Then who does? And if we try to find it, are we wrong to do so? Is it better to let others do all the thinking for us? Can only certain people decide the paradigm for us?
Alchemy "Then who does [know the truth]?" Nobody! Although there were always individuals that were convinced about knowing the truth. Most such individuals are either highly religious (closed minded around a dogma they received without skepticism, usually when they were kids), highly ignorant (Dunning Krueger effect), having mental problems (some forms of paranoia come with a high degree of confidence in a well formed system of beliefs, although demonstrably false). "If we try to find [truth] are we wrong to do so?" Off course not. That’s what we all do all the time. To be able to manifest yourself in the world (to make decisions) you must first know the world and know yourself. So this is what Life always attempted to do: know the truth. Knowing ultimate truth is just an extension of that desire to know relative particular truths (like if it’s windy outside). Religious authorities in most cases were just human beings like the rest of us (enjoying status and power over others), so religions tended to veer towards politics and control. So it’s not a wonder that they developed injunctions like "Have faith and don’t seek!" (this is a very common phrase in my christian orthodox background), which are meant to make us trust in the Church’s truth without judging it or attempting to search for the truth ourselves. Well, some people just couldn’t believe in the Church’s "truth" and they started searching for the truth. They were persecuted off course (like Galileo and Giordano Bruno) but five centuries later we pretty much let all our life in the trust of science. We are born in hospitals, babies are raised with the help of the pediatrician’s supervision, we study scientific findings in school, we communicate using phones and telecommunications protocols, we cook our food in the microwave oven, we use all manner of electrical devices, computers run everything from production to waste management, we commute by cars and airplanes, we have dental work, surgeries, etc etc etc. *All these because we tried to find truth* "It is better to let others do all the thinking for us?" No. But this cannot be reduced to black or white answers. Some people are better at thinking for themselves while others aren’t. But this depends further on the particular subject. Einstein left the medical matters to be decided by the doctors, he didn’t treat himself according to his own thinking. Off course, there are things in which it is ultimately up to you, the doctor only recommends what would be best. "Can only certain people decide the paradigm for us?" Nope. We live in a fairly libertarian world (by at large), which means that nobody is forcing you to believe anything. If you get cancer and you believe in magic you go to the magician, while if you believe in science you go to the hospital. People might try to persuade you, but nobody will force you one way or another. But apart from this, the question also has very complicated aspects, ones to which there’s no simple answer. And the best answers that exist are to be found in the works of epistemologists and ethicists. But then again.. you might ask that question one more time: Can only certain people decide the paradigm for us? Well, this is our best bet so far and it works: we must trust the people who are specialized in *critical empirical formal* ways of going about stuff.
Donald Hoffman is so brilliant. His clarity is striking! He is just one of the most intelligent chaps alive right now. His theories are currently not broadly accepted but I predict something big will come from his thinkings around our reality being just icons on a desktop.
Glad to note that Scientists are coming closer to Vedanta, that says that it is Brahman, the Absolute Consciousness, that is the only source of consciousness. It the reflection of Brahman that makes everything to appear as conscious. It was a very fruitful session for me. Thanks to all the eminent speakers.
I recently made the same comment to a scientist about Vedanta. Advaita Vedanta already understands what science can only theorize. Without direct experience of Brahman I don't know if science will ever solve this riddle for the material world due to technological limitations.
That's really good that the very ridiculed Rupert Sheldrake of "pseudoscience" is in close relation of ideas to the great Donald Hoffman. I do enjoy both of their works. I've not read any of their books though. But Donald Hoffman is a pioneer for holographic principle and for panpsychism.
"I don't know what the truth is, I'm just a scientist." - Donald Hoffman ✊❤️🤜🤛🔥✌️👌🤯😁 If only more scientists felt this way and didn't push ideas so easily off into pseudoscience and material based atheism.
“Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.” Voltaire
I have a VERY serious question...what does any of this do for our life except make it more confusing??....here is consciousness, the fact that a KING or Ruler has no more power than any other man or peasant...the fact that you have to pay someone else for the land and water that THEY say they own.....the fact that pharmaceuticals cost so much no one can afford them....that is consciousness....now what the hell are you going to do with all that consciousness? probably set around thing and having conversations and making videos that do nothing! That is unconsciousness!!
@@thetherorist9244 thats much too real and in your face type of thing..more fun to speculate on what is what...no one ever sells it 100% We 100% do know about poverty,inequality,not enough water ot go around,etc..too boring for most of us to discuss
@@thetherorist9244 I would say that, over time we have demonstrated (particularly during the enlightenment and all the revolutions which occurred during this time), that a monarchy is not a logical form of continuing our idea of government for the collective, and that over time, we are adopting more collectivist voluntaryist ideologies in the western world, while some old world powers are attempting to cling to their positions as they become obsolete... And we are seeing new forms of power arise and fall every day, as technology demonstrates its' usefulness to our societies... I think what is most important right now, is for humanity to really think about what freedom is, the concept of ownership and how important it is, and hopefully over time we will evolve into systems demonstrated in sci-fi like Star Trek, or we also have programs like The Venus Project, or people like Buckminster Fuller, who have offered many outlandish ideas along the way of our collective consciousness and its' evolution. Humanity must make a decision fast. Will we allow for invasive technologies such as being produced by companies like Neurolink? Or will we push for the external augmentation of the human experience with technology that aids and inspires us as individuals to continue to explore the vast expanse that is currently called the universe for lack of a better understanding... How important is the freedom of our consciousness to us as a species? What is more importance? Autonomy and sovereignty, or convenience and luxury? Being human isn't all meant to be easy, and we can control our emotions by means of philosophical systems that have been around for thousands of years... Will society as a whole decide that gnosis is an important part of being human, or can we leave it behind us, and evolve to be a more technologically logical and emotionless species, which merges and intergrates with technology like the borg... Science fiction writers are not idiots... And what often seems to be fantasy, can sometimes become a reality... So, as fast as things have unfolded these past 100 years or so, I suggest and urge caution, while exploring the importance of human consciousness, and the ideas of concepts like ownership as you have pointed out here... Sorry for jumbled paragraph... I'm lazy and don't feel like cleaning it up...
It sounds absolutely fine, a hero can have many attributes for many different people, for example someone who is brave enough to put their reputation on the line by stating their unpopular or strange beliefs, personally I think Rupert s has no real wisdom to share,
Native Americans and other indigenous cultures have known about this for a while. I was reminded of the song 'Colors of the wind' from the Pocahontas movie. Especially when MJ Rubenstein talking. Some of the lyrics: "I know every rock and tree and creature has a life, has a spirit, has a name". "The rainstorm and the river are my brothers. The heron and the otter are my friends and we are all connected to each other in a circle, in a hoop that never ends".
That's really good that the very ridiculed Rupert Sheldrake of "pseudoscience" is in close relation of ideas to the great Donald Hoffman. I do enjoy both of their works. I've not read any of their books though. But Donald Hoffman is a pioneer for holographic principle and for panpsychism.
"I don't know what the truth is, I'm just a scientist." - Donald Hoffman ✊❤️🤜🤛🔥✌️👌🤯😁 If only more scientists felt this way and didn't push ideas so easily off into pseudoscience and material based atheism.
Well let's face it, some of us already see him that way. But yeah, assuming the human race survives, with civilisation and knowledge of history and ideas, he will probably be seen more like that in future.
I'm a bit surprised that nobody mentioned colony consciousness, as expressed in ant and bee hives. It's a pretty good example of consciousness on a single, small scale coexisting on a larger collective scale.
Good point. Exploring a little: I think it's important to acknowledge that consciousness and reactivity are words with quite distinct meanings and that it's important to not confuse one with the other. Something, something the colony is conscious but its constituent elements merely reactive. After all, folks have built robots with much richer repertoires than individual ants and no one (afaik) insists the robots are conscious. From the colony perspective it seems reasonable to imagine a collective human consciousness... one addicted to fossil smoking, or perhaps humanity is still in a pre-conscious phase and knows not what it does.
@@REDPUMPERNICKEL AI might well be called artificial consciousness. Why artificial? Because we, rather than life, supply the power that animates it. Reactivity (the ability to field stimuli and respond thereto) is, although sometimes small, still an example of consciousness. Atomic particles, for instance, seem to display likes and dislikes.
@@kathyfausett9301 I'm thinking of prepending 'iawaft' (in a warm and friendly tone) to all of my excessively terse and ridiculously poetic comments which only ever approximate the thoughts I struggle to express. So, iawaft, a poem... Reactivity Re-imagined As Sol rises of a morning and directs his warming beams Earthward, they find Pebbly, a lonely pebble sleeping on a cold, cold beach. Pebbly awakens saying, "Ah, Sol, at last, good to see you again. Look, I expand a little to show my appreciation". Meanwhile, CL, a dissolute cloud of chlorine floats across Na, the desperately lonely sodium bed. Suddenly, in a flash of heat and light, a trillion shouts of, "I love you" and "I love you too" ring out. After they do it, a trillion newborn NaCLs muse among themselves, "What next"? At the moment Q, a speeding white ball, drives herself into the side of ole Blackie he emits a yelp of pain and takes off to hide in the corner pocket or, if feeling petulant, ricochets from the green rail, off across the flat green meadow for an adventure among his rainbow colored chums. -- Red Maybe you've read "Call of the Wild" and "The Jungle Book" and seen the film "Bambi" and perhaps dozens of its ilk... No wonder so many dogs are making excellent child surrogates. No wonder so many see themselves reflected in the eyes of robots. Consciousness and reactivity are words with quite distinct meanings. Cheers!
Rupert Sheldrake is right. I think much depression is caused because we only think we have this material life that has a lot of pain and evilness in it. Imagine how you would feel if you knew we had souls and we were part of a much bigger picture. It would be amazing.
This guy is brilliant. I have the same beliefs, that he conveyed, without having ever known about “panpsychism”. His explanations of concepts & the nature of problems with current science theories, as well as providing an overview, is excellent.Thanks to both contributors to this podcast.
Excellent......Dr.Rupert Sheldreck & Dr. D. Hoffman has beautifully , convincegly and plane / simple language has described the hard problem of consciousness... thanks 🙏.
Met Don approx 15 years ago at Esalen. He and his wife came to our table for lunch (no special lunch… it’s open) He requested feedback. I told him exactly what I was experiencing. ‘My head hurt’ When we reconvened he explained to the audience that he was accustomed to speaking to academics. Then he went on to explain a dental surgery he had where they accidentally cut his trigeminal nerve. I had never seen this from my 30 years on the path. His vulnerability changed my perspective. Personal observation…his wife was pivotal. A true shaman. (I always wonder if people take in the whole picture) Glad to see that don is still on yet beat:)
When there are people who dont even consider other people as people, you have be content with your own understanding of self and the world around you. Nobody else can tell you
"I don't know what the truth is, I'm just a scientist." - Donald Hoffman ✊❤️🤜🤛🔥✌️👌🤯😁 If only more scientists felt this way and didn't push ideas so easily off into pseudoscience and material based atheism.
I love Rupert Sheldrake. 17:20 "Do you have a worldview that is essentially a materialist worldview - there is no God, there is no consciousness out there, the universe is unconscious, it’s purposeless, meaningless, everything has happened by chance or accident, the laws of nature have no particular reason to be one way or another, we just happen to live in a universe where they happen to right for us, evolution as a matter of blind chance mutations and blind natural selection. That’s a worldview that says consciousness has just emerged in our brains and doesn’t actually do anything - also that we don’t have free will. A deeply depressing worldview, and I think that when you have whole societies based on it like ours, what you’d predict is that lots of people would suffer from depression, and the facts actually bear that out. If you think you live in a meaningless world where your mind is just in your brain and it’s nothing more than what’s happening inside your head not, not truly related to anything else - deeply depressing. Whereas, if you think that consciousness is primary, that we live in universe that’s purposeful, that our minds are part of something much greater than ourselves, that mystical experiences connect us with greater minds than our own - they’re not just serotonin levels changing inside our brains - then you have a completely different view of the universe."
