BookTalk.org

The headline here probably overstates how much a new theory can explain the emergence of consciousness. Some very intriguing possibilities though.

http://www.theatlantic.com/science/arch ... ed/485558/

This means things like love, and the conclusions a person draws from atheism is nothing but an illusory froth on top of a system designed to cope with sensory overload.

Thanks, Geo. Interesting.

Why be so shallow, even as an antagonist? There's stuff here for both sides.

Hey - you're the one that's shallow with your "love is just a spandrell" gig.

You're projecting your shallowness on to me.

Consciousness arose to accommodate and manage external sensory stimuli.
The rest is just gene propagation and survival.

You're welcome to argue for and against the above. Irrational, but an understandable coping mechanism.

ant wrote:Hey - you're the one that's shallow with your "love is just a spandrell" gig.

How is it shallow? Some types of love are a spandrel. Most love isn't.

Interbane wrote:

ant wrote:Hey - you're the one that's shallow with your "love is just a spandrell" gig.

How is it shallow? Some types of love are a spandrel. Most love isn't.

Oh - now it's "some types" huh?!

So now other types have meaning beyond simple sensory coping mechanisms and "blind" gene survival.
I'm sure nature cares that you think that, right?

ant wrote: You're projecting your shallowness on to me.

Completely unnecessary.

The biggest problem of consciousness is consciousness. We say that consciousness is awareness but it is really experience. We are conscious because we experience the world around us. Everything we observe is an experience. The problem is that we can't explain why we should experience anything nor can we explain our experiences. What we take as hard, objective data is really a subjective experience that no one can explain. Where does consciousness come from? All these dry theories that try to explain it have to be understood through consciousness which is a subjective experience that no one can explain because we're trying to reduce consciousness to data which cannot be done. Consciousness is ultimately a quale. Subjective experience (qualia) is not data. Data can be understood through subjective experience but not the other way around.

Subjective experience has always been here. Materialists might say the universe exists independently of consciousness but "universe" is what we observe outside ourselves and that is subjective experience. Universe is subjective experience--no subjective experience, no universe. Materialism not only cannot explain how consciousness should arise from dead matter but cannot predict it either--would have no reason to--except that it exists.

Consciousness then is the ground floor, the foundation, not matter. Matter is only a subjective experience that cannot be explained. We can observe it, measure it, classify it, but we cannot ultimately explain it. We can't say what that chunk of matter before us really is. We cannot even say if it is really there. The only thing we know for certain that exists is consciousness, subjective experience. It is not created, it is not destroyed. It didn't come from anywhere and it is not going anywhere. It is not this, that or the other. It simply is. And somehow, we are part of it.

ant wrote:Oh - now it's "some types" huh?!

Search the archives and find my original wording. You didn't understand me back then either, apparently.

Interbane wrote:

ant wrote:Oh - now it's "some types" huh?!

Search the archives and find my original wording. You didn't understand me back then either, apparently.

Your worldview simply cannot ground emotions like love in anything that is not reducible to "blind" gene survival.

The article added some additions to it: consciousness arose to handle sensory overload. That's basically it. There is nothing profound there for you; propagation and survival of genes within organic vessels that negotiate sensory overload via consciousness.
Your love for your family and friends is your subjective experience and THAT'S it, but it has no objective meaning to blind and purposeless Nature.

Why do you have to be so entirely dishonest about your worldview?
It's really old.