I love that Annaka is working things out and doesn’t feel she has to make conclusive statements when she’s unsure. Her not being an academic ironically makes her more academically pure. She pursues knowledge and is unafraid.
So, so wonderful to see Annaka move in this direction. I was worried she might stall at a micropsychism-type view. But she's brought her non-dual insights to bear, which is great. What we take to be the self is just a memory bundle of qualia (itself a qualitative structure). Brilliant.
The ego is your meta-conscious self… the body is what we “colloquially call”, the unconscious self! (although it’s not really unconscious, it’s a misnomer).
@@sxsmith44 Seems like a fair enough way to conceptualise it to me. I'm not sure I would categorise it quite that way, personally. I would say "ego" is the (generally quite subtle) qualia of identification with experience.
Yes. I’m not sure why I commented in the first place. I must’ve been smoking something at the time. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the term meta-conscious but it just refers to the “I“, that is aware that it is aware.
That was the best mind chat :) So refreshing to have someone agreeing with Philip for a change. Annaka expressed her views and criticisms with the clarity seemingly only possible from someone not coming to the topic from a position of being embedded in western academic philosophy. Brilliantly clear criticisms of illusionism. Felt like she really had Keith on the ropes there.’ Felt experience is the most non-conceptual thing,.’
Idealism: Metaphysical Idealism is the view that the objective, phenomenal world is the product of an IDEATION of the mind, whether that be the individual, discrete mind of a personal subject, or otherwise that of a Universal Conscious Mind (often case, a Supreme Deity), or perhaps more plausibly, in the latter form of Idealism, Impersonal Universal Consciousness Itself (“Nirguna Brahman”, in Sanskrit).
The former variety of Idealism (that the external world is merely the product of an individual mind) seems to be a form of solipsism. The latter kind of Idealism is far more plausible, yet it reduces the objective world to nothing but a figment in the “Mind of God”. Thus, BOTH these forms of Idealism can be used to justify all kinds of immoral behaviour, on the premise that life is just a sort of dream in the mind of an individual human, or else in the consciousness of the Universal Mind, and therefore, any action that is deemed by society to be immoral takes place purely in the imagination (and of course, those who favour this philosophy rarely speak of how non-human animals fit into this metaphysical world-view, at least under the former kind of Idealism, subjective Idealism). Idealism (especially Monistic Idealism), is invariably the metaphysical position proffered by neo-advaita teachers outside of India (Bhārata), almost definitely due to the promulgation of the teachings in the West of Indian (so-called) “gurus” such as Mister Venkataraman Iyer (normally referred to by his assumed name, Ramana Maharshi). See the Glossary entry “neo-advaita”. This may explain why such (bogus) teachers use the terms “Consciousness” and/or “Awareness”, instead of the Vedantic Sanskrit word “Brahman”, since with “Brahman” there is ultimately no distinction between matter and spirit (i.e. the object-subject duality). At the risk of sounding facetious, anyone can dress themselves in a white robe and go before a camera or a live audience and repeat the words “Consciousness” and “Awareness” ad-infinitum and it would seem INDISTINGUISHABLE from the so called “satsangs” (a Sanskrit term that refers to a guru preaching to a gathering of spiritual seekers) of those fools who belong to the cult of neo-advaita. Although it may seem that in a couple of places in this treatise, that a form of Monistic Idealism is presented to the reader, the metaphysical view postulated here is, in fact, a form of neutral monism known as “decompositional dual-aspect monism” (“advaita”, in Sanskrit), and is a far more complete perspective than the immaterialism proposed by Idealism, and is the one realized and taught by the most enlightened sages throughout history, especially in the most “SPIRITUAL” piece of land on earth, Bhārata. Cf. “monism”. N.B. The Idealism referred to in the above definition (and in the body of this book) is metaphysical Idealism, not the ethical or political idealism often mentioned in public discourse (e.g. “I believe everyone in society ought to be given a basic income”). Therefore, to distinguish between sociological idealism and philosophical Idealism, the initial letter of the latter term is CAPITALIZED.
We don’t know *what* experience is, we don’t know *how* it (mis)informs us of any underlying reality, we don’t know *why* it is; we know simply *that* it is. It’s the most basic unit of understanding anything. Everything else we know is known through experience; understanding any concept is an experience, remembering anything is an experience, sensing anything is an experience, so if we have any knowledge, right or wrong or purple, then there has been an experience. How can people deny that they know they experience things?
It's nice to see Mrs Harris slowly start to see the truth even if she is only 75% committed, she's very smart and intuitive I know she'll come around eventually....in fact I think in her heart she knows Idealism is right.
She will never be all in on idealism because the biggest influence on her is her husband and he’s incapable of going there. Sam is an expert-like meditator and still doesn’t see the light. On top of that the worlds foremost proponent of idealism here in the west is Bernardo Kastrup. BK and Sam do not care much for one another so she cannot cozy up to him!
Annaka's discussion on time and consciousness reminds me of the great Henri Bergson. Matter and Memory is the GREATEST book on mind and consciousness ever written. Hope you guys have a philosopher who interested in Bergson on one day.
Annaka wonders if feeling pain is necessary. We actually know that. There are people who suffer from a neurological dysfunction that manifests itself in the lack of feeling pain, and it is a life-threatening condition. Such people have to be extremely alert and aware of their surroundings all the time, which takes up a lot of mental resources.
I believe Annika may be coming from a place of believing that just because the physical mechanism of pain may be necessary/helpful (the cascading physical events from stimuli to behavioral response - touching a hot pan, nerve endings fire, muscles twitch, hand retracts. But ALSO - pain as a felt, subjective experience…That to me seems to be the seemingly unnecessary part. Would love to hear your thoughts!
@@mikebasketball11 I think that this feeling of pain, in order to fulfill its function and protect us, must be extremely uncomfortable for us, and remain in memory for a long time, because otherwise we would ignore it. That is why people who are under the influence of substances and do not feel pain often self-harm
small suggestion to my brothers across the pond. When you are debating, consolidate your words before speaking them. The barrage of half formed sentences and stuttering makes it nearly impossible to actually digest what you are trying to express (atleast for me). Most of the middle and end of this fascinating discussion sounds like the audio got corrupted. Just take a beat, nail down the thought, and then say it. Not "i,I,I,I, but, but, but, or, or, or." Fwiw, great chat all around.
I found it profoundly annoying when Annaka was cutting Keith off multiple times when Keith had been listening to Annaka and Philip for nearly half of the podcast.
Harris, time and time again, reaches the Brick Wall on what can be known about Conscious Experience. While at the Brick Wall she always says that Dualism was a possible next step. But she always deridingly called Dualism, Magical Dualism. She said that if Dualism was true then Consciousness would need to be a Fundamental Phenomenon. The 21st century upgrade to Dualism called Connectism shows how to break through the Brick Wall using an Engineering analysis of the Visual Conscious Experience and concludes that Conscious Experience certainly could be a Fundamental Phenomenon in the Universe.
Why don't we have free will? Because nobody asked us whether we live or not, and whether we want to or not, we are going down a path with life that we did not choose ourselves.
Keith doesn’t get it, Annaka was awesome! Goff is clear and amazing as usual. There is a single moment in the mind I think. Totally disagree with the free will denial.
🐟 11. FREE-WILL Vs DETERMINISM: Just as the autonomous beating of one's heart is governed by one's genes (such as the presence of a congenital heart condition), and the present-life conditioning of the heart (such as myocardial infarction as a consequence of the consumption of excessive fats and oils, or heart palpitations due to severe emotional distress), each and EVERY thought and action is governed by our genes and environmental conditioning. This teaching is possibly the most difficult concept for humans to accept, because we refuse to believe that we are not the author of our thoughts and actions. From the appearance of the pseudo-ego (one’s inaccurate conception of oneself) at the age of approximately two and a half, we have been constantly conditioned by our parents, teachers, and society, to believe that we are solely responsible for our thoughts and deeds. This deeply-ingrained belief is EXCRUCIATINGLY difficult to abandon, which is possibly the main reason why there are very few persons extant who are spiritually-enlightened, or at least who are liberated from the five manifestations of mental suffering explained elsewhere in this “Final Instruction Sheet for Humanity”, since suffering (as opposed to pain) is predicated solely upon the erroneous belief in free-will. Free-will is usually defined as the ability for a person to make a conscious decision to do otherwise, that is to say, CHOOSE to have performed an action other than what one has already done, if one had been given the opportunity to do so. To make it perfectly clear, if one, for example, is handed a restaurant menu with several dishes listed, one could decide that one dish is equally-desirable as the next dish, and choose either option. If humans truly possessed freedom of will, then logically speaking, a person who adores cats and detests dogs, ought to be able to suddenly switch their preferences at any given point in time, or even voluntarily pause the beating of his or her own heart! So, in both of the aforementioned examples, there is a pre-existing preference (at a given point in time) for one particular dish or pet. Even if a person liked cats and dogs EQUALLY, and one was literally forced to choose one over the other, that choice isn’t made freely, but entirely based upon the person’s genetic code plus the individual's up-to-date conditioning. True equality is non-existent in the phenomenal sphere. The most common argument against determinism is that humans (unlike other animals) have the ability to choose what they can do, think or feel. First of all, many species of (higher) mammals also make choices. For instance, a cat can see two birds and choose which one to prey upon, or choose whether or not to play with a ball that is thrown its way, depending on its conditioning (e.g. its mood). That choices are made is indisputable, but those choices are dependent ENTIRELY upon one’s genes and conditioning. There is no third factor involved on the phenomenal plane. On the noumenal level, thoughts and deeds are in accordance with the preordained “Story of Life”. Read previous chapters of “F.I.S.H” to understand how life is merely a dream in the “mind of the Divine” and that human beings are, essentially, that Divinity in the form of dream characters. Chapter 08, specifically, explains how an action performed in the present is the result of a chain of causation, all the way back to the earliest-known event in our apparently-real universe (the so-called “Big Bang” singularity). At this point, it should be noted that according to reputable geneticists, it is possible for genes to mutate during the lifetime of any particular person. However, that phenomenon would be included under the “conditioning” aspect. The genes mutate according to whatever conditioning is imposed upon the human organism. It is simply IMPOSSIBLE for a person to use sheer force of will to change their own genetic code. Essentially, “conditioning” includes everything that acts upon a person from conception. University studies in recent years have demonstrated, by the use of hypnosis and complex experimentation, that CONSCIOUS volition is either unnecessary for a decision to be enacted upon or (in the case of hypnotic testing) that free-will choices are completely superfluous to actions. Because scientific research into free-will is a recent phenomenon, it is recommended that the reader search online for the latest findings. If any particular volitional act was not caused by the preceding thoughts and actions, then the only alternative explanation would be due to RANDOMNESS. Many quantum physicists claim that subatomic particles can randomly move in space, but true randomness cannot occur in a deterministic universe. Just as the typical person believes that two motor vehicles colliding together was the result of pure chance (therefore the term “accident”), quantum physicists are unable to see that the seeming randomness of quantum particles are, in fact, somehow determined by each and every preceding action which led-up to the act in question. It is a known scientific fact that a random number generator cannot exist, since no computational machine or software program is able to make the decision to generate a number at “random”. We did not choose which deoxyribonucleic acid our biological parents bequeathed to us, and most all the conditions to which we were exposed throughout our lives, yet we somehow believe that we are fully-autonomous beings, with the ability to feel, think and behave as we desire. The truth is, we cannot know for certain what even our next thought will be. Do we DECIDE to choose our thoughts and deeds? Not likely. Does an infant choose to learn how to walk or to begin speaking, or does it just happen automatically, according to nature? Obviously, the toddler begins to walk and to speak according to its genes (some children are far more intelligent and verbose, and more agile than others, depending on their genetic code) and according to all the conditions to which he or she has been exposed so far (some parents begin speaking to their kids even while they are in the womb, or expose their offspring to highly-intellectual dialogues whilst still in the cradle). Even those decisions/choices that we seem to make are entirely predicated upon our genes and conditioning, and cannot be free in any sense of the word. To claim that one is the ULTIMATE creator of one’s thoughts and actions is tantamount to believing that one created one’s very being. If a computer program or artificially-intelligent robot considered itself to be the cause of its activity, it would seem absurd to the average person. Yet, that is precisely what virtually every person who has ever lived mistakenly believes of their own thoughts and deeds. The IMPRESSION that we have free-will can be considered a “Gift of Life” or “God’s Grace”, otherwise, we may be resentful of our lack of free-will, since, unlike other creatures, we humans have the intelligence to comprehend our own existence. Even an enlightened sage, who has fully realized that he is not the author of his thoughts and actions, is not conscious of his lack of volition at every moment of his day. At best, he may recall his lack of freedom during those times where suffering (as opposed to mere pain) begins to creep-in to the mind or intellect. Many, if not most scientists, particularly academic philosophers and physicists, accept determinism to be the most logical and reasonable alternative to free-will, but it seems, at least anecdotally, that they rarely (if ever) live their lives conscious of the fact that their daily actions are fated. Cont...