I love when Hoffman states with absolute conviction "Spacetime is history"...I wonder what Albert would think...I wish he was still here because he would continue to astonish.
Einstein: "Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution."
It's not useful because even in a non-dual reality there is a definite illusion of duality. It is easier to explain things within the illusions of the dual FIRST and THEN go to full Advaita.
Scientists are almost always unaware of their own Self, that's why they are so interested in the external world and are good at exploring and understanding it. Unfortunately, most scientists, being blind to their own Self, don't believe in the Soul. The problem is with the mind-set of the type of person who goes into science. Rupert Sheldrake is an exception: He is Saint Rupert, the Patron Saint of Scientists. He is very much in touch with his own Soul and that of the Universe.
Straight up monistic Idealism such as Kastrup's Alter's or even Campbell's VR's, connects the most dots by FAR imo. We're not even conscious(the ONLY thing we can ever be sure of) by ANY reasonable definition of the word is beyond absurd. Panpsychism is somewhat on the right track at least, in that we do need to upgrade our metaphysics, but it seems to be intentionally meeting materialism somewhere in the middle purely out of safety/acceptability.
You have hit the nail on the head! The patriarchs (and occasional matriarch) of the old religion must be appeased if the heretical writings are to be saved from the fire ....
Can we get Dr Hoffman to elaborate more on "All these physical theories(general relativity, quantum physics, etc) are wrong" statement? Things like whether that statement applies to evolution by natural selection is also important. It is important to know in what context all these theories are wrong.
He's just saying what every scientist will say, which is that all our models are only our best approximations for understanding reality based on the available data. They're still the best we could possibly have, and pretending otherwise (like distrusting evolution) is like saying "this theory can't be 100% proven so I'll believe in magic instead!" Scientists are people humble enough to know that we can't ever achieve total certainty about anything, but are actually giving their best attempt and providing us with usable, testable models as we work towards an ever-increasing understanding.
Doesn't all of this speculation assume that consciousness is isolated in individuals and/or particles? What if there is a bigger perspective? What if there is more to understand beyond current human understanding? Questioning is important, of course, since it could lead to new understanding. India comes to mind. They have written about it for millennia, as well as giving methods for achieving a greater perspective through individual exploration. It can be as simple as experiencing an avalanche of understanding through experience.
Ladyman equates knowing with all other qualities, avoiding the Hard Problem. The fundamentality of knowing, of life itself, escapes explanation by matter and its emergencies. Reality is being and knowing, not one or the other.
Hoffman is lost in the ontological, seemingly neuroscientists dont even approach the ultimate question of consciousness, they get stuck in the faculties of consciousness' filter that is the brain. The brain is just a tool for expression, the phenomenological framework through which consciousness is experienced Other than sheldrake, Peter Fenwick, the NDE specialist is an example of someone who directly addresses the hard problem
I wouldn't define sheldrakes perspective by the work of Hoffman as its a school of thought that likely reaches back tens of thousands of years. Also the brain would be the physical framework, as the mind is the "phenomenological framework through which consciousness is experienced". Although I do agree with your viewpoint of consciousness, as I think it is bottom up (in the physical world/unified field sense) and top down (in the quantum entanglement/coherentist/multiverse sense). Will be looking into Fenwick!
@The Institute of Art and Ideas, why not put Mary-Jane Rubenstein’s name in the title since she was also an important contributor to the ideas in this video?
19:40 I mean, kind of, though. A 'heap' of sand has novel emergent properties compared to a 'heap' of SiO2 molecules which makes up the sand, and a 'heap' of SiO2 has emergent properties compared to a single molecule of SiO2, etc. 'Heaps' go all the way down, on every scale, when you take 'heap' to mean the fundamental universal pattern of individual units congregating into collective wholes. This is the level of abstraction we are working with in panpsychism; when we talk about "consciousness going all the way down", we're not claiming that our specific human-level experience of morality or cognition or speech goes along with it into an atom, but that "experience" in the most general sense is a fundamental pattern of reality that goes all the way down and exhibits novel emergent aspects of itself at each level of increasing complexity (leading eventually to sentience, self-awareness, cognition, morality, etc). He seemed to almost be in agreement with this when he mentioned the different degrees of consciousness, acknowledging that a spider at the very least has a basic experience of sentience. Keep riding this train of thought all the way down the ladder of complexity and ask yourself where experience begins. Is experience itself the property which suddenly emerges out of some ambiguous level of complexity, or do new aspects/phenomena/properties of experience emerge as complexity increases?
Spent a lifetime hiking remote backcountry alone with wildlife plants bugs rocks. Have no doubt consciousness is universal and shared with all life forms. Nothing more intense than being eye to eye with a 600 pound bear or catching a wolf's gaze feet away or surviving a mountain's wrath. Eye to eye indeed, Autistics find eye contact painfully intense, as I felt staring that bear down, besides plants bugs rocks all talk to you after 7 days alone at remote alpine lakes ~~
Two particles are side by side somewhere in space. One particle, call it A, sends a message to the the other, call it B, 'Isn't it nice here?' to which B responds 'Shush, I am consulting I higher being' A transmits 'Wonderful isn't it?' and B follows up with 'Nonsense, you have never left here'. A says 'Neither have you' ...
Well maybe consider this... Saying there is a combination problem would be the equivalent of saying there's a combination problem with matter. What happens when matter creates a superorganism? Do the cells suddenly vanish and it's now just one giant cell? When a superawareness evolves the smaller ones do not ever go away. Every atom in your brain still has the same awareness it originally had. If you had a giant game of Chinese Whispers, have everyone act like "neurons" and one man in the middle of it all. The "neuron" people all whisper to each other, through many points of origin (as in many paths and many different whispers simultaneously). Then at the end of the chain they all whisper to the man in the middle. The other conscious beings do not vanish, just the man in the middle is aware of far more of the whispers than any of the other parts of the chain. The thing we experience as consciousness is like that man perhaps, a sort of designated receiver. An awareness of an atom expanded by further information and input. The other awarenesses are still present, they don't actually merge.
Water is at the base of all life, maybe water also is the base of consciousness. All complex life, mammals, birds etc are symbioses of many lifeforms, this could explain complex consciousness.
This is very profound! Maybe.. Water is also the physical expression of consciousness (beyond yet intrinsic to the physical world) - a similitude of the actual "nature" or composition of consciousness (something that, in my opinion is immeasurable... So using the term "composition" as a place holder of a term that refers to the immensity of something (or nothing 😊) that is infinite.) Just a thought that sparked from your thought! Thanks for sharing!
The main thing I discovered from this short is that Mr Sheldrake speaks slowly and clearly so I can hear and follow what he is saying and consider it without rewinding all the time, like I have to do with the others. Because they all speak quickly and animatedly, which is unhelpful for Bears of Little Brain, such as myself 🤔🙂
"The radical unity of the ultimate essence of each constituent part of compounds in Nature-from Star to mineral Atom, from the highest Dhyani-Chohan to the smallest infusoria, in the fullest acceptation of the term, and whether applied to the spiritual, intellectual, or physical worlds-this is the one fundamental law in Occult Science.” (H.P. Blavatsky, Secret Doctrine 1.120)
Not true, much of occultism is dualistic or panthiestic/relativistic. Also I would recommend against assuming Blatavaysky and related individuals of the period are worth trusting let alone quoting.
I am fracking on a ranch in North Dakota as I watched this and I think the ranch appreciates us fracking just as you would appreciate a doctor who successfully lanced a boil.
The 3 geniuses Sheldrake, Hoffman, and Goff are on the right track except for one thing. To use an analogy of "What's it like to be a bat:", the key phrase is "to Be". Aristotle asked this question what is "Being-In-Itself". The discussion continued with Nargajuna (150-250), and especially with Shankara's (788-820) Advaita Vedanta. He claimed that we can experience Consciousness (Brahman) directly in the state of Samadhi/Satori, but we must do so by transcending the mind. Also Penrose says "Consciousness is non-computational", so mathematics alone can only point to it, not give you a direct experience of IT. The ancient Buddhists and Hindus have provided various methods of tapping into and merging with Consciousness, such as mantras in the Rig Veda.
I read a sci-fi short story about a psychologist who is sent to distant Army outpost in a far off galaxy. Everyone on the post who has gone outside the protective atmosphere bubble is hearing voices, many think they've gone mad and have to be sedated. The voice says: "we are one.'' And words to that effect. When the doctor goes outside the natural world moves and shifts in waves of color and sound and it condenses in a monochrome image of himself mirroring his movements. The Voice describes to him that every molecule he is breathing, hearing and seeing IS a singular sentient being that together make up the planet and its atmosphere. When he goes back inside, he breathes in the Commander's face who inhales and in that instant he understands that the planet is entirely made up of conscious beings and that OUR language fails to properly describe that ''we'' plural is ALSO ''one'' singular entity. So no one is going mad, they're all just absorbing the world they're standing on, and it is responding with an unfamiliar language.🙃
It seems strange to me that panspychism equals electrons are conscious. I’ve always looked at consciousness in the sense that it is an emergent property of its underlying building blocks, analogous to how no single atom has toughness/strength/electrical conductivity/ thermal conductivity/ ductility, but many atoms in a specific arrangement do.
It's different because you can quantitatively describe how a collection of atoms manifests those emergent properties. Not so consciousness. There is no possible quantitative description of what I subjectively experience when I taste chocolate. It is simply a conscious experience that can only be truly understood through the very experience of consciousness.
@nineleafclover Lets say that everything is conscious. And just for simplicity, lets say all particles/ building blocks are the same. They would still be experiencing their existence uniquely because of their different physical position in space and in relation to the other blocks. How could you ever explain this relation to a separate block without positioning it in the exact same space. You will never be able to experience/ understand the TRULY experience of another building block, only an aproximation...
Yep, that seams correct. Whatever it is that causes the DNA to give instructions to cells is the root of our consciousness and our emotions and all experiences are just a result of the most effective method that evolution has narrowed down. Considering that, What are the odds of us finding self recognizing conscious life on another planet and what would that indicate? Meh nothing I guess. Lol
So informative!!! Was surprised when M-J R's section started as her name is not mentioned in the title that I could see. Is there a reason for this omission?
I like what the good-looking fellow 🙂 (with no hair) was saying about consciousness being emergent from complicated systems, but not necessarily being constituted (in a physical sense) of it's parts.
Yes Rupert! Just had to comment soon as I heard you say well what about the sun ha 👌 thank you 🙏 my thoughts exactly! ok let me get back to the vid now👍
Consciousness will always and forever escape rational explanation: it cannot be defined from within itself, and it has no external boundaries: just as God, infinity and the universe must be taken as simply existing with no beginning or end. That's the quantum leap of faith that science will ultimately have to make to get the the next energy level.
I have the feeling that Rupert Sheldrake was alluding to the ideas of Roger Penrose in The Emperor's New Mind when Rupert was discussing the not-fully-realized Panpsychism of some materialistic scientists.
Panpsychism has the advantage over materialism by holding consciousness as fundamental and thus dissolves the hard problem of consciousness. However, this leads to a new problem known as the combination problem. Idealism has the advantage of holding consciousness as fundamental without the combination problem.
Also, the proponents of emergence theories have no idea of what the term involution means: the infolding of certain aspects of consciousness in forms that are build by evolving beings. Emergence is a dual process.
@@WisdomTeachings Exactly, the emergentists will be committed to a form of dualism and thus inherit all the problems that come with it such as the interaction problem.
