been long before invented, created or happened to be. We could say that our universe was the start of things such as the first elements and then onto more complex things like the development of the first self aware organisms (if self aware is the correct term?) But is the start of our universe the start of the mechanism or structure that set the guidelines as to how things should be. It does not seem to be so (to me anyway). So im going to jump a bit out there, lets say in a world of no time and no matter. A kind of singular existence where everything is full and empty. Where if you condensed all that is good and evil, big and small into the same point of existence like what would be before a universe. If you condensed all that is in our universe back to the point it started in would it be stable? would there be a rebirth? The whole idea of a balanced universe...would that make sense? If you can imagine that we are not the only universe, that there are in fact an infinite amount of universes begining at the same time in an infinite sense you can kind of grasp a sense of fullness through infinity. Its kind of like being complete. An existence or mechanism that is the basis of all reality in time which runs on everything being one and complete....(i did say to step out there=)

On a very fundamental sense, life and the fact that we are self aware and conscious means that we recognise the you/me and we should acknowledge that good is a common denominator to happiness. I laff and i smile through positive actions not cause of social conditions, we know what is good and moral without religions and dogmas. We as humans are living proof of the meaning of life!!.