It's ironic, I felt annaka was the one that didn't "get it" and kept misunderstanding Keith's more suibtle point, that we could absolutely be wrong about the nature of our qualitative experiences.
@tophersonX Actually she touches on it with the split brain patient. IMHO beneath the hemispheres is our more fundamental brain which I call "our being". 😮
I have the impression that many people confuse consciousness with intelligence. If someone has dealt with patients with advanced dementia, they know that when the prefrontal cortex no longer functions, the patient is theoretically conscious, sees, hears, their senses receive stimuli from the environment but do not process them. Going further, we can say that if by consciousness we understand some form of interaction with the environment, then a single cell or even an atom has consciousness, but I have the impression that most people mean something else when they say consciousness.
Sorry to be harsh - maybe it’s nerves - but Annaka Harris needs to break the habit of interrupting halfway through someone’s sentence to tell them “what you’re really saying is” and announcing something different. If she tried to listen a little more she might learn, for example, how idiosyncratic her use of “qualia” is (and that it’s “quale” in the singular!).
I think you are being very harsh and hypercritical because Anneka was actually respectful of her fellow interlocutors. Give her a break and check your own intolerant attitude.
In a recent articles in Entropy and Scientific American, Helmet Nevin the head of google's quantum computing lab discussed planned experimentation to explore the link between quantum superposition and consciousness. 1) Entropy "Testing the Conjecture That Quantum Processes Create Conscious Experience" and 2) Scientific American, "Experiments Prepare to Test Whether Consciousness Arises from Quantum Weirdness"
A few questions: 1: as a scientist/philosopher, how do we tread the line between being open to new ideas that challenge current paradigms, and being critical thinkers/the Sagan standard? 2: How far "up" might consciousness go? Could planets, stars, or solar systems be conscious? 3:If consciousness is a fundamental feature of the universe, what was the impetus for this to develop/be there to begin with? Our specific type of consciousness seems to be a conditioned mechanism for the organism to simplify information from the environment, but what why would fundamental particles need to be conscious?
1 irrelevant 2 I would suggest we have elemental consciousness and living organism learned how to assemble it into minds. Planets don't have it 3. Protoconcious doesn't need a reason to exist and may just exist. Maybe it can be paired with an elementary free will too. But who knows.
@kuningaskolassas4720 1. The line must be crossed. I have a sound argument that "quantity" itself (the ground of mathematics) is an incorrect interpretation of the information being expressed by the number system. This is why there is no concluding theory 2. All the way. My model is such: Quarks Subatomic Atomic Molecular Cellular Species Planetary Solar Galactic Universal These are the '10 dimensions'. They are all iterations of the cycle of Samsara 3. The reason for all of THIS game is for Gods (your) entertainment. The goal of the game is to find conclusion of it. It's like a mystery or a labyrinth. You have advanced beyond those 'interior'/past incarnations and the next natural step is to planetary consciousness. However, the digital realm is diverting most of the collective human consciousness away from the natural evolution and into DEVOLUTION
How can we experience life ? .... Consciousness . If you experience life with consciousness then you got to be alive to have consciousness and that means everything alive has consciousness
Keith is simply positing one more level of interpretation between felt experience and the physical world. He still believes in phenomenal consciousness, but it itself is an interpretation of an interpretation of the outside world. Annaka just sees it as a primary essence that presents an interpretation of the outside world when combined in conscious beings
@@infov0y he acknowledges that he’s having an experience, he just doesn’t tie it to anything objective in the world, it’s simply an illusion or hallucination created by the brain. Which most people would agree, most “illusionists” for some reason don’t realize they’re just emphasizing the hallucination part while others are emphasizing the existence of experiential “states” that must exist to build up into the “illusion” or hallucination. Most of them actually agree with each other, the difference is what they emphasize.
@@BasedDialectics That's incorrect, he explicitly doesn't believe in private subjecthood, so he can't possibly believe he's having a non-objective experience. What illusionists believe is that the brain and the body are complex systems with complex interactions with the world, that no more have private subjective inner qualitative experiences than rocks or robots; they are simply disposed to believe and say that they do.
Um, no? Illusionism doesn't entail dualism, buddy. Accepting the fact that there is nos special metaphysical "self"( not too dissimilar form the problem of free will)that has these unique subjective properties gets you away from dualism.
It seems like Annaka is conveying the Buddhist no-self philosophy. The problem with this is who is having experiences? How can pain exist if there is none to feel it. To me consciousness without self is a contradiction in terms. The experience of self is of course relative and this relativity, due to limits of form of logic and geometry i.e. the body, is from where the illusion of separation arises as "me" or as conceptual "I". The whole magic of existence is the self, the witness, the one who experiences and grows and realises itself. We can see this in nature in what we call life. In the mystical tradition one eventually realises the essential identity of an individual relative self with the Cosmic Self or the Supreme Being, which some Buddhists call the true nature of mind. I believe what Annaka proposes, reality as an ocean of consciousness having experiences without self, is an intellectual construct that is too flat, it is missing the verticality and dynamics of souls. Where each souls is a holographic instance on some level of the cosmic hologram.
Re prior cause, there's abundant evidence for phenomena which cannot have a physical cause, as far as we understand the "physical". The extensive work by the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research lab is one example.
On Phillip's point about free will. I understand Libertarian will to require that our responses to past events (and constituting states like our character, emotional state etc.) be non-deterministic. Philip seems to imply that just requires they be mental (mental responses however determinate they are are non-deterministic). I don't think that is anywhere near enough, even if one had a could way to distinguish the fundamentally physical from the mental. If mental causation is not being deterministic is just a matter of it being mental that suggests a necessary breakdown between psycho-physical parallelism. If mental events were necessarily non-deterministic then the parallel physical events would have to be non-deterministic in the same way or not be parallel. If not parallel then there would be some detectable difference between them and psycho-physical parallelism would not hold. But no one seems to object to it on that basis, so our mental responses seem like they can be exactly parallel to our physical causal actions and Philip seems to admit that physical causes can only be deterministic or random, in which case if the parallel can hold it must be that mental responses are also so characterizable as either deterministic or random. Technically as stated Harris argument could be paralleled. Under a reductive theory wetness just arises spontaneously when a certain combination of H2O molecules in the right situation occur, but that would be dualism, therefore given that wetness exists everything must be wet. I think Harris would deny that wetness is different in kind from molecules existing as isolated individuals or a gas or plasma or as ice, so there is no spontaneous appearance of wetness, so its appearance while actual is not spontaneous in the relevant sense (unprecedented?), it is merely a difference of degree but there is no requirement to say that because only of degree it must exist everywhere equally. But likewise Frankish can just argue experience is not different in kind from any other physical processes (other brain processes say), but only in degree and so just as it is not required to say that everything is wet there is no requirement to say that everything is conscious. The source of there disagreement seems to be whether there is some different in kind things we could call physical existence (what say H2O molecules do) and experience (Harris's assumption there is such a difference in kind) or mere differences of degrees in those concepts two concepts (Frankish). Harris's position requires that we both admit the difference as difference in kind and somehow know that our mental experience is of that kind and what we call physical existence is of the other kind, this seems in tension with her view that we don't necessarily know anything about experience other than its mere existence (which implies we don't know what kind of thing it is). But maybe for Harris mere existence includes the kind of existence it is (experience kind versus physical kind). To me the answer is that existence (even mere physical existence) as we conceive it has many of the same paradoxical properties as experience, such that it seems quite possible to me that experience merely differs in degree from (physical) existence. For example it seems like no description of experience no matter how successful as a reductive theory say (if I had a theory of how the brain works and sensors that allowed me to read your mind and predict your every action by scanning your brain say) it would not explain or require the experience be actually an experience. If there were no actual brain but only a book that perfectly described that hypothetical brain throughout its life, the same sensor data and predictions of the theory of brain would make all the same predictions etc. and those would have a correlate in the unexperienced book and so an exactly similar empirical success. Likewise if I have a physical theory of the universe that is predictively perfect it can't tell me if the universe exists as colliding atoms of matter or as a computer simulation on God's laptop, whether what the theory describes exists in some deeper sense is unanswerable by the physical theory.
1:03:00 The entire discussion around pain and human beings etc. underscores the special nature of humans which underles Marx. Humans can separate from nature. Unlike animals or our human ancestors that felt pain and cold so they found a warm cave or gathered around a fire, humans built heated homes and sat inside on a cold winters day. Our ability to separate from nature and control nature inside our homes has Keith wrapped around himself with the argument of why do we need to "feel it". We don't need to feel it but the robot thermostat "feels it" when it turns the heater on. The entire discussion underscores how they still dont know wtf happens inside the neurons and neuronal networks when they fire. They really need a good systems engineer in this discussion.
We have a physical model of the brain that explains most of the function of the mind, and it makes sense to ask whether, after we subtract this function, there is anything left unexplained. The hard problem alleges that there is something left over, and that this leftover piece cannot be explained functionally. But whenever I see people discuss this, they are extremely careless and do not bother with the subtraction at all. Consider qualia. What does function account for? Neural networks handle association and identity. It is alleged that our qualia (or part of it, depending on how the term is used) is non-functional. So, look at the red color of an object. SUBTRACT the functional associations you have with other red objects (love hearts, blood, chili peppers, stop signs), with the emotional salience of those associations, and with the salience of color more generally. Is there anything leftover to the feeling of seeing red after the subtraction? Arguably, no. All that is left is your ability to identify red, and that is also functional in neural networks. The redness becomes flavorless and free of salience. This is, in part, Dennett's argument against the hard problem. IMO, you can experience this subtraction introspectively. If you haven't tried subtraction, give it a go. And if you see people describing the hard problem without talking about subtraction, they're not taking the argument seriously.
Do Keith and Annaka disagree about the reality of what Annaka means by ‘felt experiences’, or do they disagree about the nature of what Annaka means by ‘felt experiencs’?
Annaka asking why feeling is associated with brains but not anything else is like asking why solidness is associated with brick walls but not water or empty space. What exactly is the mystery supposed to be here?
Keith himself has pointed out how the psycho-physical( or just physical in our case) harmony argument( most commonly used for theism) better supports illusionism. Wondering why water molecules create liquid as an emergent property is stupid, but for some reason consciousness is something special.
In a recent articles in Entropy and Scientific American, Helmet Nevin the head of google's quantum computing lab discussed planned experimentation to explore the link between quantum superposition and consciousness. 1) Entropy "Testing the Conjecture That Quantum Processes Create Conscious Experience" and 2) Scientific American, "Experiments Prepare to Test Whether Consciousness Arises from Quantum
Actually, it seems you may have misrepresented the analogue. Perhaps it should be: ‘Why is solidness associated with brick walls, but not anything else?’ That’s a fairer question in relation to’why is feeling associated with brains, and not anything else?’ Well perhaps solidness is associated with other things akin to brick walls. We both know it has to do with molecular structure. Her point is that brains are by virtue brains largely due to their characteristically huge amount of ‘information processing’ (wetware/neurological events), the question is begged as to whether something other than a brain, in its own unified system that processes quantitatively massive data… could feel.
She just presumes (wrongly) that feeling is something over and above the information processing. If one presumes that, then yes, you got yourself a mystery. Panpsychism "solves" the problem by pushing it to the realm of the inexplicable underlying consciousness of everything... Great idea!
My own guess is that the most fundamental laws of our local universe must arise so as to allow consciousness and free will to exist. I believe that consciousness and free will in the universe arises out of the quantum wave function.
Keith keeps saying we cannot be certain about any of the claims made about our subjective consciousness. But Annaka isn't making any specific claims about it only that it does in fact exist. I find it hard not to see Keith's position, if taken to it's logical conclusion is, as anything other than a denial of consciousness as an potential illusion.