@@MonisticIdealism The way I see it is that the dual process is a cooperation between hierarchies of beings. It can be seen as spiritual light condensing and interacting with itself, hence, ultimately, a qualified monism. The duality is in the eye of the perceiver.
Panpsychism merely rebrands the hard problem as the combination problem - or rather, it moves the start line down the track but still before the goalpost - kinda like trying to explain the origin of life with panspermia
How have I gone this long without knowing there were other people; much less people of science, and academia; who not only have articulated my worldview, but lend it substantial credence. I’m in tears right now ya’ll!! I mean uhh, my lacrimal tissues are secreting an organic dihydrogen monoxide based solution as a result of this realization.
Never read philosophy, in my life. Only reading science everyday. Reading science, knowing different things, and becoming confused and obsessed with some thoughts, I dont the answers to them. After 8 years of studying science, I started accumulating all ideas and theories and couldnt just come up with a solution of our own existence. So, maybe Consciousness is only independent entity, existing, and maybe everything, the materials, spacetime itself, which we believe, could have been formed 13.8 billion years ago via inflation, and not explosion, maybe nothing but just a misinterpretation of the current known laws. The laws are not enough. Science is evidence, but philosophy dont want evidence. Philosophy wants the ultimate truth, but science is trying to help his brother to know the truth, but philosophy just doesnt believe his own sister. Maybe we need something new. Maybe we need a new understanding, and we believe in something nothing complexity. Something from nothing or something is nothing. But maybe there is something beyond sometging and nothing. A complexity which is beyond explanation.
Phillip Goff, brilliant intro! CONSIDER THIS HYPOTHETICAL ANALOGY: Perhaps it's like 3 plugs creating particle spin charge. Something like a soul is limited to doing Morris code communication (lol) regulating charge effects on 1 prong. Pan-psychism is on prong 2, working emerging phenomenon up to the material world, on prong 3 where the materialist's, can't hear the electron phase symphony of drums, string, and wind instrument's in the math.
Do they ever approach the problem of consciousness from the perspective that WE are it? That the thoughts, your brain, and consciousness are all one...meaning it's happening live, it's not coming from outside of you, nor are you the puppet. It's the only solution.
It's all so simple. The universe is fractal and the Creator manipulates the chance and probability of the outcome of every event at every level to suit its purposes (which we cannot predict).
I like Rupert Sheldrake's statement that the whole Universe is conscious. The anima mundi (Greek: ψυχὴ κόσμου, psychè kósmou) or world soul is, according to several systems of thought, an intrinsic connection between all living beings, which relates to the world in much the same way as the soul is connected to the human body. Although the concept of the anima mundi originated in classical antiquity, similar ideas can be found in the thoughts of later European philosophers in the 18th and 19th centuries.. Plato and Pythagoras were on to it way back and most indigenous are aware of it, because they are not speeding around like in todays world where so many are locked into their head. So there are just 'finer' levels of soul - From the Solar System to the Galactic to the Universal.
Consciousness is to time and space as energy is to time and space. In variant organization and density, it manifests differently. We need to find a detector sensitive to consciousness on this level.
Wetness can be explained at a molecular level and so can the red light at a frequency level but try explaining color red to a blind person or wetness to someone with no sense of touch. They are both experienced properties. The cause of wetness is the molecular structure but that too is only an observed property. The experience is in the consciousness and there is only the field of consciousness in which all matter, space and time emerge.
The cause of wetness, or any other perception, is the interaction between the water and the nerve ends in the body, interacting with the water. Consciousness is the knowing of, and the being of what is real at this very moment. So the objective and the subjective turn out to be the same thing. A set of relationships between different aggregates and states in a system, where the organism and the environment are conscious and not separate. A falling tree in the forest will make sound only to a pair of ears/brain, or a recording device out there to percieve it.
@@t.todorov5202 to add to your commentary, an electron will behave as a particle when observed and as a wave when not. How is the particle conscious/aware that it is being observed unless it has consciousness? So consciousness pervades everything but it "reflects" off matter giving the illusion of conscious matter like the bright moon appears to be radiating light but the reality is deeper. Why does some matter appear to be more conscious tuan other?...working on that. 🙂
Hey great video but why did you leave Mary Jane Rubenstein's name out of the title? And no mention in key moments- just at the end of the list of people... seems off with peace & love!!
Im almost totally convinced now , yes consciousness is fundamental. Almost that consciousness could just be an advanced form of computation. Some spiritual advisors believe that earth is a master school and only the bravest souls enter this earth game simulation. And 90% of these souls still complain and suffer most of the time and some never make it past samsara and wakening to the way we are so asleep. Very few are able to see through this simulation and which means radical awakening to the objective and subjective parts of reality.
Mary-Jane Rubenstein doesn't have a ontology or even a philosophy of consciousness. Ethics and even politics motivate which ontological and philosophical positions she will adopt. What she adopts is adopted to further moral and political causes. It's a kind of pragmatism. And it has nothing to do with truth or ontological correctness. This isn't to say that I or anyone else has the truth on these issues. However, unlike Rubenstein, we are searching for that truth. Rubenstein, on the other hand, is using philosophical positions as tools against "monotheism", "hierarchy", anthropocentrism, etc. She is extremely honest and explicit about this. This is like Jacques Derrida and, earlier, Emmanuel Levinas who treated Ethics and, I would argue, Politics as First Philosophy. All philosophical positions must serve ethical and political goals. Marxists too had a similar take on philosophy. Marx himself famously said: "The point isn't to interpret the world, it is to change it." Rubenstein doesn't want to interpret the world: she wants to change it.
Hi Paul, thanks for you comment - interesting thoughts on Mary-Jane Rubenstein. You might find this interview with her interesting: iai.tv/video/mary-jane-rubenstein-in-depth-interview
@@TheInstituteOfArtAndIdeas The write up in the link above simply demonstrates my point: "Philosopher Mary-Jane Rubenstein discusses her work on two radical and subversive ideas: pantheism and the multiverse. She discusses the theological ideas that underpin physicists' ideas ..."
Consciousness is the expression of expansionism.... and what we need to remember is that we are unraveling what is but at the same time what is is expanding and attaching consciousness as an entity defies the actual .
Don, the people showing up at the train station do cause the train to arrive. Over time, if people didn't come to catch the train, there would be no train schedule, and the train would not arrive. In other words, from this point of view, the causality IS the people wanting to catch the train. So, this kind of argument works both ways, and it is a more nuanced understanding that sees it both ways--simultaneously.
Holism yes light dark left right white black off on stop start north south. is 1 and 2 = 3 = center balance form experience existence consciousness. maybe thats wrong maybe thats right who knows lol
But you wouldn't see people wanting to catch the train at that particular time if there wasn't a train schedule. The schedule causes both the train and the people to arrive at the time that they do.
Existence is an unbounded self-aware energetic field or presence that we call consciousness. It oscillates between a dormant stage. and an active stage ad infinitum. When emerging from a dormant stage the energetic part of consciousness is impulsed by the awareness or . self-aware aspect of consciousness to explore patterns which evolve into matter and eventually intelligent beings so that consciousness or existence knows itself fully once again
My problem with panpsychism is that i know my own consciousness can disappear when my brain cells interact in a different way (eg when I'm asleep), so it really does seem to be the result of their interactions rather than a property they intrinsically possess
The brain is still active, just less so, when in non-REM sleep states. Although we use the term "unconscious" to refer to someone who is asleep, it doesn't necessarily follow that we are quite literally unconscious. In fact, sleep studies have shown people having conscious interactive experiences while technically asleep, such as passive auditory learning or sleep walking behaviors. Then there's the experiences of people in a coma who appear nearly or literally brain dead, but then later awoke with vibrant details of their conscious experience while technically comatose. Many of these experiences intersect with hearing or seeing literal events in their hospital room that we believed they shouldn't have been able to perceive.
@@chelsmaria surely all that shows is that 1. our bodies can function without consciousness (your examples of learning while asleep and also walking) and 2. consciousness continues to exist sometimes in situations where we don't expect it. Are you suggesting that we're conscious all the time but just forget that we were once we wake up?
@@singingphysics9416 It's possible that you were conscious, but you don't remember it. If insects are conscious, but they have no real episodic memory as we understand it, they are still conscious. It's also possible that the consciousness is merely different from consciousness you experience when awake. Finally, some serious Buddhists claim that consciousness does indeed persist during all phases of sleep. Look into B. Alan Wallace on the last point if you're interested.
I have no problems with consciousness; it is my own unconscious that really irks me. If the universe is conscious, it seems as conscious of me as I am of the bacteria in my gut. "Bounded rationality" is the phrase that pops up in my mind when I watch such videos as this.
Our current consciousness is a sort of operating system, installed in the brain, to make sense of our sensory inputs in the context of logic. Our brains are conscious computers. I believe our senses evolved much further than they seem now, with the ability to provide us with much greater detail and see a much wider spectrum of light, sound, etc, but to make sense of the world in the context of consciousess, our operating system pared down the feeds so we could begin to process them and still survive. Thoughts are grouped electrons in low frequency waves. Our processing system, similar to a computer, is a sensemaking algorithm. It's a framework of organized groups of electrons. We started with 2x2 groups of electrons, or conscious thought. and a 10x10 cube, where we can only "see" paths along the outside of the cube from one thing we perceive as an "event." Now, some of the "input" still goes to our earlier processing system, which can use abstract, more powerful logic, but can not naturally "interface" with our current operating system, EXCEPT by producing reward/warning emotions, which our conscious mind also perceives. If you look at consciousness in that framework, there are 600 (thoughts) that we can hold for a decision consciously, but if we create a new system that has 1,000 clusters, or thoughts, which is possible, we can process up to 1,000 and explain what is going on up to 600 pretty easily. We can make perfect sense of the world within the context of the current norm. We can explain paths that we intuit, which others see exist, but not see in the context of logic. What we are doing, in essence, is gleaning paths "through the cube" and we are able to explain them in the context of metaphor only. I believe what we have been waiting for to be able to be aware of this wole process and to be able to explain how we generate those metaphors in a way that humans can understand AND design algorithms on computers to process information. The period of "abstraction" is a stage in the development of consciousness where we know we can reason the answer, but can't explain it, because we are not aware of how we are doing it. The good news is... WE HAVE EVOLVED past this. We can use sounds to organize our thoughts themselves into the configuration of a C-60 fullerene and, after we evolve to understand that, we can go even further. We can also evolve larger sensemaking grids entirely. When we can process 1,000 logical steps, our brain maps that onto the concept of a 10x10 cube WITH the middle included. SOnic geometry and meditation can help us accomplish this. I have generated a conceptual model of a meta metaphor that generates solution metaphors to understand any set of information in context. It can be explained using a 1D picture of a 3D sphere with a sort of process for looking fora point where we can break through the "magic middle" and from the other side, we can deduce a linear path. Each time this is used, it increases our capacity for understanding to include two additional variables. When that happens, we can be fully conscious of the process of evolution. I have actually gone quite a bit further than this, but there are probably are very few people that can even understand this. If you can, please reach out.
Our brains can perceive other thought waves, and possibly those coming from other parallel universes that are close to ours. This is understood in the context of a "multiverse framework." The thoughts we tune into are determined by a condition of our current thinking habits. We could easily test this by using me as a PAINLESS guinea pig, which I would be willing to do. I would love to work on this model somewhere, but I have no resources and no access to help. For that matter, I have no desire at all on behalf of myself only. I do have desires for US that include me. Hope that makes a little sense.
Lovevolution is a new word/concept we can share. A free open domain word we can use and spread to help humanity to focus in a positive direction during this time of radical change. Lovevolution can act as a common denominator for the interfaith community and new models of science. Please accept this gift of this word to connect humanity in this common purpose.
