Hi Edgar, Ok, I'll bite :)
On Tue, Dec 31, 2013 at 3:09 PM, Edgar L. Owen <[email protected]> wrote: > All, > > I'll present a brief overview of my theory of consciousness from my book on > Reality here. If anyone is interested I can elaborate. > > To understand consciousness we first must clearly distinguish between > consciousness ITSELF and > the contents of consciousness that become conscious This seems circular. > by appearing within consciousness itself. > > The nature of consciousness itself, why things seem conscious, I would argue that why things seem conscious can be explained with neuroscience + computer science. The real mystery is why I am conscious. > is the > subject of Chalmer's 'Hard Problem', whereas the various structures of the > contents of consciousness are the so called 'Easy Problems', the subjects of > the study of mind. Several theories of mind address consciousness, notably comp (as Liz pointed out) > Chalmer's formulation of the Hard Problem is 'How does consciousness arise > from a physical brain?' Let's generalized this a little to 'How does > consciousness arise from a physical world?' Here you're already making a strong assumption. How do you know it's not the other way round: the physical world arising from consciousness? > The key to the solution is understanding that the world is not 'physical' in > the sense assumed. It is not a passive clockwork Newtonian world that just > sits there waiting to be brought into consciousness by an observer. In fact > the notion of observation is intrinsic to reality itself in a manner that > reality actively manifests most of the defining attributes of reality on its > own and all the conscious observer adds is participation in that process > from a particular locus with a particular computational nformation > structure. > > I'll explain how this works though the theory is subtle and requires some > work, and there is a lot to it I don't cover here. > > In ancient times there was an extramission (emission) theory of vision, that > objects were seen because the eyes shown light on them. Today we still have > the functionally identical emission theory of consciousness, that things > become conscious because mind somehow shines consciousness on them. > > Both theories are wrong. Things are conscious because reality continually > SELF-MANIFESTS itself. It continually computes itself into existence, and > existence self-manifests. This makes sense to me. I have similar intuitions but I don't feel this is sufficiently rigorous or well-defined (as my intuitions are also not). > It is immanent because it is actually real, and > actually present, and has actual being. This is what I call Ontological > Energy (OE). Ok but I dislike this kind of overloading of terms. Unless you argue that Ontological Energy has some convincing similarities to the well accepted concept of energy. > Things are really really real, they are really actually there, > and consciousness just opens its 'eyes' and participates in this reality. > Rather than the mind shining consciousness onto things, things manifest > their actual reality, their actual real presence in reality, to whatever > interacts with them, including human brains. So are dreams real? > The only thing an individual observer brings to consciousness is an > interaction with reality from a particular location, and an interaction with > the information contents of consciousness filtered through its own > perceptual cognitive structure. Ok. > Thus consciousness itself is simply the immanent actual real presence of > reality, whereas the information structures of the contents of conscious are > due to information computations of the brain interacting with information > from external reality. So what you're saying is: stuff is conscious, stuff is complex? > This is the best, most convincing theory of consciousness of which I'm > aware. But like most of my theories it requires a big paradigm shift in > understanding since it's a completely new interpretation of reality. Edgar, I agree with some of what you say here, but I don't understand what the theory is. It feels more like a collection of intuitions. Do you think you could make your theory more explicit and precise? Cheers Telmo. > Best, > Edgar > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