Illusionism is simply an anti-realist position against phenomenality/qualia. Conceptualizing consciousness in such a way leads to specific claims about awareness and its contents. It's simply a way to logically tie up any loose ends in the physicalist model. The fact that a magic show is occurring isn't special, but claiming that its specifically magical requires justification.
@@KeithFrankish I'll ask it! Lately it's been rather busy with the hard problem of matter, so responds slowly to introspection ;) It's also rather dismayed by the aspects of others' experience it's been forced to share - e.g. automobiles and autocrats :-/
Really? Mine doesn't. My impulse is to conclude that I am a zombie, but then again, a typical zombie wouldn't conclude that. Oh lord, what a mess the illusion of introspection gets us in. Half joking, but it really doesn't seem that mysterious any longer, thanks to people like you and Dennett. Have you asked Philip or any of your other opponents what their model of us illusionist is? Do they think we don't have a rich inner experience? Or that we have it, but we don't realise it? Or that we are trying to deceive others? I feel like most of them don't actually take in that opposing convictions about these "inner phenomena" should at least lead them to explore alternative explanations. Anyway thanks for doing your best against the magicalist gang in this video! @@KeithFrankish
You guys need a workable definition of concepts like Idealism and Physicalism. Idealism: the set of all things is consciousness and a subset we label as physical stuff. Physicalism: the set of all things is physical and a subset we label as having consciousness. Dualism: consciousness and physical stuff are two different sets that either do not overlap (and therefore must be mediated by a third set) or only some elements of their individual subsets overlap. That covers it. Panpsychism must belong to one of the three.
I'm a bit confused by Keith's position on 'cogito ergo sum'. He challenges the insight that the one thing we know for certain is that something is experiencing something else (and therefore rules out that we can piece together an understanding of the universe based on x logical conclusion), but he challenges it on the grounds that it's extremely unlikely that brains would evolve - via natural selection - the ability to ask this exact question. I don't think anyone on either side of the debate believes that the brain is hard coded to ask these questions, but instead they believe that the brain evolved to formulate lines of reasoning in general. This same capacity of reasoning, by the way, is what allows us to put trust in the scientific method.
Quite interesting and lively debate, but I think lots of (unstated and unclear) metaphysical assumptions were getting in the way. I think for a more fruitful discussion, Nagarjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā would be required reading (to uncover how concepts, despite their practical utility, obscure direct perception/knowing), as would be Vasubandhu's work (covered really well in William Waldron's Making Sense of Mind Only: Why Yogācāra Buddhism Matters). Oh, and on the question of the ontological status of consciousness and of free will/Free Will, one cannot go wrong with Christopher Wallis' The Recognition Sutras. Asian philosophy is miles ahead of (most of) Western philosophy.
Keith: "It exists but I don't necessarily know what it is. I need science to tell me what it is." Really? Why? This explains so much about his perspective.
@@Nonconceptuality simply because introspection doesn't tell you squat about what it is. Introspection creates a certain experience but doesn't reveal anything about the underlying nature of it. I think panpsychism is BS, but even if you're into it you should not draw conclusions from how things seem. If you're a monist you should see it's problematic, to say the least, to claim that "you" (subject) can observe "consciousness" (object). "consciousness" observing itself is equally problematic. Observation is always a subject-object enterprise. If idealism would be discovered to be true it would not be through introspection.
@StrangeLoopsOfReality Pure observation is the direct experience of reality. You think the words and thoughts are revealing reality when in fact they are obscuring reality. You have an inverted perspective of reality
@@Nonconceptuality yeah that is the illusion. There is no direct experience. Everything is conceptual. If you think you have gotten to know directly what reality or experience before concepts is, then that is thought. That is belief. It's the same for me of course. But if you think you can subjectively observe reality or truth as an object, you are tricking yourself.
@StrangeLoopsOfReality You aren't getting it. If I'm free of thought I'm not thinking that I'm free of thought. I live my life free of concepts, but to someone who isn't familiar with thought free Awareness, everything is conceptual. Just abide free of the voice in the head. That's the reality. The words and concepts that you are superimosong over top of sensual experience, is DELUSION
@@Nonconceptuality yeah you know you're free of thought without thinking it. You just know it, directly, right? From where? I've experienced being free of thought many times. I just don't kid myself any longer that "direct experience" is non-conceptual.
"I think feeling is the least conceptualized thing there is, and we just have no way of talking about it without concepts" That, from @annakaharris is spot on. But I should also way you're probably wrong on FW. When you see the process in meditation, what you're seeing are the extra nonspatial & random (but contextual when decision-making) qualia inputs into otherwise effectively deterministic spacetime: imagination, which *enables* FW. Sure, it will appear from the spacetime perspective (which you're still shackled to, even though you're now fully-minded) that these come from no-where; but they don't, they come from the nonspatiotemporal qualitative undergirding from which spacetime emerges. At least that's what I suspect, but certainly FW is possible; it just depends on what metaphysics is true. The point on there being no non-caused effects is wrong (at least according to current physics). The evidence is every single quantum interaction, which is governed by the probabilistic Born rule:: no individual effect (e.g. decay or not-decay of a particle) has a cause. It's in this space between randomness and the effective determinism of macro systems (from the Law of Large Numbers) that FW probably operates.
@@mikebasketball11 Something like the ability to make decisions into an open future, such that if the same decision was replayed again with exactly the same antecedent conditions, one can make a different decision. Or to put it more fully, for the same spacetime with the same initial conditions, the same laws of physics; and so precisely the same spatiotemporal state of the universe, an agent with libertarian free will must be able to be the locus of a willed conscious decision that has some influence on the course of spacetime into its open future.
If you deny the existence of a self/subject, in what sense can you still believe in qualia? Aren't qualia by definition supposed to be properties that can only be directly known by a self/subject of experience. Even if we go with the idea of a 'felt experience', if this is meant in a way that cannot be cashed out in third person, functionalist terms (e.g. in terms of sensitivities and reactions), isn't 'felt experience' just another term for a state that is only directly known by a self that is the subject of that state.
Denying the existence of a self is nessescary to establish the nondual modus operandi of consciousness. But if you deny the existence of a subject in this context you beg the question: where is consiousness located? And then you open up the floor for debate. Regardless of what theory of consciousness you subscribe to, it is useful to establish that consciousness is identical to experience, and that there is no "experiencer separate of experience." And that self is an artefact of thought and that thought is just an appereance in consciousness.
@@samsklair4701 I think the nonexistence of the self/subject is compatible with the existence of qualia for various reasons, such as: 1. Qualia, in particular visual qualia, seem to be out there in the world. It is possible that qualia are out there in the world and that they can exist without anyone experiencing them. I believe Russell made this point about sense data in his paper ‘The Relation of Sense-data to Physics’ 2. Even if qualia cannot exist without being in some sense experienced, it may be possible to cash out what it is for a quale to be experienced in a way which does not mention the subject. You could say, for example, that streams or fields of consciousness are more basic than subjects, and that what it is for a quale to be experienced is simply for it to be part of a particular stream or field of consciousness Also, in your response to @_thenyounoticeyourethinking, you claim that if it is denied that there is a subject or self to have the experiences, then it must also be denied that there is an aspect of experience that can only be directly known by the subject. One way of understanding this claim is by reading it as saying that the nonexistence of the subject/self is incompatible with the privacy of consciousness. If this is a fair rewording of your claim, then you are claiming that the privacy of consciousness requires the existence of a subject/self. This claim takes for granted that a subject/self must be posited in order to make sense of the privacy of experience. But perhaps there are ways of making sense of the privacy of consciousness which do not invoke a subject/self. I’m not sure how exactly, but i don’t think we can rule out that there are such ways!
@@samsklair4701 it seems that you are making two claims here (although please correct me if you think I’m misrepresenting you): 1. If the subject/self does not exist, then neither does the qualitative character of consciousness 2. If the subject/self does not exist, then neither does the privacy of consciousness I understand you to be saying 1 when you say that the reality of qualia must be denied if the reality of the subject/self is denied, and I understand you to be saying 2 when you say that if the existence of the subject/self is denied, then it must be denied that there is an aspect of experience that can only be directly known from the first-person perspective. I think 1 can be argued against on the grounds that qualitative character may very well exist without being experienced. Intuitively, qualitative character, especially visual qualitative character, is part of the external world. It could be that qualitative character exists independently of being experienced by subjects. I think Russell makes a claim like this in his article ‘The Relation of Sense Data to Physics’. If qualitative character can exist independently of being experienced by subjects, then there is no reason to think that 1 is true. I think 2 can be argued against on the basis that there may be ways of cashing out the privacy of consciousness which do not reference the subject/self. I’m not sure how to make sense of the privacy of consciousness without invoking a subject/self, but there could be a way of doing so!
@@qualiashow I am only making the second claim insofar as I understand qualia to be properties that can only be known directly by whoever is aquainted with them. If there is another way of cashing out the privacy of consciousness/qualia without referencing a subject that would be interesting! But as of yet I am not aware of any way of doing so. The way I understand it, the claim that consciousness has a qualitative character is another way of saying that it has an aspect that cannot be captured in quantitative/mathematical terms. For example, you could not capture the ‘reddish character’ of red experiences (i.e. what it feels like for someone to experience red) in mathematical terms. But could you capture the reddish character of red experiences in any terms? We can say that the ‘reddish character’ of our red experiences is more like the 'orangey character' of our orange experiences than the 'blueish character' of our blue experiences, but can we say what the reddish character of our red experiences is in and of itself? I don't think so. So if you think of ‘qualitative character’ as something intrinsic to experiences I think it ends up being something ineffable. But if it’s ineffable then there is no way of making sense of it and I would be doubtful that it’s even a real thing. Of course there are aspects of our experiences that we describe using qualitative language rather than quantitative/mathematical language (e.g. we talk in terms of things being red, blue, green etc rather than in terms of wavelengths of light) but that doesn't mean that ‘qualitative character’ is some intrinsic property of experience.
@@qualiashow For what it's worth I do have pretty strong intuitions about the privacy and the qualitative character of my own experiences, I'm just not sure I would endorse them upon reflection. Although they are very hard for me to shake. That's why I'm quite sympathetic to illusionism.
How would it feel to be a cat? I would say nothing will change except that you will have a different life and experience. Consciousness remains the same. It is impossible to have a cat consciousness and a human consciousness at the same time. We are all individual people and have individual experiences. That is why we live in our own universe that can only be perceived by us.
59:19 it is funny anika was accusing keith of dualism and then starts with the cartesian position. The issue with taking acquaintance with representings as absolutely certain is that they are conceptually linked to the represented and cannot be taken in itself. The regress issue is a problem but i take the virtuous circular explanations to be the way out.
Remote Viewing is a technology used to view what it is like to be another consciousness. See The Alexandria Project headed by Stephan A. Schawrz and the CIA research of Dean Radin in a recent DysmystifySci Podcast.
So, if anyone more knowledgeable on her work could clarify it to me, Annaka's view on "there are no selves" is essentially like a physicalist/panpsychist version of Bernardo Kastrup's idea that there is really one single "big consciousness" and our perception of being individual separated selfs is an illusion? The main difference seems to be that she considers that big consciousness to be more a property of the universe rather than the universe itself. Is that right?
Well, at this point I don't think we can call Annaka a physicalist. She's clearly in the panpsychist camp, maybe even the Idealist. But she's not as much of a monist as Kastrup, I think.
@@plafar7887 Yeah, I was gonna say "panpsychist version", but there was a point in the interview where Phillip called her a panpsychist and she said she wouldn't necessarily call herself one, so I'm not sure what exactly to call her. She did give me the impression of being an "expanded physicalist" similar to how John Searle and even Galen Strawson to some degree call themselves (Galen is a panpsychist, but he does claim that "the real materialist" should be a panpsychist, so it seems he does consider himself a physicalist or at least a materialist to some degree). She also says she agrees with almost everything Keith says, and they only diverge in the very last step, and Keith is a physicalist, so there's that.
@@randombartz8163 Yeah, the part where she says she agrees with Keith did disappoint me a bit. I don't think she appreciates how much their views diverge, but anyway. As for the rest, I think a lot of it is just semantics, although I do disagree with Searle on a number of things. To be fair, Searle belongs to an older generation, with less refined views on this subject. I also disagree with some of Kastrup's views, namely when it comes to Biology, but I am sympathetic to the Idealist position in general.