The purpose of consciousness is creation. Original stories, (fact & fiction), music, & athletic accomplishments, are all conscious possibilities to "Flow" with. Flowing with The One Groove, globally, is the foreseen epiphany that we have intelligently evolved to manifest! Music bonds gatherings in magnificent ways. billions Entrained with The One Groove will Be miraculous!!!
*[...] we can predict what choices you're gonna make [...]* - I don't think you can . You may be able to intercept the signal sent from the inner me to the interface we call "the body" before the body reacts to it but you can't predict my choices . The body is just one layer of the *"ME"* composite .
Immediately after he laid out that illustration he said we should be careful not to think that that illustrates a causation of brain material creating thought. Then, he laid out the example of how a group of people gathering at a train stop could superficially look to an observer like the people gathering is what summons the train.
Denying the existence of consciousness, in a blind attempt to prove that all that is exists lies within the realm of materialism, is ironically explained by virtue of the lack of consciousness held by those strongly viewed individuals.
I don't see pansychism or dualism as being mutually exclusive. The best analogy I have currently for a possible Mind/Body/Soul connection is light through a prism. The white light is the Soul, the prism is the physical Body and the refracted spectrum is our Mind, or Consciousness. Subjective experience. The Soul is "pure" and external. The faculty to experience without the capability. No physical form, no physical context for subjective experience. As physical form evolves (Protons, Electrons, Elements, Molecules, Matter), this pure, undiluted 'potential experience' is refracted through all the physical forms, the form informing the refraction pattern. The more complex the form, the more complex the refracted pattern, or the Consciousness. An Electron won't 'experience' anything more than a change in resonance when interacting with itself or other particles. It won't feel pain, or emotion, it won't have an ability to study the event, introspect on how the event may have changed it's nature, or it's environment...but at some level it will sense and react. Base. The sensory nature becomes more complex with the physical form. From the explanation in the video, this appears to be a blending of both Pansychism and Dualism.
Alas, I'm disappointed that this was simply an assemblage of old interviews (many of which I had seen) rather than a debate among the interviewees. I also have to admit that, based on some of the snarky comments, there are obviously those who are so beholden to the bible of materialism that they can't open their (billiard ball) minds to the possibility that their religion may well be incomplete, if not downright wrong.
As a hard materialist, I’m open to alternatives, but no arguments were actually made in this video to assess one way or the other. I’d be interested in presentations followed by a debate. The claim that all things (quarks to rocks to animals to planets to the universe) are conscious, or that the things below animals (starting at particles) are conscious, requires serious evidence. It would fundamentally change all of our understandings of just about everything in the universe. What is the actual theory of the mechanism for which a quark exhibits awareness, for example? Or the sun? What is the theory for how multiple aware things form the conscious human mind? I think it’s just a sliding scale which could appear in any system, and to our knowledge which currently only appears in animals and potential artificial minds we humans may create someday. I think it’s illusory or real only depending on how you define it.
@@NoOne-vm2wd they're not baseless, as for example the double slit experiment shows that observation changes what happens, so in other words the universe isn't entirely objective. Consciousness is involved somehow and personally, I don't see how materialism can hold up under evidence like that.
@@NoOne-vm2wd The measuring instrument itself didn't change the results, because when no one was observing and the instrument was left to measure on its own, there were waves, but when there was a conscious observer, you got particles.
@@martingarreis I do plenty of self-inquiry. There's no way to determine the true nature of one's own consciousness from the inside. Whether it's material or not, you still only know that you are conscious, and nothing beyond that, per Descartes. Falsifying materialism requires public demonstration of something inarguably immaterial.
That's a strawman of materialism (not that anyone really uses that term anymore in philosophy; physicalism being more accurate) if ever I've seen one. No physicist seriously believes in a billiard ball model of fundamental particles. And calling science a religion only serves to highlight just how clueless you are about the state of contemporary physics in light of quantum mechanics.
"Particles don't have consciousness, consciousness has particles." Rupert Spira At the same time this video was being made Rupert was making another on consciousness which can be found on YT search for .Does Consciousness Arise in the Brain?
Mathematics is a concept, an abstraction. I dont think being in a computer would allow for us to have this conscious experience. I mean do you think a video game character is conscious?
Bryan Guilford what really is conscious ? At a point sacrificing humans to gods was acceptable now even throwing trash on the ground makes us guilty. Conscious seems to be learned and evolves just like artificial intelligence
monet roshi consciousness is just another way of describing our senses, self consciousness is the problem, to my knowledge I’d say Language is the missing price of the consciousness problem.
@17:33 omg its my roommate…such a depressing view indeed. He is depressed and a loner…never a relationship w a women..no friends…bleak existence if you ask me…
How then is it possible to NOT be conscious, as in a dreamless sleep, if our being conscious is a consequence of the mere presence and collective sum of tiny bits of consciousness which are integral to/fundamental aspects of, particulate matter? This perspective says all of the complex biological processes going on in brains is irrelevant to being conscious. It says that living and dead brains are equally conscious. This strike anyone else as odd especially in light of the fact that we all become not conscious every day (except for the occasional all nighter)? Isn't it obvious to everyone that when we are not conscious we are not existent, that if we died suddenly when not conscious we wouldn't even notice? or care? From a certain perspective, only I am conscious and y'all are only theoretically. I can never know with absolute certainty that you are conscious. How is it that I am convinced that you are? And being convinced, are you convinced that I am? Why? Our sense organs translate impinging energies into neural code that, with only a very tiny adjustment in perspective, can be taken as the metaphorization of the environment. From this perspective, speech is more easily understood as a stream of metaphorical entities riding on the streams of neural code metaphors from the ears into the brain. Thus ideas, thoughts, the "contents" of conscious being, are all metaphors. A thought is not the thing the thought is about (e.g. the thought of a rock is not a rock) except when the thought is about the thought that it is, like this one. I am the metaphor of me. What is the existential status of a metaphor? It's certainly not matter. Thus I'm not a materialist but neither am I a panpsychist. I guess the category most fitting would be perhaps abstractionist. Talk to Douglas Hofstadter for a more intelligent exposition of this train of thoughts. How is it that when the last thought in a conscious being has fled, so too has the conscious being?
In non-dual traditions they use the word awareness,and awareness dos'nt need conciousness,but conciousness needs awareness .Awareness itself is just a name for absolute nothing.
🙏 Addressing only the thought about dreamless state: 1. Who is that who is conscious of the waker, dreamer and in the dream less state. It has to be a 4th. 2. In the dreamless state is this 4th there or not. Surely there because it is there when the person wakes up and it was there when dreaming. Could not have mysteriously disappeared somewhere in the interim 3. Why is this 4th not aware of the dreamless state? It is aware because otherwise after waking one would not be aware that they were in a dreamless state. The waker and dreamer is not aware but the 4th is. 4. From a panpsychism perspective : consciousness evolves with complexity. In a complex structure such as a human brain, consciousness shines brightly. As the brain shuts down during sleep, consciousness fades off to it's very basic and fundamental levels but is still there as elucidated in 3 above.
@@ramankhatri This 4th state as you cal it is another concept,there is not even one .This questioning about who is the observer is pointless.The only importance that is has is that the seeker dissapears.What fades away during the deep sleep is conciousness identifying with form.You can only talk about the deep sleep when you're awake,in deep sleep there is no world,no toughts,no problems.And the brain dos'nt shut down during the deep sleep,blood has to flow,digesting happens etc .
@@hermansohier7643 - I take conscious, aware, awake, cognizant, apprehensive, mindful, thinking, etc. as essentially synonymous metaphors for the same phenomenon. Obviously then, to use some of them to characterize others of them is a tautological exercise unable to provide new understanding. This is quite unlike the way one's understanding of something can usually be augmented by reading a list of synonyms in a thesaurus. Strikes one as reflective of the weirdness of the phenomenon in a way similar to the weirdness one sees on a TV screen when the source of the image is the camera aimed at the self same screen. Isn't it interesting that a synonym for thinking is reflection?
@@ramankhatri iawaft: "1. Who is that who is conscious of the waker, dreamer and in the dream less state. It has to be a 4th." I AM conscious. Consciousness is not an alien thing, like some ghostly hanger on, conscious IS what I am, the reason I am ephemeral. I am the dream. No need at all for some imaginary onlooker, 4th, 3rd or 2nd. When I talk to myself, it is I, the 1st, last, one and only both speaking and listening and both with their roots in my conscious being. "2. In the dreamless state is this 4th there or not. Surely there because it is there when the person wakes up and it was there when dreaming. Could not have mysteriously disappeared somewhere in the interim" Not there. That's exactly my contention. We cease to exist in dreamless sleep and in death. I am not when body enters dreamless sleep just as the flame is not when the candle is extinguished. I return to being when the candle is relit. Getting relit is the job of the Sun or in Winter the job of the alarm clock or of the fire alarm in the event of smoke or, failing all that, it is the job of the internal timing circuits. "3. Why is this 4th not aware of the dreamless state? It is aware because otherwise after waking one would not be aware that they were in a dreamless state. The waker and dreamer is not aware but the 4th is." Memory suffices. Imagine what would remain if a person lost every memory. They would be exactly like a newborn baby, but big. When I switch my computer off I trust when I switch it on again it will not just hum, light an LED and leave my screens blank (horrible to contemplate and yet I must. Reminds me, do a backup this very night). "4. From a panpsychism perspective : consciousness evolves with complexity." That is not my impression of panpsychism. Seems to me panpsychism simply and erroneously equates consciousness with the innate ability of Nature to behave as it does. About this we know a little under titles like physics and chemistry. Cheers!
"I don't know what the truth is, i'm just a scientist" - this would have to be the most honest expression i have heard.
This means you’re not listening to scientists often enough :)
Then who does? And if we try to find it, are we wrong to do so? Is it better to let others do all the thinking for us? Can only certain people decide the paradigm for us?
Alchemy
"Then who does [know the truth]?"
Nobody! Although there were always individuals that were convinced about knowing the truth. Most such individuals are either highly religious (closed minded around a dogma they received without skepticism, usually when they were kids), highly ignorant (Dunning Krueger effect), having mental problems (some forms of paranoia come with a high degree of confidence in a well formed system of beliefs, although demonstrably false).
"If we try to find [truth] are we wrong to do so?"
Off course not. That’s what we all do all the time. To be able to manifest yourself in the world (to make decisions) you must first know the world and know yourself. So this is what Life always attempted to do: know the truth. Knowing ultimate truth is just an extension of that desire to know relative particular truths (like if it’s windy outside). Religious authorities in most cases were just human beings like the rest of us (enjoying status and power over others), so religions tended to veer towards politics and control. So it’s not a wonder that they developed injunctions like "Have faith and don’t seek!" (this is a very common phrase in my christian orthodox background), which are meant to make us trust in the Church’s truth without judging it or attempting to search for the truth ourselves. Well, some people just couldn’t believe in the Church’s "truth" and they started searching for the truth. They were persecuted off course (like Galileo and Giordano Bruno) but five centuries later we pretty much let all our life in the trust of science. We are born in hospitals, babies are raised with the help of the pediatrician’s supervision, we study scientific findings in school, we communicate using phones and telecommunications protocols, we cook our food in the microwave oven, we use all manner of electrical devices, computers run everything from production to waste management, we commute by cars and airplanes, we have dental work, surgeries, etc etc etc. *All these because we tried to find truth*
"It is better to let others do all the thinking for us?"
No. But this cannot be reduced to black or white answers. Some people are better at thinking for themselves while others aren’t. But this depends further on the particular subject. Einstein left the medical matters to be decided by the doctors, he didn’t treat himself according to his own thinking. Off course, there are things in which it is ultimately up to you, the doctor only recommends what would be best.
"Can only certain people decide the paradigm for us?"