@@plafar7887 I'm not sure that boils down to Searle being older, if you look at his old interviews, he used to be much more dismissive of the hard problem of consciousness, while nowadays he adamantly affirms its validity. Regarding Kastrup, I think his argument about how the dissociation we observe in DPD patients gives a nice example of how it could plausibly happen for a "universal consciousness" as well is very interesting, but I disagree with most of what he says outside of that, mostly because I think a lot of it is a huge stretch from some principles which are "well, maybe" at best.
Consciousness resides on the quantum, imaginary number, side of reality, where imaginary universes of infinite potential possibilities resides. Conscious free will occurs when trains of thought collapse into the transient particle like boundary conditions of an evolving conscious quantum field. Free will arises at the moment of the wave to particle transition, and is accompanied by an evolution of the conscious quantum field boundary conditions.
Self-evidently, we can be functionally categorised as "autonomous entities". The immediate persistence of our autonomy fundamentally depends on us physically detecting our situation. Essentially, a detection event can be regarded as a change of physical state triggered by a specific contact. Naturally occurring detection mechanisms appear to be rather exclusive to living entities. From the inside, the situational detection events that occur within our physiology ARE subjective experiences, rather than objectively observable occurrences. From the outside, the VERY SAME detection events ARE objectively observable occurrences, rather than subjective experiences. In other words, from the outside, within an ontologically autonomous entity, there is no objective evidence of a subjective experience that is undeniably present from the inside. There is only objective evidence of an observable detection event. In contrast with all other physical events observed in nature, these uniquely dichotomous detection events seem to be an ontological anomaly. Because of this, whenever we conceptually abstract and label our own subjective experiences for purposes of self-reflection and discussion, we unwittingly make them seem as though as they are ontologically different to the objectively observable detection events occurring within our own physiology. That is to say, to us, the subjective experience seems to be "non-physical", in conceptual contrast with the objectively observable detection event. Because this is not actually the case, the field of cognitive neuroscience remains profoundly unsuccessful in observing the mechanism(s) responsible for (what they assume is) an objectively observable detection event giving rise to a subjective experience, leading to the appearance of what has come to be known as the "hard problem of consciousness". Empirically, all there is to find are these autonomous entities, with the uniquely dichotomous situational detection events occurring within them. There is evidently a lot of incidental processing accompanying these detection events, and this processing can be regarded as the entity "utilising" the events as an attempt to preserve its own autonomy. Other than the simple fact that we ARE such entities, there is no reason why it feels like anything for us to be alive. This realisation is the dissolution of the "hard problem".
@@BLSFL_HAZE Not sure I can be more precise? Subjective knowledge and objective knowledge are ontologically different. A log floating down a stream is one thing and a log floating down a stream while it thinks to itself is something very different.
@danzigvssartre A log floating downstream isn't an autonomous entity, though, so it's not something that has the capacity to think to itself. It was once a "part" of a proactive entity we call a tree. I feel it's justified to delineate naturally occurring entities into three primary ontological categories. 1. Reactive entities (all non-living entities). 2. Proactive entities (all vegetation and untethered organisms lacking a central nervous system). 3. Autonomous entities (all untethered organisms that have a central nervous system). Underlying these three categories, there is only "asymmetrically hierarchical activity" (commonly known as the universe). I view "reactivity" as "unfocused asymmetrically hierarchical activity", "proactivity" as "partially focused asymmetrically hierarchical activity", and "autonomy" as "fully focused asymmetrically hierarchical activity". In other words, consciousness is really nothing more than this highest degree of ontological focus.
Why can't we solve the combination problem for panpsychism in the following way? Every time a particle changes state, a calculation must be made, and this calculation involves a quale. So for every collapse of the wavefunction, every change of state, nature must calculate what to do next, and this calculation involves qualia. Now, the vast majority of these calculations via qualia are not like ours - they cannot reference memories or sense data from a body, or have a sense of self. An iron atom in a fork calculating what to do next has no way to reference the past states of the fork, the information isn't there to reference as it calculates what to do next. This is also true for the vast majority of molecules in our bodies, except (presumably) in the brain. IF there are large molecules (I am envisioning something like microtubules) in the brain that are presented with information about the organism's body and it's past states, then these are our conscious states. Hope that makes sense. :)
Annaka seems so nice and so smart, but she just doesn't get it. And she doesn't let Keith speak. Despite her commitments to non-dual views she has a lot of dualistic residue in her way of thinking about the mind. For example, "why would some kinds of information processing and not others be associated with experience" just flat-out presumes that there is information processing AND experience and, yeah, with that dualism you sure do have a mystery at your hands. Another one is how she, despite her claims, models herself as a subject that can introspect on the object of consciousness. She thinks consciousness can be "observed", like other objects. This just doesn't work for any monism, despite claiming to be a monist. She just can't say that she observed consciousness to be serial (or whatever she said), that implies a point of view from which she can make a judgement, a kind of subject which experiences the serial nature of consciousness. She, like many others, just can't snap out of the subject-object duality despite successfully deconstructing the solid self. Like her husband, she seems to have replaced the self with "consciousness" which somehow acts as both the subject and the object. Dualism crammed into monist ideals. If Annaka takes Buddhism seriously, (which I believe she does) she cannot ignore what is taught about emptiness, including the emptiness of consciousness. Consciousness has no essence, no self-nature. The "direct experience" that consciousness has this or that property is an illusion, that experience is just part of the content, just as the sense of a self is. If Annaka believes that the brain does process information, which I believe she does, then she really should take seriously the implication that whatever she may say about qualia are the result of information processing. She really should take seriously the possibility that whatever she concludes about qualia and physicalism is a result of information processing. She should take seriously the idea that perhaps "she" or "consciousness" is not having a vivid experience associated with the information processing, rather, the computational model IS that there is a subject having vivid, subjective experience, inexplicable qualia, which illusionists just don't get, and so forth.
I'm very interested in this subject and was eager to hear a thoughtful discussion among experts on this topic, but this was not a discussion. The young lady would not allow the gentleman to finish a single sentence without interjecting her own contrary opinion. Consequently we got an abstract topic delivered in fractured and conflicting bits and pieces and I learned nothing. Waste of time I'm sorry to say.
If i acknowledge the fact that we can only effectively study things that can be measured, detected, quantified, does that make me "a materialist"? There may very well be more to the picture but how on earth can you study it? If I begin to accept my feelings or intuition and build conclusions from that the likelihood of certainty is going to be even less. There can never be absolute certainty and that reliable axiom brings itself into question. These categories and "isms" are just obstacles. How do you make progress with non material concepts? It starts to sound like claim after claim to me. Phillip constantly complaining about "physics doesn't care about......" and these comparative "us vs. them" rants aren't helpful and never will be. Just explain-how-to-study-non-material- phenomena. How? Start there.
This guy Keith is too far gone into the reductionist mindset to be convinced with just two hours of conversation. He keeps repeating the same absurd statement that "experiences are an illusion". Yes, experiences may have many illusory aspects to them, but that just means that one experience is not exactly what you think, it's just another kind of experience, not that it doesn't exist any experience at all! Saying that is just nonsensical sophistry! Btw, he is clearly a disciple of Dennett (with the latter's picture on the shelves behind him), so it's pretty on-brand that he just parrots Dennett's particular flavor of Illusionism.
What moments were there where that happened? We can't help that Annaka is awful at addressing the interlocutors objections. A woman engaging in Magical thinking is just as bad as a man.
I agree with Annaka over Keith when it comes to the substance of what they're saying. But as a listener and a learner, it's very frustrating to listen to her interrupt Keith, because it denies us (and her) of knowing the full picture of what Keith was trying to convey. So I completely disagree that she challenged 'at very appropriate moments'. One fifth of the way through his sentences is not an appropriate moment to challenge. As such, we were denied a more thorough debate because of her inability to let people finish their sentences. I'm sure she would interrupt a woman just as readily as she would interrupt a man, by the way. And yes it's true that in life, it's usually men talking over women due to our patriarchal culture. So it makes sense to take pleasure and catharsis in the spectacle of a woman turning the tables. But do we as listeners as learners really want to hear anyone interrupting anybody else during well-meaning debate?
This is probably my fault. No problem. But I fail to understand what she is talking about. I understand what Philip says even if I don't agree. But what she says I guess is beyond meaning.
This was just rehashed Schopenhauer. I would suggest to start with some semantics first. I couldn't make heads or tails of all the claims being made. I am at the point where i want to excise experience from my vocabulary. This such a looose concept with no determinate content.
@@infov0ynobody's fault but more precisely claims were just stated and I didn't see any reasons provided. People who already agree wouldn't care about that so for them it would surely be intelligible
@@ReflectiveJourney These are academic analytic philosophers mate. Unlike your average opinion (mine included), their claims are laid out in excruciating detail in the academic papers they publish in philosophy journals, in many cases in more accessible form in the books they publish, and often in even more accessible terms in pieces on the web. They can't be expected to lay out all the terms and arguments surrounding them before every discussion; the onus is on you to do some simple searching on the endless resources available and discover that for yourself
@@infov0y Keith and Phillip are fine. I understand where they are coming from and know where i disagree. My comment was more in reference to the guest and the loose language of it is all just experience and mostly quasi-mystical claims in the vicinity using "experience".
Saying the addition of conscious experience is no different than saying electric eels had an additional property of electricity to stun their prey. Why that modality and not another, is evolutionary
When one goes to sleep or passes out, consciousness is lost, so consciousness can not be fundamental. In dreamless sleep there is no world and no time, so it is said, no consciousness. To fix this I have defined consciousness as: "Awareness of something." So in my model, awareness is fundamental and consciousness, is all experience (thoughts and sensations). Take the waking state (the life of the character 'your name here') to be a novel. Self (God. Yes, Divinity or a transcendent state is required in the final model) is the reader of the book, and the ego, the false sense of self, is the protagonist. The reading of the book is the Observer (true Self). So consciousness is coming through the book and that Awareness of the Observer is what animates the story. The reading of the book is consciousness. Consciousness is what is occurring while the Observer/God/Self is reading the book. The reader is transcendent of the book realm. This is where Annaka's theory fails. Divinity is REQUIRED in the model. The reality is not detectable in the thought and sensational realms. This is why my triune Fundamental Model of Reality is the ONLY, SINGULAR complete final theory. The body-mind problem CAN NOT be resolved without the inclusion of SPIRIT or Divinity. I understand everything 🙏
You might want to get the basics right before you become so assertive. Claiming there is no consciousness during sleep, passing out, or dreamless sleep is counter to all neurological data. It is correct to say that consciousness is lost during those instances in layman terms, as per norms, but it does not correlate with scientific observation. If you are basing your further claims on this simple fallacy, you might want to reconsider.
@@Nonconceptuality Are you conscious during dreams? Are you conscious during the dreams that you don't remember? If you answer yes to those, then you must consider that you may be conscious during deep sleep as well.
@dungeon_architect *sigh* During dreamless sleep you do not have experience and yet you exist. Therefore the world arises and passes within you. Assuming any perspective other than first-person is hearsay and assumption
@@Nonconceptuality > During dreamless sleep you do not have experience and yet you exist. I'm not convinced that during dreamless you do not have experience. There are many conscious states that you can have that you don't remember. There's every possibility that experience is happening during dreamless sleep and you just don't remember it. Further, there are humans who have completely lost their short term memory. Every waking moment for them is like they just woke up. But we wouldn't say that they weren't conscious five minutes ago. Similarly, when you wake up, you can't remember what happened during your sleep unless you dreamt, but again, it doesn't necessarily mean that you weren't conscious during sleep. So you have to concede the possibility that experience happens during dreamless sleep. If scientists ever successfully attribute some brain process to pure consciousness, then we'll be able to find out whether experience / consciousness is possible during dreamless sleep. But right now you couldn't say one way or the other.
![Ram Dass Full Lecture Compilation: Volume 3 [Black Screen/No Music]](/img/1.gif)
Annaka is a delight...very stimulating and articulate...always a pleasure to watch and hear.
I love that Annaka is working things out and doesn’t feel she has to make conclusive statements when she’s unsure. Her not being an academic ironically makes her more academically pure. She pursues knowledge and is unafraid.
Glad Mind Chat is back! I hope my flight has WiFi so I can watch it "live."
So, so wonderful to see Annaka move in this direction. I was worried she might stall at a micropsychism-type view. But she's brought her non-dual insights to bear, which is great.
What we take to be the self is just a memory bundle of qualia (itself a qualitative structure). Brilliant.
The ego is your meta-conscious self… the body is what we “colloquially call”, the unconscious self!
(although it’s not really unconscious, it’s a misnomer).
If you want to reply and disagree with me, before you do ask yourself to keep an open mind… at least for a while.
@@sxsmith44 Seems like a fair enough way to conceptualise it to me. I'm not sure I would categorise it quite that way, personally. I would say "ego" is the (generally quite subtle) qualia of identification with experience.
Yes. I’m not sure why I commented in the first place.
I must’ve been smoking something at the time.
I don’t know if you’re familiar with the term meta-conscious but it just refers to the “I“, that is aware that it is aware.
@@sxsmith44 Yes, I'm familiar. :) I'm a fan of Kastrup's work, and he talks about meta-consciousness.
That was the best mind chat :) So refreshing to have someone agreeing with Philip for a change. Annaka expressed her views and criticisms with the clarity seemingly only possible from someone not coming to the topic from a position of being embedded in western academic philosophy. Brilliantly clear criticisms of illusionism. Felt like she really had Keith on the ropes there.’ Felt experience is the most non-conceptual thing,.’
Idealism:
Metaphysical Idealism is the view that the objective, phenomenal world is the product of an IDEATION of the mind, whether that be the individual, discrete mind of a personal subject, or otherwise that of a Universal Conscious Mind (often case, a Supreme Deity), or perhaps more plausibly, in the latter form of Idealism, Impersonal Universal Consciousness Itself (“Nirguna Brahman”, in Sanskrit).
The former variety of Idealism (that the external world is merely the product of an individual mind) seems to be a form of solipsism.
The latter kind of Idealism is far more plausible, yet it reduces the objective world to nothing but a figment in the “Mind of God”.
Thus, BOTH these forms of Idealism can be used to justify all kinds of immoral behaviour, on the premise that life is just a sort of dream in the mind of an individual human, or else in the consciousness of the Universal Mind, and therefore, any action that is deemed by society to be immoral takes place purely in the imagination (and of course, those who favour this philosophy rarely speak of how non-human animals fit into this metaphysical world-view, at least under the former kind of Idealism, subjective Idealism).
Idealism (especially Monistic Idealism), is invariably the metaphysical position proffered by neo-advaita teachers outside of India (Bhārata), almost definitely due to the promulgation of the teachings in the West of Indian (so-called) “gurus” such as Mister Venkataraman Iyer (normally referred to by his assumed name, Ramana Maharshi). See the Glossary entry “neo-advaita”.
This may explain why such (bogus) teachers use the terms “Consciousness” and/or “Awareness”, instead of the Vedantic Sanskrit word “Brahman”, since with “Brahman” there is ultimately no distinction between matter and spirit (i.e. the object-subject duality).
At the risk of sounding facetious, anyone can dress themselves in a white robe and go before a camera or a live audience and repeat the words “Consciousness” and “Awareness” ad-infinitum and it would seem INDISTINGUISHABLE from the so called “satsangs” (a Sanskrit term that refers to a guru preaching to a gathering of spiritual seekers) of those fools who belong to the cult of neo-advaita.
Although it may seem that in a couple of places in this treatise, that a form of Monistic Idealism is presented to the reader, the metaphysical view postulated here is, in fact, a form of neutral monism known as “decompositional dual-aspect monism” (“advaita”, in Sanskrit), and is a far more complete perspective than the immaterialism proposed by Idealism, and is the one realized and taught by the most enlightened sages throughout history, especially in the most “SPIRITUAL” piece of land on earth, Bhārata. Cf. “monism”.
N.B. The Idealism referred to in the above definition (and in the body of this book) is metaphysical Idealism, not the ethical or political idealism often mentioned in public discourse (e.g. “I believe everyone in society ought to be given a basic income”).
Therefore, to distinguish between sociological idealism and philosophical Idealism, the initial letter of the latter term is CAPITALIZED.
What a juggernaut to burst back onto the MindChat scene with!
We don’t know *what* experience is, we don’t know *how* it (mis)informs us of any underlying reality, we don’t know *why* it is; we know simply *that* it is. It’s the most basic unit of understanding anything. Everything else we know is known through experience; understanding any concept is an experience, remembering anything is an experience, sensing anything is an experience, so if we have any knowledge, right or wrong or purple, then there has been an experience.
How can people deny that they know they experience things?
Great conversation! My book ("Origins of Life's Sensoria") attempts to bridge many of these concepts.
It's nice to see Mrs Harris slowly start to see the truth even if she is only 75% committed, she's very smart and intuitive I know she'll come around eventually....in fact I think in her heart she knows Idealism is right.
She will never be all in on idealism because the biggest influence on her is her husband and he’s incapable of going there.
Sam is an expert-like meditator and still doesn’t see the light.
On top of that the worlds foremost proponent of idealism here in the west is Bernardo Kastrup.
BK and Sam do not care much for one another so she cannot cozy up to him!
@@PatrickMcnally834 only 25% makes me pessimistic lol
@@sxsmith44I'm very familiar with Bernardo Kastrup he's my teacher so to speak, he seems like a really nice guy as well..
Annaka and Keith are the living proof of quantum particles 😂😂
Annaka's discussion on time and consciousness reminds me of the great Henri Bergson. Matter and Memory is the GREATEST book on mind and consciousness ever written. Hope you guys have a philosopher who interested in Bergson on one day.
Annaka wonders if feeling pain is necessary. We actually know that. There are people who suffer from a neurological dysfunction that manifests itself in the lack of feeling pain, and it is a life-threatening condition. Such people have to be extremely alert and aware of their surroundings all the time, which takes up a lot of mental resources.
I believe Annika may be coming from a place of believing that just because the physical mechanism of pain may be necessary/helpful (the cascading physical events from stimuli to behavioral response - touching a hot pan, nerve endings fire, muscles twitch, hand retracts. But ALSO - pain as a felt, subjective experience…That to me seems to be the seemingly unnecessary part. Would love to hear your thoughts!
@@mikebasketball11 I think that this feeling of pain, in order to fulfill its function and protect us, must be extremely uncomfortable for us, and remain in memory for a long time, because otherwise we would ignore it. That is why people who are under the influence of substances and do not feel pain often self-harm
small suggestion to my brothers across the pond. When you are debating, consolidate your words before speaking them. The barrage of half formed sentences and stuttering makes it nearly impossible to actually digest what you are trying to express (atleast for me). Most of the middle and end of this fascinating discussion sounds like the audio got corrupted. Just take a beat, nail down the thought, and then say it. Not "i,I,I,I, but, but, but, or, or, or." Fwiw, great chat all around.
I found it profoundly annoying when Annaka was cutting Keith off multiple times when Keith had been listening to Annaka and Philip for nearly half of the podcast.
💯
@@dan.timonea596 agreed
Me too , I would have liked to hear what Keith had to say, how can you bring something to light if you forbid the opposition.
Harris, time and time again, reaches the Brick Wall on what can be known about Conscious Experience. While at the Brick Wall she always says that Dualism was a possible next step. But she always deridingly called Dualism, Magical Dualism. She said that if Dualism was true then Consciousness would need to be a Fundamental Phenomenon. The 21st century upgrade to Dualism called Connectism shows how to break through the Brick Wall using an Engineering analysis of the Visual Conscious Experience and concludes that Conscious Experience certainly could be a Fundamental Phenomenon in the Universe.
keith answered every single question she had with ease, having heard those arguments before a million times. Very good willed debate.
I wish Annaka didn't interrupt Keith so much. Poor Sam ;-)
Haha they are probably a good match
Probably being married to Sam has caused her to learn to interpret to be heard and have an,opinion 😂I love them both btw.
@@sherrilawrence662 I love them both, too.
Why don't we have free will? Because nobody asked us whether we live or not, and whether we want to or not, we are going down a path with life that we did not choose ourselves.
Keith doesn’t get it, Annaka was awesome! Goff is clear and amazing as usual. There is a single moment in the mind I think. Totally disagree with the free will denial.
🐟 11. FREE-WILL Vs DETERMINISM:
Just as the autonomous beating of one's heart is governed by one's genes (such as the presence of a congenital heart condition), and the present-life conditioning of the heart (such as myocardial infarction as a consequence of the consumption of excessive fats and oils, or heart palpitations due to severe emotional distress), each and EVERY thought and action is governed by our genes and environmental conditioning.
This teaching is possibly the most difficult concept for humans to accept, because we refuse to believe that we are not the author of our thoughts and actions. From the appearance of the pseudo-ego (one’s inaccurate conception of oneself) at the age of approximately two and a half, we have been constantly conditioned by our parents, teachers, and society, to believe that we are solely responsible for our thoughts and deeds. This deeply-ingrained belief is EXCRUCIATINGLY difficult to abandon, which is possibly the main reason why there are very few persons extant who are spiritually-enlightened, or at least who are liberated from the five manifestations of mental suffering explained elsewhere in this “Final Instruction Sheet for Humanity”, since suffering (as opposed to pain) is predicated solely upon the erroneous belief in free-will.
Free-will is usually defined as the ability for a person to make a conscious decision to do otherwise, that is to say, CHOOSE to have performed an action other than what one has already done, if one had been given the opportunity to do so. To make it perfectly clear, if one, for example, is handed a restaurant menu with several dishes listed, one could decide that one dish is equally-desirable as the next dish, and choose either option. If humans truly possessed freedom of will, then logically speaking, a person who adores cats and detests dogs, ought to be able to suddenly switch their preferences at any given point in time, or even voluntarily pause the beating of his or her own heart!
So, in both of the aforementioned examples, there is a pre-existing preference (at a given point in time) for one particular dish or pet. Even if a person liked cats and dogs EQUALLY, and one was literally forced to choose one over the other, that choice isn’t made freely, but entirely based upon the person’s genetic code plus the individual's up-to-date conditioning. True equality is non-existent in the phenomenal sphere.
The most common argument against determinism is that humans (unlike other animals) have the ability to choose what they can do, think or feel. First of all, many species of (higher) mammals also make choices. For instance, a cat can see two birds and choose which one to prey upon, or choose whether or not to play with a ball that is thrown its way, depending on its conditioning (e.g. its mood). That choices are made is indisputable, but those choices are dependent ENTIRELY upon one’s genes and conditioning. There is no third factor involved on the phenomenal plane. On the noumenal level, thoughts and deeds are in accordance with the preordained “Story of Life”.
Read previous chapters of “F.I.S.H” to understand how life is merely a dream in the “mind of the Divine” and that human beings are, essentially, that Divinity in the form of dream characters. Chapter 08, specifically, explains how an action performed in the present is the result of a chain of causation, all the way back to the earliest-known event in our apparently-real universe (the so-called “Big Bang” singularity).
At this point, it should be noted that according to reputable geneticists, it is possible for genes to mutate during the lifetime of any particular person. However, that phenomenon would be included under the “conditioning” aspect. The genes mutate according to whatever conditioning is imposed upon the human organism. It is simply IMPOSSIBLE for a person to use sheer force of will to change their own genetic code. Essentially, “conditioning” includes everything that acts upon a person from conception.
University studies in recent years have demonstrated, by the use of hypnosis and complex experimentation, that CONSCIOUS volition is either unnecessary for a decision to be enacted upon or (in the case of hypnotic testing) that free-will choices are completely superfluous to actions. Because scientific research into free-will is a recent phenomenon, it is recommended that the reader search online for the latest findings.
If any particular volitional act was not caused by the preceding thoughts and actions, then the only alternative explanation would be due to RANDOMNESS. Many quantum physicists claim that subatomic particles can randomly move in space, but true randomness cannot occur in a deterministic universe. Just as the typical person believes that two motor vehicles colliding together was the result of pure chance (therefore the term “accident”), quantum physicists are unable to see that the seeming randomness of quantum particles are, in fact, somehow determined by each and every preceding action which led-up to the act in question. It is a known scientific fact that a random number generator cannot exist, since no computational machine or software program is able to make the decision to generate a number at “random”.