Nope. We live in a fairly libertarian world (by at large), which means that nobody is forcing you to believe anything. If you get cancer and you believe in magic you go to the magician, while if you believe in science you go to the hospital. People might try to persuade you, but nobody will force you one way or another. But apart from this, the question also has very complicated aspects, ones to which there’s no simple answer. And the best answers that exist are to be found in the works of epistemologists and ethicists. But then again.. you might ask that question one more time: Can only certain people decide the paradigm for us? Well, this is our best bet so far and it works: we must trust the people who are specialized in *critical empirical formal* ways of going about stuff.
@@raresmircea I am not sure I agree.
Alchemy As long as it’s something that’s only concerning you, then you’re perfectly entitled to believe *anything* .
I love Hoffman's critical yet open mind and his humility.
Conscious sleeps in the rock. Dreams in the plant. Awakens in the animal. Self-aware in the human.
Wow..
Fantastic. Thank you for that.
Cute
There are some animals that are self-aware but not most as far as we have tested.
Poetry
It's always a pleasure to listen to Sheldrake speak!
Donald Hoffman is so brilliant. His clarity is striking! He is just one of the most intelligent chaps alive right now. His theories are currently not broadly accepted but I predict something big will come from his thinkings around our reality being just icons on a desktop.
Glad to note that Scientists are coming closer to Vedanta, that says that it is Brahman, the Absolute Consciousness, that is the only source of consciousness. It the reflection of Brahman that makes everything to appear as conscious. It was a very fruitful session for me. Thanks to all the eminent speakers.
I recently made the same comment to a scientist about Vedanta. Advaita Vedanta already understands what science can only theorize. Without direct experience of Brahman I don't know if science will ever solve this riddle for the material world due to technological limitations.
It's more like they have realized the truth of it now but are reluctant to move away from materialism or not admin that they were wrong.
Most people:
Watch comedy movies and TikTok.
Me:
Reading the comment sections of external consciousness propositions.
That's really good that the very ridiculed Rupert Sheldrake of "pseudoscience" is in close relation of ideas to the great Donald Hoffman. I do enjoy both of their works. I've not read any of their books though. But Donald Hoffman is a pioneer for holographic principle and for panpsychism.
"I don't know what the truth is, I'm just a scientist." - Donald Hoffman ✊❤️🤜🤛🔥✌️👌🤯😁
If only more scientists felt this way and didn't push ideas so easily off into pseudoscience and material based atheism.
“Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.”
Voltaire
I have a VERY serious question...what does any of this do for our life except make it more confusing??....here is consciousness, the fact that a KING or Ruler has no more power than any other man or peasant...the fact that you have to pay someone else for the land and water that THEY say they own.....the fact that pharmaceuticals cost so much no one can afford them....that is consciousness....now what the hell are you going to do with all that consciousness? probably set around thing and having conversations and making videos that do nothing! That is unconsciousness!!
@@thetherorist9244 that is "conscious of", a function.
@@thetherorist9244 thats much too real and in your face type of thing..more fun to speculate on what is what...no one ever sells it 100% We 100% do know about poverty,inequality,not enough water ot go around,etc..too boring for most of us to discuss
@@thetherorist9244 I would say that, over time we have demonstrated (particularly during the enlightenment and all the revolutions which occurred during this time), that a monarchy is not a logical form of continuing our idea of government for the collective, and that over time, we are adopting more collectivist voluntaryist ideologies in the western world, while some old world powers are attempting to cling to their positions as they become obsolete... And we are seeing new forms of power arise and fall every day, as technology demonstrates its' usefulness to our societies... I think what is most important right now, is for humanity to really think about what freedom is, the concept of ownership and how important it is, and hopefully over time we will evolve into systems demonstrated in sci-fi like Star Trek, or we also have programs like The Venus Project, or people like Buckminster Fuller, who have offered many outlandish ideas along the way of our collective consciousness and its' evolution. Humanity must make a decision fast. Will we allow for invasive technologies such as being produced by companies like Neurolink? Or will we push for the external augmentation of the human experience with technology that aids and inspires us as individuals to continue to explore the vast expanse that is currently called the universe for lack of a better understanding... How important is the freedom of our consciousness to us as a species? What is more importance? Autonomy and sovereignty, or convenience and luxury? Being human isn't all meant to be easy, and we can control our emotions by means of philosophical systems that have been around for thousands of years... Will society as a whole decide that gnosis is an important part of being human, or can we leave it behind us, and evolve to be a more technologically logical and emotionless species, which merges and intergrates with technology like the borg... Science fiction writers are not idiots... And what often seems to be fantasy, can sometimes become a reality... So, as fast as things have unfolded these past 100 years or so, I suggest and urge caution, while exploring the importance of human consciousness, and the ideas of concepts like ownership as you have pointed out here... Sorry for jumbled paragraph... I'm lazy and don't feel like cleaning it up...
Rupert Sheldrake is one of my all time heroes.
what heroism? do you even know what you are saying? do you even realise how that sounds?
It sounds absolutely fine, a hero can have many attributes for many different people, for example someone who is brave enough to put their reputation on the line by stating their unpopular or strange beliefs, personally I think Rupert s has no real wisdom to share,
Native Americans and other indigenous cultures have known about this for a while.
I was reminded of the song 'Colors of the wind' from the Pocahontas movie. Especially when MJ Rubenstein talking.
Some of the lyrics:
"I know every rock and tree and creature has a life, has a spirit, has a name".
"The rainstorm and the river are my brothers. The heron and the otter are my friends and we are all connected to each other in a circle, in a hoop that never ends".
Rupert Sheldrake will one day be seen as one of the most brilliant minds of this era.
Most people:
Watch comedy movies and TikTok.
Me:
Reading the comment sections of external consciousness propositions.
That's really good that the very ridiculed Rupert Sheldrake of "pseudoscience" is in close relation of ideas to the great Donald Hoffman. I do enjoy both of their works. I've not read any of their books though. But Donald Hoffman is a pioneer for holographic principle and for panpsychism.
"I don't know what the truth is, I'm just a scientist." - Donald Hoffman ✊❤️🤜🤛🔥✌️👌🤯😁
If only more scientists felt this way and didn't push ideas so easily off into pseudoscience and material based atheism.
Well let's face it, some of us already see him that way.
But yeah, assuming the human race survives, with civilisation and knowledge of history and ideas, he will probably be seen more like that in future.
I do hope so, I don't understand why Rupert Sheldrake is not respected. I think his theories are brilliant.
I'm a bit surprised that nobody mentioned colony consciousness, as expressed in ant and bee hives. It's a pretty good example of consciousness on a single, small scale coexisting on a larger collective scale.
It is strange how blind we (humans) are to all of these other levels of conciseness.
Good point. Exploring a little: I think it's important to acknowledge that consciousness and reactivity are words with quite distinct meanings and that it's important to not confuse one with the other. Something, something the colony is conscious but its constituent elements merely reactive. After all, folks have built robots with much richer repertoires than individual ants and no one (afaik) insists the robots are conscious.
From the colony perspective it seems reasonable to imagine a collective human consciousness... one addicted to fossil smoking, or perhaps humanity is still in a pre-conscious phase and knows not what it does.
@@REDPUMPERNICKEL AI might well be called artificial consciousness. Why artificial? Because we, rather than life, supply the power that animates it. Reactivity (the ability to field stimuli and respond thereto) is, although sometimes small, still an example of consciousness. Atomic particles, for instance, seem to display likes and dislikes.
@@kathyfausett9301 I'm thinking of prepending 'iawaft' (in a warm and friendly tone) to all of my excessively terse and ridiculously poetic comments which only ever approximate the thoughts I struggle to express.
So, iawaft, a poem...
Reactivity Re-imagined
As Sol rises of a morning and directs his warming beams Earthward, they find Pebbly, a lonely pebble sleeping on a cold, cold beach. Pebbly awakens saying, "Ah, Sol, at last, good to see you again. Look, I expand a little to show my appreciation".
Meanwhile, CL, a dissolute cloud of chlorine floats across Na, the desperately lonely sodium bed. Suddenly, in a flash of heat and light, a trillion shouts of, "I love you" and "I love you too" ring out. After they do it, a trillion newborn NaCLs muse among themselves, "What next"?
At the moment Q, a speeding white ball, drives herself into the side of ole Blackie he emits a yelp of pain and takes off to hide in the corner pocket or, if feeling petulant, ricochets from the green rail, off across the flat green meadow for an adventure among his rainbow colored chums. -- Red
Maybe you've read "Call of the Wild" and "The Jungle Book" and seen the film "Bambi" and perhaps dozens of its ilk...
No wonder so many dogs are making excellent child surrogates. No wonder so many see themselves reflected in the eyes of robots.
Consciousness and reactivity are words with quite distinct meanings.
Cheers!
@@REDPUMPERNICKEL Here hear!
Rupert Sheldrake is right. I think much depression is caused because we only think we have this material life that has a lot of pain and evilness in it.
Imagine how you would feel if you knew we had souls and we were part of a much bigger picture. It would be amazing.
This guy is brilliant. I have the same beliefs, that he conveyed, without having ever known about “panpsychism”. His explanations of concepts & the nature of problems with current science theories, as well as providing an overview, is excellent.Thanks to both contributors to this podcast.
Excellent......Dr.Rupert Sheldreck & Dr. D. Hoffman has beautifully , convincegly and plane / simple language has described the hard problem of consciousness... thanks 🙏.
Met Don approx 15 years ago at Esalen. He and his wife came to our table for lunch (no special lunch… it’s open) He requested feedback. I told him exactly what I was experiencing. ‘My head hurt’
When we reconvened he explained to the audience that he was accustomed to speaking to academics. Then he went on to explain a dental surgery he had where they accidentally cut his trigeminal nerve. I had never seen this from my 30 years on the path. His vulnerability changed my perspective. Personal observation…his wife was pivotal. A true shaman. (I always wonder if people take in the whole picture)
Glad to see that don is still on yet beat:)
I'm so pleased to discover these intelligent, insightful and thought provoking videos. Thank you!
We are the universe consciously experiencing itself
When there are people who dont even consider other people as people, you have be content with your own understanding of self and the world around you. Nobody else can tell you
Rupert Sheldrake and Donald Hoffman are next LEVEL
The person I’ve heard discussing and thinking most coherently about this subject is Bernado Kastrup.
"I don't know what the truth is, I'm just a scientist." - Donald Hoffman ✊❤️🤜🤛🔥✌️👌🤯😁
If only more scientists felt this way and didn't push ideas so easily off into pseudoscience and material based atheism.
Err..why is "atheism" material based?
I love Rupert Sheldrake.
17:20 "Do you have a worldview that is essentially a materialist worldview - there is no God, there is no consciousness out there, the universe is unconscious, it’s purposeless, meaningless, everything has happened by chance or accident, the laws of nature have no particular reason to be one way or another, we just happen to live in a universe where they happen to right for us, evolution as a matter of blind chance mutations and blind natural selection. That’s a worldview that says consciousness has just emerged in our brains and doesn’t actually do anything - also that we don’t have free will. A deeply depressing worldview, and I think that when you have whole societies based on it like ours, what you’d predict is that lots of people would suffer from depression, and the facts actually bear that out. If you think you live in a meaningless world where your mind is just in your brain and it’s nothing more than what’s happening inside your head not, not truly related to anything else - deeply depressing. Whereas, if you think that consciousness is primary, that we live in universe that’s purposeful, that our minds are part of something much greater than ourselves, that mystical experiences connect us with greater minds than our own - they’re not just serotonin levels changing inside our brains - then you have a completely different view of the universe."
Brillant talk of each Scientist. And it is so strong to say that we dont know yet
I love when Hoffman states with absolute conviction "Spacetime is history"...I wonder what Albert would think...I wish he was still here because he would continue to astonish.