We did not choose which deoxyribonucleic acid our biological parents bequeathed to us, and most all the conditions to which we were exposed throughout our lives, yet we somehow believe that we are fully-autonomous beings, with the ability to feel, think and behave as we desire. The truth is, we cannot know for certain what even our next thought will be. Do we DECIDE to choose our thoughts and deeds? Not likely. Does an infant choose to learn how to walk or to begin speaking, or does it just happen automatically, according to nature? Obviously, the toddler begins to walk and to speak according to its genes (some children are far more intelligent and verbose, and more agile than others, depending on their genetic code) and according to all the conditions to which he or she has been exposed so far (some parents begin speaking to their kids even while they are in the womb, or expose their offspring to highly-intellectual dialogues whilst still in the cradle).
Even those decisions/choices that we seem to make are entirely predicated upon our genes and conditioning, and cannot be free in any sense of the word. To claim that one is the ULTIMATE creator of one’s thoughts and actions is tantamount to believing that one created one’s very being. If a computer program or artificially-intelligent robot considered itself to be the cause of its activity, it would seem absurd to the average person. Yet, that is precisely what virtually every person who has ever lived mistakenly believes of their own thoughts and deeds.
The IMPRESSION that we have free-will can be considered a “Gift of Life” or “God’s Grace”, otherwise, we may be resentful of our lack of free-will, since, unlike other creatures, we humans have the intelligence to comprehend our own existence. Even an enlightened sage, who has fully realized that he is not the author of his thoughts and actions, is not conscious of his lack of volition at every moment of his day. At best, he may recall his lack of freedom during those times where suffering (as opposed to mere pain) begins to creep-in to the mind or intellect. Many, if not most scientists, particularly academic philosophers and physicists, accept determinism to be the most logical and reasonable alternative to free-will, but it seems, at least anecdotally, that they rarely (if ever) live their lives conscious of the fact that their daily actions are fated.
Cont...
Who or what is it, that has the free will?
It's ironic, I felt annaka was the one that didn't "get it" and kept misunderstanding Keith's more suibtle point, that we could absolutely be wrong about the nature of our qualitative experiences.
Precisely @@tophersonX
@tophersonX Actually she touches on it with the split brain patient. IMHO beneath the hemispheres is our more fundamental brain which I call "our being". 😮
I have the impression that many people confuse consciousness with intelligence. If someone has dealt with patients with advanced dementia, they know that when the prefrontal cortex no longer functions, the patient is theoretically conscious, sees, hears, their senses receive stimuli from the environment but do not process them. Going further, we can say that if by consciousness we understand some form of interaction with the environment, then a single cell or even an atom has consciousness, but I have the impression that most people mean something else when they say consciousness.
👍👍👍👍
Sorry to be harsh - maybe it’s nerves - but Annaka Harris needs to break the habit of interrupting halfway through someone’s sentence to tell them “what you’re really saying is” and announcing something different. If she tried to listen a little more she might learn, for example, how idiosyncratic her use of “qualia” is (and that it’s “quale” in the singular!).
Agreed. Could barely make it through it because of this.
There's a bit of a delay in their connection. Makes it harder to have a perfectly graceful conversation.
What's idiosyncratic her use of “qualia”?
I think you are being very harsh and hypercritical because Anneka was actually respectful of her fellow interlocutors. Give her a break and check your own intolerant attitude.
In a recent articles in Entropy and Scientific American, Helmet Nevin the head of google's quantum computing lab discussed planned experimentation to explore the link between quantum superposition and consciousness.
1) Entropy "Testing the Conjecture That Quantum Processes Create Conscious Experience" and
2) Scientific American, "Experiments Prepare to Test Whether Consciousness Arises from Quantum Weirdness"
A few questions:
1: as a scientist/philosopher, how do we tread the line between being open to new ideas that challenge current paradigms, and being critical thinkers/the Sagan standard?
2: How far "up" might consciousness go? Could planets, stars, or solar systems be conscious?
3:If consciousness is a fundamental feature of the universe, what was the impetus for this to develop/be there to begin with? Our specific type of consciousness seems to be a conditioned mechanism for the organism to simplify information from the environment, but what why would fundamental particles need to be conscious?
1 irrelevant 2 I would suggest we have elemental consciousness and living organism learned how to assemble it into minds. Planets don't have it 3. Protoconcious doesn't need a reason to exist and may just exist. Maybe it can be paired with an elementary free will too. But who knows.
@kuningaskolassas4720 1. The line must be crossed. I have a sound argument that "quantity" itself (the ground of mathematics) is an incorrect interpretation of the information being expressed by the number system. This is why there is no concluding theory
2. All the way. My model is such:
Quarks
Subatomic
Atomic
Molecular
Cellular
Species
Planetary
Solar
Galactic
Universal
These are the '10 dimensions'. They are all iterations of the cycle of Samsara
3. The reason for all of THIS game is for Gods (your) entertainment. The goal of the game is to find conclusion of it. It's like a mystery or a labyrinth. You have advanced beyond those 'interior'/past incarnations and the next natural step is to planetary consciousness.
However, the digital realm is diverting most of the collective human consciousness away from the natural evolution and into DEVOLUTION
How can we experience life ? .... Consciousness .
If you experience life with consciousness then you got to be alive to have consciousness and that means everything alive has consciousness
Keith is simply positing one more level of interpretation between felt experience and the physical world. He still believes in phenomenal consciousness, but it itself is an interpretation of an interpretation of the outside world. Annaka just sees it as a primary essence that presents an interpretation of the outside world when combined in conscious beings
"He still believes in phenomenal consciousness"
No, he explicitly doesn't.
@@infov0y he acknowledges that he’s having an experience, he just doesn’t tie it to anything objective in the world, it’s simply an illusion or hallucination created by the brain. Which most people would agree, most “illusionists” for some reason don’t realize they’re just emphasizing the hallucination part while others are emphasizing the existence of experiential “states” that must exist to build up into the “illusion” or hallucination. Most of them actually agree with each other, the difference is what they emphasize.
@@BasedDialectics That's incorrect, he explicitly doesn't believe in private subjecthood, so he can't possibly believe he's having a non-objective experience. What illusionists believe is that the brain and the body are complex systems with complex interactions with the world, that no more have private subjective inner qualitative experiences than rocks or robots; they are simply disposed to believe and say that they do.
The prevailing thought is consciousness arose out of matter but if matter arose out of consciousness then consciousness would be everywhere.
Keith when he realizes he's a dualist: 😦
Um, no? Illusionism doesn't entail dualism, buddy. Accepting the fact that there is nos special metaphysical "self"( not too dissimilar form the problem of free will)that has these unique subjective properties gets you away from dualism.
@@jackkrell4238 It was a joke referencing Annaka's implication that that was Kieth's position. I wasn't being serious.
It seems like Annaka is conveying the Buddhist no-self philosophy. The problem with this is who is having experiences? How can pain exist if there is none to feel it. To me consciousness without self is a contradiction in terms. The experience of self is of course relative and this relativity, due to limits of form of logic and geometry i.e. the body, is from where the illusion of separation arises as "me" or as conceptual "I".
The whole magic of existence is the self, the witness, the one who experiences and grows and realises itself. We can see this in nature in what we call life. In the mystical tradition one eventually realises the essential identity of an individual relative self with the Cosmic Self or the Supreme Being, which some Buddhists call the true nature of mind.
I believe what Annaka proposes, reality as an ocean of consciousness having experiences without self, is an intellectual construct that is too flat, it is missing the verticality and dynamics of souls. Where each souls is a holographic instance on some level of the cosmic hologram.
Re prior cause, there's abundant evidence for phenomena which cannot have a physical cause, as far as we understand the "physical". The extensive work by the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research lab is one example.
On Phillip's point about free will.
I understand Libertarian will to require that our responses to past events (and constituting states like our character, emotional state etc.) be non-deterministic. Philip seems to imply that just requires they be mental (mental responses however determinate they are are non-deterministic). I don't think that is anywhere near enough, even if one had a could way to distinguish the fundamentally physical from the mental.
If mental causation is not being deterministic is just a matter of it being mental that suggests a necessary breakdown between psycho-physical parallelism. If mental events were necessarily non-deterministic then the parallel physical events would have to be non-deterministic in the same way or not be parallel. If not parallel then there would be some detectable difference between them and psycho-physical parallelism would not hold. But no one seems to object to it on that basis, so our mental responses seem like they can be exactly parallel to our physical causal actions and Philip seems to admit that physical causes can only be deterministic or random, in which case if the parallel can hold it must be that mental responses are also so characterizable as either deterministic or random.
Technically as stated Harris argument could be paralleled. Under a reductive theory wetness just arises spontaneously when a certain combination of H2O molecules in the right situation occur, but that would be dualism, therefore given that wetness exists everything must be wet. I think Harris would deny that wetness is different in kind from molecules existing as isolated individuals or a gas or plasma or as ice, so there is no spontaneous appearance of wetness, so its appearance while actual is not spontaneous in the relevant sense (unprecedented?), it is merely a difference of degree but there is no requirement to say that because only of degree it must exist everywhere equally. But likewise Frankish can just argue experience is not different in kind from any other physical processes (other brain processes say), but only in degree and so just as it is not required to say that everything is wet there is no requirement to say that everything is conscious. The source of there disagreement seems to be whether there is some different in kind things we could call physical existence (what say H2O molecules do) and experience (Harris's assumption there is such a difference in kind) or mere differences of degrees in those concepts two concepts (Frankish). Harris's position requires that we both admit the difference as difference in kind and somehow know that our mental experience is of that kind and what we call physical existence is of the other kind, this seems in tension with her view that we don't necessarily know anything about experience other than its mere existence (which implies we don't know what kind of thing it is). But maybe for Harris mere existence includes the kind of existence it is (experience kind versus physical kind).
To me the answer is that existence (even mere physical existence) as we conceive it has many of the same paradoxical properties as experience, such that it seems quite possible to me that experience merely differs in degree from (physical) existence. For example it seems like no description of experience no matter how successful as a reductive theory say (if I had a theory of how the brain works and sensors that allowed me to read your mind and predict your every action by scanning your brain say) it would not explain or require the experience be actually an experience. If there were no actual brain but only a book that perfectly described that hypothetical brain throughout its life, the same sensor data and predictions of the theory of brain would make all the same predictions etc. and those would have a correlate in the unexperienced book and so an exactly similar empirical success. Likewise if I have a physical theory of the universe that is predictively perfect it can't tell me if the universe exists as colliding atoms of matter or as a computer simulation on God's laptop, whether what the theory describes exists in some deeper sense is unanswerable by the physical theory.
Is it practical to use panpsychism to develop philosophical (or scientific) ideas? Much more important than "is it true?"
1:03:00 The entire discussion around pain and human beings etc. underscores the special nature of humans which underles Marx. Humans can separate from nature. Unlike animals or our human ancestors that felt pain and cold so they found a warm cave or gathered around a fire, humans built heated homes and sat inside on a cold winters day. Our ability to separate from nature and control nature inside our homes has Keith wrapped around himself with the argument of why do we need to "feel it". We don't need to feel it but the robot thermostat "feels it" when it turns the heater on. The entire discussion underscores how they still dont know wtf happens inside the neurons and neuronal networks when they fire. They really need a good systems engineer in this discussion.
We have a physical model of the brain that explains most of the function of the mind, and it makes sense to ask whether, after we subtract this function, there is anything left unexplained. The hard problem alleges that there is something left over, and that this leftover piece cannot be explained functionally. But whenever I see people discuss this, they are extremely careless and do not bother with the subtraction at all.
Consider qualia. What does function account for? Neural networks handle association and identity. It is alleged that our qualia (or part of it, depending on how the term is used) is non-functional. So, look at the red color of an object. SUBTRACT the functional associations you have with other red objects (love hearts, blood, chili peppers, stop signs), with the emotional salience of those associations, and with the salience of color more generally. Is there anything leftover to the feeling of seeing red after the subtraction? Arguably, no. All that is left is your ability to identify red, and that is also functional in neural networks. The redness becomes flavorless and free of salience. This is, in part, Dennett's argument against the hard problem.
IMO, you can experience this subtraction introspectively. If you haven't tried subtraction, give it a go. And if you see people describing the hard problem without talking about subtraction, they're not taking the argument seriously.
Annaka accurately understand your interlocutors argument and don't overconfidently interrupt with mistaken rebuttals challenge: impossible!
Do Keith and Annaka disagree about the reality of what Annaka means by ‘felt experiences’, or do they disagree about the nature of what Annaka means by ‘felt experiencs’?
She needs to let Keith answer her questions
Agreed
💯👍
Annaka asking why feeling is associated with brains but not anything else is like asking why solidness is associated with brick walls but not water or empty space. What exactly is the mystery supposed to be here?
Keith himself has pointed out how the psycho-physical( or just physical in our case) harmony argument( most commonly used for theism) better supports illusionism. Wondering why water molecules create liquid as an emergent property is stupid, but for some reason consciousness is something special.
In a recent articles in Entropy and Scientific American, Helmet Nevin the head of google's quantum computing lab discussed planned experimentation to explore the link between quantum superposition and consciousness.
1) Entropy "Testing the Conjecture That Quantum Processes Create Conscious Experience" and
2) Scientific American, "Experiments Prepare to Test Whether Consciousness Arises from Quantum
Actually, it seems you may have misrepresented the analogue. Perhaps it should be:
‘Why is solidness associated with brick walls, but not anything else?’
That’s a fairer question in relation to’why is feeling associated with brains, and not anything else?’
Well perhaps solidness is associated with other things akin to brick walls. We both know it has to do with molecular structure.
Her point is that brains are by virtue brains largely due to their characteristically huge amount of ‘information processing’ (wetware/neurological events), the question is begged as to whether something other than a brain, in its own unified system that processes quantitatively massive data… could feel.
She just presumes (wrongly) that feeling is something over and above the information processing. If one presumes that, then yes, you got yourself a mystery. Panpsychism "solves" the problem by pushing it to the realm of the inexplicable underlying consciousness of everything... Great idea!
My own guess is that the most fundamental laws of our local universe must arise so as to allow consciousness and free will to exist. I believe that consciousness and free will in the universe arises out of the quantum wave function.
Keith keeps saying we cannot be certain about any of the claims made about our subjective consciousness. But Annaka isn't making any specific claims about it only that it does in fact exist. I find it hard not to see Keith's position, if taken to it's logical conclusion is, as anything other than a denial of consciousness as an potential illusion.
Illusionism is simply an anti-realist position against phenomenality/qualia. Conceptualizing consciousness in such a way leads to specific claims about awareness and its contents. It's simply a way to logically tie up any loose ends in the physicalist model. The fact that a magic show is occurring isn't special, but claiming that its specifically magical requires justification.
Agreed @@jackkrell4238
It's everywhere. Even in your dreams and deep sleep.
I've arrived at the unavoidable interpretation that Keith's subjective experience is dramatically different than that of Annaka, Philip, and myself :)
Well, my subjective experience seems mysterious, irreducibly subjective, and incapable of physical explanation. How does yours seem? :)
@@KeithFrankish I'll ask it! Lately it's been rather busy with the hard problem of matter, so responds slowly to introspection ;)
It's also rather dismayed by the aspects of others' experience it's been forced to share - e.g. automobiles and autocrats :-/
Really? Mine doesn't. My impulse is to conclude that I am a zombie, but then again, a typical zombie wouldn't conclude that. Oh lord, what a mess the illusion of introspection gets us in. Half joking, but it really doesn't seem that mysterious any longer, thanks to people like you and Dennett.
Have you asked Philip or any of your other opponents what their model of us illusionist is? Do they think we don't have a rich inner experience? Or that we have it, but we don't realise it? Or that we are trying to deceive others? I feel like most of them don't actually take in that opposing convictions about these "inner phenomena" should at least lead them to explore alternative explanations. Anyway thanks for doing your best against the magicalist gang in this video! @@KeithFrankish
You guys need a workable definition of concepts like Idealism and Physicalism.
Idealism: the set of all things is consciousness and a subset we label as physical stuff.
Physicalism: the set of all things is physical and a subset we label as having consciousness.
Dualism: consciousness and physical stuff are two different sets that either do not overlap (and therefore must be mediated by a third set) or only some elements of their individual subsets overlap.
That covers it.
Panpsychism must belong to one of the three.
I'm a bit confused by Keith's position on 'cogito ergo sum'. He challenges the insight that the one thing we know for certain is that something is experiencing something else (and therefore rules out that we can piece together an understanding of the universe based on x logical conclusion), but he challenges it on the grounds that it's extremely unlikely that brains would evolve - via natural selection - the ability to ask this exact question. I don't think anyone on either side of the debate believes that the brain is hard coded to ask these questions, but instead they believe that the brain evolved to formulate lines of reasoning in general. This same capacity of reasoning, by the way, is what allows us to put trust in the scientific method.
Quite interesting and lively debate, but I think lots of (unstated and unclear) metaphysical assumptions were getting in the way. I think for a more fruitful discussion, Nagarjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā would be required reading (to uncover how concepts, despite their practical utility, obscure direct perception/knowing), as would be Vasubandhu's work (covered really well in William Waldron's Making Sense of Mind Only: Why Yogācāra Buddhism Matters). Oh, and on the question of the ontological status of consciousness and of free will/Free Will, one cannot go wrong with Christopher Wallis' The Recognition Sutras. Asian philosophy is miles ahead of (most of) Western philosophy.
Keith: "It exists but I don't necessarily know what it is. I need science to tell me what it is."
Really? Why?
This explains so much about his perspective.
@@Nonconceptuality simply because introspection doesn't tell you squat about what it is. Introspection creates a certain experience but doesn't reveal anything about the underlying nature of it. I think panpsychism is BS, but even if you're into it you should not draw conclusions from how things seem.
If you're a monist you should see it's problematic, to say the least, to claim that "you" (subject) can observe "consciousness" (object). "consciousness" observing itself is equally problematic. Observation is always a subject-object enterprise.
If idealism would be discovered to be true it would not be through introspection.
@StrangeLoopsOfReality Pure observation is the direct experience of reality. You think the words and thoughts are revealing reality when in fact they are obscuring reality. You have an inverted perspective of reality
@@Nonconceptuality yeah that is the illusion. There is no direct experience. Everything is conceptual.
If you think you have gotten to know directly what reality or experience before concepts is, then that is thought. That is belief.
It's the same for me of course. But if you think you can subjectively observe reality or truth as an object, you are tricking yourself.
@StrangeLoopsOfReality You aren't getting it. If I'm free of thought I'm not thinking that I'm free of thought. I live my life free of concepts, but to someone who isn't familiar with thought free Awareness, everything is conceptual.
Just abide free of the voice in the head. That's the reality. The words and concepts that you are superimosong over top of sensual experience, is DELUSION
@@Nonconceptuality yeah you know you're free of thought without thinking it. You just know it, directly, right? From where?
I've experienced being free of thought many times. I just don't kid myself any longer that "direct experience" is non-conceptual.
"I think feeling is the least conceptualized thing there is, and we just have no way of talking about it without concepts"
That, from @annakaharris is spot on.
But I should also way you're probably wrong on FW. When you see the process in meditation, what you're seeing are the extra nonspatial & random (but contextual when decision-making) qualia inputs into otherwise effectively deterministic spacetime: imagination, which *enables* FW. Sure, it will appear from the spacetime perspective (which you're still shackled to, even though you're now fully-minded) that these come from no-where; but they don't, they come from the nonspatiotemporal qualitative undergirding from which spacetime emerges. At least that's what I suspect, but certainly FW is possible; it just depends on what metaphysics is true.
The point on there being no non-caused effects is wrong (at least according to current physics). The evidence is every single quantum interaction, which is governed by the probabilistic Born rule:: no individual effect (e.g. decay or not-decay of a particle) has a cause. It's in this space between randomness and the effective determinism of macro systems (from the Law of Large Numbers) that FW probably operates.
How do you, personally, define free will?
@@mikebasketball11 Something like the ability to make decisions into an open future, such that if the same decision was replayed again with exactly the same antecedent conditions, one can make a different decision.
Or to put it more fully, for the same spacetime with the same initial conditions, the same laws of physics; and so precisely the same spatiotemporal state of the universe, an agent with libertarian free will must be able to be the locus of a willed conscious decision that has some influence on the course of spacetime into its open future.
Awesome lady.
Sam's a lucky man.....
or is luck another aspect of free will or no free will hidden as chance?
If you deny the existence of a self/subject, in what sense can you still believe in qualia? Aren't qualia by definition supposed to be properties that can only be directly known by a self/subject of experience. Even if we go with the idea of a 'felt experience', if this is meant in a way that cannot be cashed out in third person, functionalist terms (e.g. in terms of sensitivities and reactions), isn't 'felt experience' just another term for a state that is only directly known by a self that is the subject of that state.
Denying the existence of a self is nessescary to establish the nondual modus operandi of consciousness. But if you deny the existence of a subject in this context you beg the question: where is consiousness located? And then you open up the floor for debate.
Regardless of what theory of consciousness you subscribe to, it is useful to establish that consciousness is identical to experience, and that there is no "experiencer separate of experience." And that self is an artefact of thought and that thought is just an appereance in consciousness.
@@samsklair4701 I think the nonexistence of the self/subject is compatible with the existence of qualia for various reasons, such as:
1. Qualia, in particular visual qualia, seem to be out there in the world. It is possible that qualia are out there in the world and that they can exist without anyone experiencing them. I believe Russell made this point about sense data in his paper ‘The Relation of Sense-data to Physics’
2. Even if qualia cannot exist without being in some sense experienced, it may be possible to cash out what it is for a quale to be experienced in a way which does not mention the subject. You could say, for example, that streams or fields of consciousness are more basic than subjects, and that what it is for a quale to be experienced is simply for it to be part of a particular stream or field of consciousness
Also, in your response to @_thenyounoticeyourethinking, you claim that if it is denied that there is a subject or self to have the experiences, then it must also be denied that there is an aspect of experience that can only be directly known by the subject. One way of understanding this claim is by reading it as saying that the nonexistence of the subject/self is incompatible with the privacy of consciousness. If this is a fair rewording of your claim, then you are claiming that the privacy of consciousness requires the existence of a subject/self. This claim takes for granted that a subject/self must be posited in order to make sense of the privacy of experience. But perhaps there are ways of making sense of the privacy of consciousness which do not invoke a subject/self. I’m not sure how exactly, but i don’t think we can rule out that there are such ways!
@@samsklair4701 it seems that you are making two claims here (although please correct me if you think I’m misrepresenting you):
1. If the subject/self does not exist, then neither does the qualitative character of consciousness
2. If the subject/self does not exist, then neither does the privacy of consciousness
I understand you to be saying 1 when you say that the reality of qualia must be denied if the reality of the subject/self is denied, and I understand you to be saying 2 when you say that if the existence of the subject/self is denied, then it must be denied that there is an aspect of experience that can only be directly known from the first-person perspective.
I think 1 can be argued against on the grounds that qualitative character may very well exist without being experienced. Intuitively, qualitative character, especially visual qualitative character, is part of the external world. It could be that qualitative character exists independently of being experienced by subjects. I think Russell makes a claim like this in his article ‘The Relation of Sense Data to Physics’. If qualitative character can exist independently of being experienced by subjects, then there is no reason to think that 1 is true.
I think 2 can be argued against on the basis that there may be ways of cashing out the privacy of consciousness which do not reference the subject/self. I’m not sure how to make sense of the privacy of consciousness without invoking a subject/self, but there could be a way of doing so!
@@qualiashow I am only making the second claim insofar as I understand qualia to be properties that can only be known directly by whoever is aquainted with them. If there is another way of cashing out the privacy of consciousness/qualia without referencing a subject that would be interesting! But as of yet I am not aware of any way of doing so.
The way I understand it, the claim that consciousness has a qualitative character is another way of saying that it has an aspect that cannot be captured in quantitative/mathematical terms. For example, you could not capture the ‘reddish character’ of red experiences (i.e. what it feels like for someone to experience red) in mathematical terms.
But could you capture the reddish character of red experiences in any terms? We can say that the ‘reddish character’ of our red experiences is more like the 'orangey character' of our orange experiences than the 'blueish character' of our blue experiences, but can we say what the reddish character of our red experiences is in and of itself? I don't think so.
So if you think of ‘qualitative character’ as something intrinsic to experiences I think it ends up being something ineffable. But if it’s ineffable then there is no way of making sense of it and I would be doubtful that it’s even a real thing.
Of course there are aspects of our experiences that we describe using qualitative language rather than quantitative/mathematical language (e.g. we talk in terms of things being red, blue, green etc rather than in terms of wavelengths of light) but that doesn't mean that ‘qualitative character’ is some intrinsic property of experience.