Einstein: "Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution."
Every Hindu knows that we are “living” within the consciousness of Brahman.
It's not useful because even in a non-dual reality there is a definite illusion of duality. It is easier to explain things within the illusions of the dual FIRST and THEN go to full Advaita.
of course they do. it's so obivese
Scientists are almost always unaware of their own Self, that's why they are so interested in the external world and are good at exploring and understanding it. Unfortunately, most scientists, being blind to their own Self, don't believe in the Soul. The problem is with the mind-set of the type of person who goes into science. Rupert Sheldrake is an exception: He is Saint Rupert, the Patron Saint of Scientists. He is very much in touch with his own Soul and that of the Universe.
Straight up monistic Idealism such as Kastrup's Alter's or even Campbell's VR's, connects the most dots by FAR imo. We're not even conscious(the ONLY thing we can ever be sure of) by ANY reasonable definition of the word is beyond absurd. Panpsychism is somewhat on the right track at least, in that we do need to upgrade our metaphysics, but it seems to be intentionally meeting materialism somewhere in the middle purely out of safety/acceptability.
You have hit the nail on the head! The patriarchs (and occasional matriarch) of the old religion must be appeased if the heretical writings are to be saved from the fire ....
Can we get Dr Hoffman to elaborate more on "All these physical theories(general relativity, quantum physics, etc) are wrong" statement? Things like whether that statement applies to evolution by natural selection is also important. It is important to know in what context all these theories are wrong.
He's just saying what every scientist will say, which is that all our models are only our best approximations for understanding reality based on the available data. They're still the best we could possibly have, and pretending otherwise (like distrusting evolution) is like saying "this theory can't be 100% proven so I'll believe in magic instead!" Scientists are people humble enough to know that we can't ever achieve total certainty about anything, but are actually giving their best attempt and providing us with usable, testable models as we work towards an ever-increasing understanding.
"I am probably wrong." I love this guy!
This is the most insightful video, and by far the best one in all senses, for my experience at least!
Doesn't all of this speculation assume that consciousness is isolated in individuals and/or particles? What if there is a bigger perspective? What if there is more to understand beyond current human understanding? Questioning is important, of course, since it could lead to new understanding. India comes to mind. They have written about it for millennia, as well as giving methods for achieving a greater perspective through individual exploration. It can be as simple as experiencing an avalanche of understanding through experience.
Ladyman equates knowing with all other qualities, avoiding the Hard Problem. The fundamentality of knowing, of life itself, escapes explanation by matter and its emergencies. Reality is being and knowing, not one or the other.
Hoffman is lost in the ontological, seemingly neuroscientists dont even approach the ultimate question of consciousness, they get stuck in the faculties of consciousness' filter that is the brain. The brain is just a tool for expression, the phenomenological framework through which consciousness is experienced
Other than sheldrake, Peter Fenwick, the NDE specialist is an example of someone who directly addresses the hard problem
I wouldn't define sheldrakes perspective by the work of Hoffman as its a school of thought that likely reaches back tens of thousands of years.
Also the brain would be the physical framework, as the mind is the "phenomenological framework through which consciousness is experienced".
Although I do agree with your viewpoint of consciousness, as I think it is bottom up (in the physical world/unified field sense) and top down (in the quantum entanglement/coherentist/multiverse sense).
Will be looking into Fenwick!
This man is in the correct path.
@The Institute of Art and Ideas, why not put Mary-Jane Rubenstein’s name in the title since she was also an important contributor to the ideas in this video?
19:40
I mean, kind of, though. A 'heap' of sand has novel emergent properties compared to a 'heap' of SiO2 molecules which makes up the sand, and a 'heap' of SiO2 has emergent properties compared to a single molecule of SiO2, etc. 'Heaps' go all the way down, on every scale, when you take 'heap' to mean the fundamental universal pattern of individual units congregating into collective wholes.
This is the level of abstraction we are working with in panpsychism; when we talk about "consciousness going all the way down", we're not claiming that our specific human-level experience of morality or cognition or speech goes along with it into an atom, but that "experience" in the most general sense is a fundamental pattern of reality that goes all the way down and exhibits novel emergent aspects of itself at each level of increasing complexity (leading eventually to sentience, self-awareness, cognition, morality, etc).
He seemed to almost be in agreement with this when he mentioned the different degrees of consciousness, acknowledging that a spider at the very least has a basic experience of sentience. Keep riding this train of thought all the way down the ladder of complexity and ask yourself where experience begins. Is experience itself the property which suddenly emerges out of some ambiguous level of complexity, or do new aspects/phenomena/properties of experience emerge as complexity increases?
4:00 - I agree; ultimately physical materialism just offers no support whatsoever for conscious phenomena.
@Grady Stein Oh, how nice, Grady. Why discuss when you can smear? Very classy. Have a nice weekend, and stay safe out there.
Spent a lifetime hiking remote backcountry alone with wildlife plants bugs rocks. Have no doubt consciousness is universal and shared with all life forms. Nothing more intense than being eye to eye with a 600 pound bear or catching a wolf's gaze feet away or surviving a mountain's wrath. Eye to eye indeed, Autistics find eye contact painfully intense, as I felt staring that bear down, besides plants bugs rocks all talk to you after 7 days alone at remote alpine lakes ~~
Donald Hoffman is truly inspiring!
Two particles are side by side somewhere in space. One particle, call it A, sends a message to the the other, call it B, 'Isn't it nice here?' to which B responds 'Shush, I am consulting I higher being' A transmits 'Wonderful isn't it?' and B follows up with 'Nonsense, you have never left here'. A says 'Neither have you' ...
Well maybe consider this...
Saying there is a combination problem would be the equivalent of saying there's a combination problem with matter. What happens when matter creates a superorganism? Do the cells suddenly vanish and it's now just one giant cell?
When a superawareness evolves the smaller ones do not ever go away. Every atom in your brain still has the same awareness it originally had.
If you had a giant game of Chinese Whispers, have everyone act like "neurons" and one man in the middle of it all. The "neuron" people all whisper to each other, through many points of origin (as in many paths and many different whispers simultaneously). Then at the end of the chain they all whisper to the man in the middle.
The other conscious beings do not vanish, just the man in the middle is aware of far more of the whispers than any of the other parts of the chain.
The thing we experience as consciousness is like that man perhaps, a sort of designated receiver. An awareness of an atom expanded by further information and input. The other awarenesses are still present, they don't actually merge.
Water is at the base of all life, maybe water also is the base of consciousness. All complex life, mammals, birds etc are symbioses of many lifeforms, this could explain complex consciousness.
This is very profound! Maybe.. Water is also the physical expression of consciousness (beyond yet intrinsic to the physical world) - a similitude of the actual "nature" or composition of consciousness (something that, in my opinion is immeasurable... So using the term "composition" as a place holder of a term that refers to the immensity of something (or nothing 😊) that is infinite.) Just a thought that sparked from your thought! Thanks for sharing!
The main thing I discovered from this short is that Mr Sheldrake speaks slowly and clearly so I can hear and follow what he is saying and consider it without rewinding all the time, like I have to do with the others. Because they all speak quickly and animatedly, which is unhelpful for Bears of Little Brain, such as myself 🤔🙂
Same 🙂
Everything is an image in Consciousness Idealism is the correct view get Kastrup on.
"The radical unity of the ultimate essence of each constituent part of compounds in Nature-from Star to mineral Atom, from the highest Dhyani-Chohan to the smallest infusoria, in the fullest acceptation of the term, and whether applied to the spiritual, intellectual, or physical worlds-this is the one fundamental law in Occult Science.”
(H.P. Blavatsky, Secret Doctrine 1.120)
Spirit of indifference come out in the name of jesus. ☺
Not true, much of occultism is dualistic or panthiestic/relativistic. Also I would recommend against assuming Blatavaysky and related individuals of the period are worth trusting let alone quoting.
I am fracking on a ranch in North Dakota as I watched this and I think the ranch appreciates us fracking just as you would appreciate a doctor who successfully lanced a boil.
The 3 geniuses Sheldrake, Hoffman, and Goff are on the right track except for one thing. To use an analogy of "What's it like to be a bat:", the key phrase is "to Be". Aristotle asked this question what is "Being-In-Itself". The discussion continued with Nargajuna (150-250), and especially with Shankara's (788-820) Advaita Vedanta. He claimed that we can experience Consciousness (Brahman) directly in the state of Samadhi/Satori, but we must do so by transcending the mind. Also Penrose says "Consciousness is non-computational", so mathematics alone can only point to it, not give you a direct experience of IT. The ancient Buddhists and Hindus have provided various methods of tapping into and merging with Consciousness, such as mantras in the Rig Veda.
I read a sci-fi short story about a psychologist who is sent to distant Army outpost in a far off galaxy. Everyone on the post who has gone outside the protective atmosphere bubble is hearing voices, many think they've gone mad and have to be sedated.
The voice says: "we are one.'' And words to that effect.
When the doctor goes outside the natural world moves and shifts in waves of color and sound and it condenses in a monochrome image of himself mirroring his movements.
The Voice describes to him that every molecule he is breathing, hearing and seeing IS a singular sentient being that together make up the planet and its atmosphere.
When he goes back inside, he breathes in the Commander's face who inhales and in that instant he understands that the planet is entirely made up of conscious beings and that OUR language fails to properly describe that ''we'' plural is ALSO ''one'' singular entity.
So no one is going mad, they're all just absorbing the world they're standing on, and it is responding with an unfamiliar language.🙃
It seems strange to me that panspychism equals electrons are conscious. I’ve always looked at consciousness in the sense that it is an emergent property of its underlying building blocks, analogous to how no single atom has toughness/strength/electrical conductivity/ thermal conductivity/ ductility, but many atoms in a specific arrangement do.
It's different because you can quantitatively describe how a collection of atoms manifests those emergent properties. Not so consciousness. There is no possible quantitative description of what I subjectively experience when I taste chocolate. It is simply a conscious experience that can only be truly understood through the very experience of consciousness.
@nineleafclover Lets say that everything is conscious. And just for simplicity, lets say all particles/ building blocks are the same. They would still be experiencing their existence uniquely because of their different physical position in space and in relation to the other blocks. How could you ever explain this relation to a separate block without positioning it in the exact same space. You will never be able to experience/ understand the TRULY experience of another building block, only an aproximation...
Yep, that seams correct. Whatever it is that causes the DNA to give instructions to cells is the root of our consciousness and our emotions and all experiences are just a result of the most effective method that evolution has narrowed down.
Considering that, What are the odds of us finding self recognizing conscious life on another planet and what would that indicate? Meh nothing I guess. Lol
Doesnt seem possible. Because what arranged said atoms? Evolution is more like a active force than a sequence of events. Observer is eternal
It sad to see Rupert Sheldrake rapidly aging.
I came to realize that he is right, we do have a soul, and our soul is an eternal.
From the absurd to the brilliant, what a range of people working on this field!
So informative!!! Was surprised when M-J R's section started as her name is not mentioned in the title that I could see. Is there a reason for this omission?
yep
I like what the good-looking fellow 🙂 (with no hair) was saying about consciousness being emergent from complicated systems, but not necessarily being constituted (in a physical sense) of it's parts.
Yes Rupert! Just had to comment soon as I heard you say well what about the sun ha 👌 thank you 🙏 my thoughts exactly! ok let me get back to the vid now👍
Consciousness will always and forever escape rational explanation: it cannot be defined from within itself, and it has no external boundaries: just as God, infinity and the universe must be taken as simply existing with no beginning or end. That's the quantum leap of faith that science will ultimately have to make to get the the next energy level.
I have the feeling that Rupert Sheldrake was alluding to the ideas of Roger Penrose in The Emperor's New Mind when Rupert was discussing the not-fully-realized Panpsychism of some materialistic scientists.
Panpsychism has the advantage over materialism by holding consciousness as fundamental and thus dissolves the hard problem of consciousness. However, this leads to a new problem known as the combination problem. Idealism has the advantage of holding consciousness as fundamental without the combination problem.
Yes, and objective idealism states that things or rather beings exist as long as there is any perceiver of that thing.
Also, the proponents of emergence theories have no idea of what the term involution means: the infolding of certain aspects of consciousness in forms that are build by evolving beings. Emergence is a dual process.
@@WisdomTeachings Exactly, the emergentists will be committed to a form of dualism and thus inherit all the problems that come with it such as the interaction problem.
@@MonisticIdealism The way I see it is that the dual process is a cooperation between hierarchies of beings. It can be seen as spiritual light condensing and interacting with itself, hence, ultimately, a qualified monism. The duality is in the eye of the perceiver.
Panpsychism merely rebrands the hard problem as the combination problem - or rather, it moves the start line down the track but still before the goalpost - kinda like trying to explain the origin of life with panspermia
How have I gone this long without knowing there were other people; much less people of science, and academia; who not only have articulated my worldview, but lend it substantial credence. I’m in tears right now ya’ll!! I mean uhh, my lacrimal tissues are secreting an organic dihydrogen monoxide based solution as a result of this realization.
Never read philosophy, in my life. Only reading science everyday. Reading science, knowing different things, and becoming confused and obsessed with some thoughts, I dont the answers to them. After 8 years of studying science, I started accumulating all ideas and theories and couldnt just come up with a solution of our own existence. So, maybe Consciousness is only independent entity, existing, and maybe everything, the materials, spacetime itself, which we believe, could have been formed 13.8 billion years ago via inflation, and not explosion, maybe nothing but just a misinterpretation of the current known laws. The laws are not enough. Science is evidence, but philosophy dont want evidence. Philosophy wants the ultimate truth, but science is trying to help his brother to know the truth, but philosophy just doesnt believe his own sister. Maybe we need something new. Maybe we need a new understanding, and we believe in something nothing complexity. Something from nothing or something is nothing. But maybe there is something beyond sometging and nothing. A complexity which is beyond explanation.
or a simplicity which is beyond explanation.
Phillip Goff, brilliant intro!
CONSIDER THIS HYPOTHETICAL ANALOGY: Perhaps it's like 3 plugs creating particle spin charge. Something like a soul is limited to doing Morris code communication (lol) regulating charge effects on 1 prong. Pan-psychism is on prong 2, working emerging phenomenon up to the material world, on prong 3 where the materialist's, can't hear the electron phase symphony of drums, string, and wind instrument's in the math.
Do they ever approach the problem of consciousness from the perspective that WE are it? That the thoughts, your brain, and consciousness are all one...meaning it's happening live, it's not coming from outside of you, nor are you the puppet. It's the only solution.
By examining itself conciousness may be making a bigger deal out of itself than it really is...
It's all so simple. The universe is fractal and the Creator manipulates the chance and probability of the outcome of every event at every level to suit its purposes (which we cannot predict).
Brilliant and beautiful! Thank you for posting ❤️
30:13 - did I just understand the hidden world of consciousness with a GTA explanation from Donald Hoffman...
Extremely good presentation of the question. Thank You
I like Rupert Sheldrake's statement that the whole Universe is conscious. The anima mundi (Greek: ψυχὴ κόσμου, psychè kósmou) or world soul is, according to several systems of thought, an intrinsic connection between all living beings, which relates to the world in much the same way as the soul is connected to the human body.
Although the concept of the anima mundi originated in classical antiquity, similar ideas can be found in the thoughts of later European philosophers in the 18th and 19th centuries..
Plato and Pythagoras were on to it way back and most indigenous are aware of it, because they are not speeding around like in todays world where so many are locked into their head. So there are just 'finer' levels of soul - From the Solar System to the Galactic to the Universal.
Consciousness is to time and space as energy is to time and space. In variant organization and density, it manifests differently. We need to find a detector sensitive to consciousness on this level.
Our brains
Wetness can be explained at a molecular level and so can the red light at a frequency level but try explaining color red to a blind person or wetness to someone with no sense of touch. They are both experienced properties. The cause of wetness is the molecular structure but that too is only an observed property.
The experience is in the consciousness and there is only the field of consciousness in which all matter, space and time emerge.
The cause of wetness, or any other perception, is the interaction between the water and the nerve ends in the body, interacting with the water. Consciousness is the knowing of, and the being of what is real at this very moment. So the objective and the subjective turn out to be the same thing. A set of relationships between different aggregates and states in a system, where the organism and the environment are conscious and not separate. A falling tree in the forest will make sound only to a pair of ears/brain, or a recording device out there to percieve it.
@@t.todorov5202 to add to your commentary, an electron will behave as a particle when observed and as a wave when not. How is the particle conscious/aware that it is being observed unless it has consciousness?
So consciousness pervades everything but it "reflects" off matter giving the illusion of conscious matter like the bright moon appears to be radiating light but the reality is deeper. Why does some matter appear to be more conscious tuan other?...working on that. 🙂
Hey great video but why did you leave Mary Jane Rubenstein's name out of the title? And no mention in key moments- just at the end of the list of people... seems off with peace & love!!
Im almost totally convinced now , yes consciousness is fundamental. Almost that consciousness could just be an advanced form of computation. Some spiritual advisors believe that earth is a master school and only the bravest souls enter this earth game simulation. And 90% of these souls still complain and suffer most of the time and some never make it past samsara and wakening to the way we are so asleep. Very few are able to see through this simulation and which means radical awakening to the objective and subjective parts of reality.
Mary-Jane Rubenstein doesn't have a ontology or even a philosophy of consciousness. Ethics and even politics motivate which ontological and philosophical positions she will adopt. What she adopts is adopted to further moral and political causes. It's a kind of pragmatism. And it has nothing to do with truth or ontological correctness. This isn't to say that I or anyone else has the truth on these issues. However, unlike Rubenstein, we are searching for that truth. Rubenstein, on the other hand, is using philosophical positions as tools against "monotheism", "hierarchy", anthropocentrism, etc. She is extremely honest and explicit about this.
This is like Jacques Derrida and, earlier, Emmanuel Levinas who treated Ethics and, I would argue, Politics as First Philosophy. All philosophical positions must serve ethical and political goals. Marxists too had a similar take on philosophy. Marx himself famously said: "The point isn't to interpret the world, it is to change it."
Rubenstein doesn't want to interpret the world: she wants to change it.
Hi Paul, thanks for you comment - interesting thoughts on Mary-Jane Rubenstein. You might find this interview with her interesting: iai.tv/video/mary-jane-rubenstein-in-depth-interview
@@TheInstituteOfArtAndIdeas The write up in the link above simply demonstrates my point: "Philosopher Mary-Jane Rubenstein discusses her work on two radical and subversive ideas: pantheism and the multiverse. She discusses the theological ideas that underpin physicists' ideas ..."
Consciousness is the expression of expansionism.... and what we need to remember is that we are unraveling what is but at the same time what is is expanding and attaching consciousness as an entity defies the actual .
Very intelligent philosophers on this video
One day my consciousness will leave me but then again will it matter.
like tears in the rain
Don, the people showing up at the train station do cause the train to arrive. Over time, if people didn't come to catch the train, there would be no train schedule, and the train would not arrive. In other words, from this point of view, the causality IS the people wanting to catch the train. So, this kind of argument works both ways, and it is a more nuanced understanding that sees it both ways--simultaneously.
Holism yes light dark left right white black off on stop start north south. is 1 and 2 = 3 = center balance form experience existence consciousness. maybe thats wrong maybe thats right who knows lol
But you wouldn't see people wanting to catch the train at that particular time if there wasn't a train schedule. The schedule causes both the train and the people to arrive at the time that they do.
You never have a thought or feeling that has never been thought or felt before.
C S Peirce's Realm of Firstness = the realm of possibility and the imagination. Possibility precedes 'things' and 'thought' etc.
Existence is an unbounded self-aware energetic field or presence
that we call consciousness. It oscillates between a dormant stage. and an active stage ad infinitum. When emerging from a dormant stage the energetic part of consciousness is impulsed by the awareness or . self-aware aspect of consciousness to explore patterns which evolve into matter and eventually intelligent beings so that consciousness or existence knows itself fully once again
My problem with panpsychism is that i know my own consciousness can disappear when my brain cells interact in a different way (eg when I'm asleep), so it really does seem to be the result of their interactions rather than a property they intrinsically possess
Do you really believe your consciousness disappears or transforms? I can't agree that consciousness ever disappears.
@@dylanakent yes totally. when I'm asleep (and not dreaming) I have no consciousness
The brain is still active, just less so, when in non-REM sleep states. Although we use the term "unconscious" to refer to someone who is asleep, it doesn't necessarily follow that we are quite literally unconscious. In fact, sleep studies have shown people having conscious interactive experiences while technically asleep, such as passive auditory learning or sleep walking behaviors. Then there's the experiences of people in a coma who appear nearly or literally brain dead, but then later awoke with vibrant details of their conscious experience while technically comatose. Many of these experiences intersect with hearing or seeing literal events in their hospital room that we believed they shouldn't have been able to perceive.
@@chelsmaria surely all that shows is that 1. our bodies can function without consciousness (your examples of learning while asleep and also walking) and 2. consciousness continues to exist sometimes in situations where we don't expect it.
Are you suggesting that we're conscious all the time but just forget that we were once we wake up?
@@singingphysics9416 It's possible that you were conscious, but you don't remember it. If insects are conscious, but they have no real episodic memory as we understand it, they are still conscious. It's also possible that the consciousness is merely different from consciousness you experience when awake. Finally, some serious Buddhists claim that consciousness does indeed persist during all phases of sleep. Look into B. Alan Wallace on the last point if you're interested.
I have no problems with consciousness; it is my own unconscious that really irks me. If the universe is conscious, it seems as conscious of me as I am of the bacteria in my gut. "Bounded rationality" is the phrase that pops up in my mind when I watch such videos as this.
Wow!! Excellent interviews ,.-)
Our current consciousness is a sort of operating system, installed in the brain, to make sense of our sensory inputs in the context of logic. Our brains are conscious computers. I believe our senses evolved much further than they seem now, with the ability to provide us with much greater detail and see a much wider spectrum of light, sound, etc, but to make sense of the world in the context of consciousess, our operating system pared down the feeds so we could begin to process them and still survive. Thoughts are grouped electrons in low frequency waves. Our processing system, similar to a computer, is a sensemaking algorithm. It's a framework of organized groups of electrons. We started with 2x2 groups of electrons, or conscious thought. and a 10x10 cube, where we can only "see" paths along the outside of the cube from one thing we perceive as an "event." Now, some of the "input" still goes to our earlier processing system, which can use abstract, more powerful logic, but can not naturally "interface" with our current operating system, EXCEPT by producing reward/warning emotions, which our conscious mind also perceives. If you look at consciousness in that framework, there are 600 (thoughts) that we can hold for a decision consciously, but if we create a new system that has 1,000 clusters, or thoughts, which is possible, we can process up to 1,000 and explain what is going on up to 600 pretty easily. We can make perfect sense of the world within the context of the current norm. We can explain paths that we intuit, which others see exist, but not see in the context of logic. What we are doing, in essence, is gleaning paths "through the cube" and we are able to explain them in the context of metaphor only. I believe what we have been waiting for to be able to be aware of this wole process and to be able to explain how we generate those metaphors in a way that humans can understand AND design algorithms on computers to process information. The period of "abstraction" is a stage in the development of consciousness where we know we can reason the answer, but can't explain it, because we are not aware of how we are doing it. The good news is... WE HAVE EVOLVED past this. We can use sounds to organize our thoughts themselves into the configuration of a C-60 fullerene and, after we evolve to understand that, we can go even further. We can also evolve larger sensemaking grids entirely. When we can process 1,000 logical steps, our brain maps that onto the concept of a 10x10 cube WITH the middle included. SOnic geometry and meditation can help us accomplish this. I have generated a conceptual model of a meta metaphor that generates solution metaphors to understand any set of information in context. It can be explained using a 1D picture of a 3D sphere with a sort of process for looking fora point where we can break through the "magic middle" and from the other side, we can deduce a linear path. Each time this is used, it increases our capacity for understanding to include two additional variables. When that happens, we can be fully conscious of the process of evolution. I have actually gone quite a bit further than this, but there are probably are very few people that can even understand this. If you can, please reach out.
Our brains can perceive other thought waves, and possibly those coming from other parallel universes that are close to ours. This is understood in the context of a "multiverse framework." The thoughts we tune into are determined by a condition of our current thinking habits. We could easily test this by using me as a PAINLESS guinea pig, which I would be willing to do. I would love to work on this model somewhere, but I have no resources and no access to help. For that matter, I have no desire at all on behalf of myself only. I do have desires for US that include me. Hope that makes a little sense.
Lovevolution
is a new word/concept we can share. A free open domain word we can use and
spread to help humanity to focus in a positive direction during this time of
radical change. Lovevolution can act as a common denominator for the interfaith
community and new models of science. Please accept this gift of this word to
connect humanity in this common purpose.
The purpose of consciousness is creation. Original stories, (fact & fiction), music, & athletic accomplishments, are all conscious possibilities to "Flow" with. Flowing with The One Groove, globally, is the foreseen epiphany that we have intelligently evolved to manifest! Music bonds gatherings in magnificent ways. billions Entrained with The One Groove will Be miraculous!!!
That hard gulp at 6:37... That's how serious the problem is.
*[...] we can predict what choices you're gonna make [...]* - I don't think you can . You may be able to intercept the signal sent from the inner me to the interface we call "the body" before the body reacts to it but you can't predict my choices . The body is just one layer of the *"ME"* composite .
Immediately after he laid out that illustration he said we should be careful not to think that that illustrates a causation of brain material creating thought. Then, he laid out the example of how a group of people gathering at a train stop could superficially look to an observer like the people gathering is what summons the train.
Denying the existence of consciousness, in a blind attempt to prove that all that is exists lies within the realm of materialism, is ironically explained by virtue of the lack of consciousness held by those strongly viewed individuals.
I don't see pansychism or dualism as being mutually exclusive. The best analogy I have currently for a possible Mind/Body/Soul connection is light through a prism. The white light is the Soul, the prism is the physical Body and the refracted spectrum is our Mind, or Consciousness. Subjective experience.
The Soul is "pure" and external. The faculty to experience without the capability. No physical form, no physical context for subjective experience.
As physical form evolves (Protons, Electrons, Elements, Molecules, Matter), this pure, undiluted 'potential experience' is refracted through all the physical forms, the form informing the refraction pattern. The more complex the form, the more complex the refracted pattern, or the Consciousness.
An Electron won't 'experience' anything more than a change in resonance when interacting with itself or other particles. It won't feel pain, or emotion, it won't have an ability to study the event, introspect on how the event may have changed it's nature, or it's environment...but at some level it will sense and react. Base. The sensory nature becomes more complex with the physical form.
From the explanation in the video, this appears to be a blending of both Pansychism and Dualism.
Alas, I'm disappointed that this was simply an assemblage of old interviews (many of which I had seen) rather than a debate among the interviewees. I also have to admit that, based on some of the snarky comments, there are obviously those who are so beholden to the bible of materialism that they can't open their (billiard ball) minds to the possibility that their religion may well be incomplete, if not downright wrong.
As a hard materialist, I’m open to alternatives, but no arguments were actually made in this video to assess one way or the other. I’d be interested in presentations followed by a debate. The claim that all things (quarks to rocks to animals to planets to the universe) are conscious, or that the things below animals (starting at particles) are conscious, requires serious evidence. It would fundamentally change all of our understandings of just about everything in the universe. What is the actual theory of the mechanism for which a quark exhibits awareness, for example? Or the sun? What is the theory for how multiple aware things form the conscious human mind?
I think it’s just a sliding scale which could appear in any system, and to our knowledge which currently only appears in animals and potential artificial minds we humans may create someday. I think it’s illusory or real only depending on how you define it.
@@NoOne-vm2wd they're not baseless, as for example the double slit experiment shows that observation changes what happens, so in other words the universe isn't entirely objective. Consciousness is involved somehow and personally, I don't see how materialism can hold up under evidence like that.
@@NoOne-vm2wd The measuring instrument itself didn't change the results, because when no one was observing and the instrument was left to measure on its own, there were waves, but when there was a conscious observer, you got particles.
@@martingarreis I do plenty of self-inquiry. There's no way to determine the true nature of one's own consciousness from the inside. Whether it's material or not, you still only know that you are conscious, and nothing beyond that, per Descartes. Falsifying materialism requires public demonstration of something inarguably immaterial.
That's a strawman of materialism (not that anyone really uses that term anymore in philosophy; physicalism being more accurate) if ever I've seen one. No physicist seriously believes in a billiard ball model of fundamental particles. And calling science a religion only serves to highlight just how clueless you are about the state of contemporary physics in light of quantum mechanics.
06:52 when someone knocks on the bathroom's door.
Great Video! thank you so much for sharing!
Sheldrake & Hoffman are twin brothers from different continents :)
Whitechocolatemocha,there brother's from different mothers.
"Particles don't have consciousness, consciousness has particles." Rupert Spira
At the same time this video was being made Rupert was making another on consciousness which can be found on YT search for .Does Consciousness Arise in the Brain?
Physical science tell you about matter but philosophy tells you about what matters - Jordan Peterson
If everything is mathematical formulae algorithms then are we living in a simulated world
Mathematics is a concept, an abstraction. I dont think being in a computer would allow for us to have this conscious experience. I mean do you think a video game character is conscious?
Bryan Guilford they will be, and why would you put this universe on the same level as a computer
Bryan Guilford what really is conscious ? At a point sacrificing humans to gods was acceptable now even throwing trash on the ground makes us guilty. Conscious seems to be learned and evolves just like artificial intelligence
monet roshi consciousness is just another way of describing our senses, self consciousness is the problem, to my knowledge I’d say Language is the missing price of the consciousness problem.
Most likely we are. This has been broadly accepted as highly probable.....
Gosh.. when a single video.. undoes the assumptions underlying your worldview
@17:33 omg its my roommate…such a depressing view indeed. He is depressed and a loner…never a relationship w a women..no friends…bleak existence if you ask me…
So many people have that depressing world view, he is so right there. It's also depressing for anyone who is close to someone like that.
How then is it possible to NOT be conscious, as in a dreamless sleep, if our being conscious is a consequence of the mere presence and collective sum of tiny bits of consciousness which are integral to/fundamental aspects of, particulate matter? This perspective says all of the complex biological processes going on in brains is irrelevant to being conscious. It says that living and dead brains are equally conscious. This strike anyone else as odd especially in light of the fact that we all become not conscious every day (except for the occasional all nighter)? Isn't it obvious to everyone that when we are not conscious we are not existent, that if we died suddenly when not conscious we wouldn't even notice? or care?
From a certain perspective, only I am conscious and y'all are only theoretically. I can never know with absolute certainty that you are conscious. How is it that I am convinced that you are? And being convinced, are you convinced that I am? Why?
Our sense organs translate impinging energies into neural code that, with only a very tiny adjustment in perspective, can be taken as the metaphorization of the environment. From this perspective, speech is more easily understood as a stream of metaphorical entities riding on the streams of neural code metaphors from the ears into the brain. Thus ideas, thoughts, the "contents" of conscious being, are all metaphors. A thought is not the thing the thought is about (e.g. the thought of a rock is not a rock) except when the thought is about the thought that it is, like this one. I am the metaphor of me. What is the existential status of a metaphor? It's certainly not matter. Thus I'm not a materialist but neither am I a panpsychist. I guess the category most fitting would be perhaps abstractionist. Talk to Douglas Hofstadter for a more intelligent exposition of this train of thoughts.
How is it that when the last thought in a conscious being has fled, so too has the conscious being?
In non-dual traditions they use the word awareness,and awareness dos'nt need conciousness,but conciousness needs awareness .Awareness itself is just a name for absolute nothing.
🙏 Addressing only the thought about dreamless state:
1. Who is that who is conscious of the waker, dreamer and in the dream less state. It has to be a 4th.
2. In the dreamless state is this 4th there or not. Surely there because it is there when the person wakes up and it was there when dreaming. Could not have mysteriously disappeared somewhere in the interim
3. Why is this 4th not aware of the dreamless state? It is aware because otherwise after waking one would not be aware that they were in a dreamless state. The waker and dreamer is not aware but the 4th is.
4. From a panpsychism perspective : consciousness evolves with complexity. In a complex structure such as a human brain, consciousness shines brightly. As the brain shuts down during sleep, consciousness fades off to it's very basic and fundamental levels but is still there as elucidated in 3 above.
@@ramankhatri This 4th state as you cal it is another concept,there is not even one .This questioning about who is the observer is pointless.The only importance that is has is that the seeker dissapears.What fades away during the deep sleep is conciousness identifying with form.You can only talk about the deep sleep when you're awake,in deep sleep there is no world,no toughts,no problems.And the brain dos'nt shut down during the deep sleep,blood has to flow,digesting happens etc .
@@hermansohier7643 - I take conscious, aware, awake, cognizant, apprehensive, mindful, thinking, etc. as essentially synonymous metaphors for the same phenomenon. Obviously then, to use some of them to characterize others of them is a tautological exercise unable to provide new understanding. This is quite unlike the way one's understanding of something can usually be augmented by reading a list of synonyms in a thesaurus. Strikes one as reflective of the weirdness of the phenomenon in a way similar to the weirdness one sees on a TV screen when the source of the image is the camera aimed at the self same screen. Isn't it interesting that a synonym for thinking is reflection?
@@ramankhatri iawaft:
"1. Who is that who is conscious of the waker, dreamer and in the dream less state. It has to be a 4th."
I AM conscious. Consciousness is not an alien thing, like some ghostly hanger on, conscious IS what I am, the reason I am ephemeral. I am the dream. No need at all for some imaginary onlooker, 4th, 3rd or 2nd. When I talk to myself, it is I, the 1st, last, one and only both speaking and listening and both with their roots in my conscious being.
"2. In the dreamless state is this 4th there or not. Surely there because it is there when the person wakes up and it was there when dreaming. Could not have mysteriously disappeared somewhere in the interim"
Not there. That's exactly my contention. We cease to exist in dreamless sleep and in death. I am not when body enters dreamless sleep just as the flame is not when the candle is extinguished. I return to being when the candle is relit. Getting relit is the job of the Sun or in Winter the job of the alarm clock or of the fire alarm in the event of smoke or, failing all that, it is the job of the internal timing circuits.
"3. Why is this 4th not aware of the dreamless state? It is aware because otherwise after waking one would not be aware that they were in a dreamless state. The waker and dreamer is not aware but the 4th is."
Memory suffices. Imagine what would remain if a person lost every memory. They would be exactly like a newborn baby, but big. When I switch my computer off I trust when I switch it on again it will not just hum, light an LED and leave my screens blank (horrible to contemplate and yet I must. Reminds me, do a backup this very night).
"4. From a panpsychism perspective : consciousness evolves with complexity."
That is not my impression of panpsychism. Seems to me panpsychism simply and erroneously equates consciousness with the innate ability of Nature to behave as it does. About this we know a little under titles like physics and chemistry.
Cheers!