@@qualiashow For what it's worth I do have pretty strong intuitions about the privacy and the qualitative character of my own experiences, I'm just not sure I would endorse them upon reflection. Although they are very hard for me to shake. That's why I'm quite sympathetic to illusionism.
How would it feel to be a cat? I would say nothing will change except that you will have a different life and experience. Consciousness remains the same. It is impossible to have a cat consciousness and a human consciousness at the same time. We are all individual people and have individual experiences. That is why we live in our own universe that can only be perceived by us.
Is consciousness everywhere? It is, at least, everywhen!
What does she mean by “felt experience”?
Perceptions of any kind: visual, auditory, tactile, emotional, thoughts.
59:19 it is funny anika was accusing keith of dualism and then starts with the cartesian position. The issue with taking acquaintance with representings as absolutely certain is that they are conceptually linked to the represented and cannot be taken in itself. The regress issue is a problem but i take the virtuous circular explanations to be the way out.
@philip, microphone popping, please do not speak directly into it but move it to the side.
Mind the chat, long time no mind..
I'm sorry Keith's epistemic questioning, though justified, is not sufficient to deny the possibility of ontological speculation.
Is not sufficient to=does not necessarily
And why is that, exactly? They have no justification/basis for their speculation. That's the problem.
Remote Viewing is a technology used to view what it is like to be another consciousness. See The Alexandria Project headed by Stephan A. Schawrz and the CIA research of Dean Radin in a recent DysmystifySci Podcast.
DysmystifySci Podcast interview with Dean Radin on Top Secret CIA consciousness research.
ruclips.net/video/lbkMmVBdshA/видео.html
The Alexandria Project.
ruclips.net/video/Q0QZTwpCAFo/видео.html
So, if anyone more knowledgeable on her work could clarify it to me, Annaka's view on "there are no selves" is essentially like a physicalist/panpsychist version of Bernardo Kastrup's idea that there is really one single "big consciousness" and our perception of being individual separated selfs is an illusion? The main difference seems to be that she considers that big consciousness to be more a property of the universe rather than the universe itself. Is that right?
Well, at this point I don't think we can call Annaka a physicalist. She's clearly in the panpsychist camp, maybe even the Idealist. But she's not as much of a monist as Kastrup, I think.
@@plafar7887 Yeah, I was gonna say "panpsychist version", but there was a point in the interview where Phillip called her a panpsychist and she said she wouldn't necessarily call herself one, so I'm not sure what exactly to call her. She did give me the impression of being an "expanded physicalist" similar to how John Searle and even Galen Strawson to some degree call themselves (Galen is a panpsychist, but he does claim that "the real materialist" should be a panpsychist, so it seems he does consider himself a physicalist or at least a materialist to some degree). She also says she agrees with almost everything Keith says, and they only diverge in the very last step, and Keith is a physicalist, so there's that.
@@randombartz8163 Yeah, the part where she says she agrees with Keith did disappoint me a bit. I don't think she appreciates how much their views diverge, but anyway.
As for the rest, I think a lot of it is just semantics, although I do disagree with Searle on a number of things. To be fair, Searle belongs to an older generation, with less refined views on this subject.
I also disagree with some of Kastrup's views, namely when it comes to Biology, but I am sympathetic to the Idealist position in general.
@@plafar7887 I'm not sure that boils down to Searle being older, if you look at his old interviews, he used to be much more dismissive of the hard problem of consciousness, while nowadays he adamantly affirms its validity. Regarding Kastrup, I think his argument about how the dissociation we observe in DPD patients gives a nice example of how it could plausibly happen for a "universal consciousness" as well is very interesting, but I disagree with most of what he says outside of that, mostly because I think a lot of it is a huge stretch from some principles which are "well, maybe" at best.
I don’t think she makes the leap that standard physics, where we emerge, is manifest from Quantum.
Annaka, what if mathematics is an attribute of consciousness?...
The concept of the inanimate seems to exist, math, so far as it is determinate, could be an attribute, but not the sole tribute to consciousness.
Consciousness resides on the quantum, imaginary number, side of reality, where imaginary universes of infinite potential possibilities resides. Conscious free will occurs when trains of thought collapse into the transient particle like boundary conditions of an evolving conscious quantum field. Free will arises at the moment of the wave to particle transition, and is accompanied by an evolution of the conscious quantum field boundary conditions.
Please bring Kastrup
Self-evidently, we can be functionally categorised as "autonomous entities".
The immediate persistence of our autonomy fundamentally depends on us physically detecting our situation.
Essentially, a detection event can be regarded as a change of physical state triggered by a specific contact. Naturally occurring detection mechanisms appear to be rather exclusive to living entities.
From the inside, the situational detection events that occur within our physiology ARE subjective experiences, rather than objectively observable occurrences.
From the outside, the VERY SAME detection events ARE objectively observable occurrences, rather than subjective experiences.
In other words, from the outside, within an ontologically autonomous entity, there is no objective evidence of a subjective experience that is undeniably present from the inside. There is only objective evidence of an observable detection event.
In contrast with all other physical events observed in nature, these uniquely dichotomous detection events seem to be an ontological anomaly.
Because of this, whenever we conceptually abstract and label our own subjective experiences for purposes of self-reflection and discussion, we unwittingly make them seem as though as they are ontologically different to the objectively observable detection events occurring within our own physiology.
That is to say, to us, the subjective experience seems to be "non-physical", in conceptual contrast with the objectively observable detection event.
Because this is not actually the case, the field of cognitive neuroscience remains profoundly unsuccessful in observing the mechanism(s) responsible for (what they assume is) an objectively observable detection event giving rise to a subjective experience, leading to the appearance of what has come to be known as the "hard problem of consciousness".
Empirically, all there is to find are these autonomous entities, with the uniquely dichotomous situational detection events occurring within them.
There is evidently a lot of incidental processing accompanying these detection events, and this processing can be regarded as the entity "utilising" the events as an attempt to preserve its own autonomy.
Other than the simple fact that we ARE such entities, there is no reason why it feels like anything for us to be alive.
This realisation is the dissolution of the "hard problem".
It feels like everything to be alive. It is everything to be alive.
@@danzigvssartre I might agree, but can you be a bit more precise about what you mean?
@@BLSFL_HAZE Not sure I can be more precise? Subjective knowledge and objective knowledge are ontologically different. A log floating down a stream is one thing and a log floating down a stream while it thinks to itself is something very different.
@danzigvssartre A log floating downstream isn't an autonomous entity, though, so it's not something that has the capacity to think to itself. It was once a "part" of a proactive entity we call a tree.
I feel it's justified to delineate naturally occurring entities into three primary ontological categories.
1. Reactive entities (all non-living entities).
2. Proactive entities (all vegetation and untethered organisms lacking a central nervous system).
3. Autonomous entities (all untethered organisms that have a central nervous system).
Underlying these three categories, there is only "asymmetrically hierarchical activity" (commonly known as the universe).
I view "reactivity" as "unfocused asymmetrically hierarchical activity", "proactivity" as "partially focused asymmetrically hierarchical activity", and "autonomy" as "fully focused asymmetrically hierarchical activity".
In other words, consciousness is really nothing more than this highest degree of ontological focus.
"We only assume that only humans have consciousness" Huh? Really?
Rupert Sheldrake Ph.D. does a much better job at addressing this subject matter. Harris and Goff need to contact him.
Why can't we solve the combination problem for panpsychism in the following way? Every time a particle changes state, a calculation must be made, and this calculation involves a quale. So for every collapse of the wavefunction, every change of state, nature must calculate what to do next, and this calculation involves qualia.
Now, the vast majority of these calculations via qualia are not like ours - they cannot reference memories or sense data from a body, or have a sense of self. An iron atom in a fork calculating what to do next has no way to reference the past states of the fork, the information isn't there to reference as it calculates what to do next. This is also true for the vast majority of molecules in our bodies, except (presumably) in the brain. IF there are large molecules (I am envisioning something like microtubules) in the brain that are presented with information about the organism's body and it's past states, then these are our conscious states.
Hope that makes sense. :)
Annaka seems so nice and so smart, but she just doesn't get it. And she doesn't let Keith speak.
Despite her commitments to non-dual views she has a lot of dualistic residue in her way of thinking about the mind.
For example, "why would some kinds of information processing and not others be associated with experience" just flat-out presumes that there is information processing AND experience and, yeah, with that dualism you sure do have a mystery at your hands.
Another one is how she, despite her claims, models herself as a subject that can introspect on the object of consciousness. She thinks consciousness can be "observed", like other objects. This just doesn't work for any monism, despite claiming to be a monist. She just can't say that she observed consciousness to be serial (or whatever she said), that implies a point of view from which she can make a judgement, a kind of subject which experiences the serial nature of consciousness. She, like many others, just can't snap out of the subject-object duality despite successfully deconstructing the solid self. Like her husband, she seems to have replaced the self with "consciousness" which somehow acts as both the subject and the object. Dualism crammed into monist ideals.
If Annaka takes Buddhism seriously, (which I believe she does) she cannot ignore what is taught about emptiness, including the emptiness of consciousness. Consciousness has no essence, no self-nature. The "direct experience" that consciousness has this or that property is an illusion, that experience is just part of the content, just as the sense of a self is.
If Annaka believes that the brain does process information, which I believe she does, then she really should take seriously the implication that whatever she may say about qualia are the result of information processing. She really should take seriously the possibility that whatever she concludes about qualia and physicalism is a result of information processing. She should take seriously the idea that perhaps "she" or "consciousness" is not having a vivid experience associated with the information processing, rather, the computational model IS that there is a subject having vivid, subjective experience, inexplicable qualia, which illusionists just don't get, and so forth.
@@jttj742 hmm yeah I obviously don't know her. She was partially disrespectful and uninterested in Keith, not letting him speak.
I'm very interested in this subject and was eager to hear a thoughtful discussion among experts on this topic, but this was not a discussion. The young lady would not allow the gentleman to finish a single sentence without interjecting her own contrary opinion. Consequently we got an abstract topic delivered in fractured and conflicting bits and pieces and I learned nothing. Waste of time I'm sorry to say.
If i acknowledge the fact that we can only effectively study things that can be measured, detected, quantified, does that make me "a materialist"?
There may very well be more to the picture but how on earth can you study it?
If I begin to accept my feelings or intuition and build conclusions from that the likelihood of certainty is going to be even less.
There can never be absolute certainty and that reliable axiom brings itself into question.
These categories and "isms" are just obstacles.
How do you make progress with non material concepts?
It starts to sound like claim after claim to me.
Phillip constantly complaining about "physics doesn't care about......" and these comparative "us vs. them" rants aren't helpful and never will be.
Just explain-how-to-study-non-material- phenomena.
How?
Start there.
This guy Keith is too far gone into the reductionist mindset to be convinced with just two hours of conversation. He keeps repeating the same absurd statement that "experiences are an illusion". Yes, experiences may have many illusory aspects to them, but that just means that one experience is not exactly what you think, it's just another kind of experience, not that it doesn't exist any experience at all! Saying that is just nonsensical sophistry!
Btw, he is clearly a disciple of Dennett (with the latter's picture on the shelves behind him), so it's pretty on-brand that he just parrots Dennett's particular flavor of Illusionism.
Heuristics....
Seems to be a few men in the comments not happy with a man being challenged by a woman at very appropriate moments with salient questions 😄
What moments were there where that happened? We can't help that Annaka is awful at addressing the interlocutors objections. A woman engaging in Magical thinking is just as bad as a man.
I agree with Annaka over Keith when it comes to the substance of what they're saying. But as a listener and a learner, it's very frustrating to listen to her interrupt Keith, because it denies us (and her) of knowing the full picture of what Keith was trying to convey. So I completely disagree that she challenged 'at very appropriate moments'. One fifth of the way through his sentences is not an appropriate moment to challenge. As such, we were denied a more thorough debate because of her inability to let people finish their sentences. I'm sure she would interrupt a woman just as readily as she would interrupt a man, by the way.
And yes it's true that in life, it's usually men talking over women due to our patriarchal culture. So it makes sense to take pleasure and catharsis in the spectacle of a woman turning the tables. But do we as listeners as learners really want to hear anyone interrupting anybody else during well-meaning debate?
@@jackkrell4238 What's "Magical thinking"?
Russelian Monism...
This is probably my fault. No problem. But I fail to understand what she is talking about. I understand what Philip says even if I don't agree. But what she says I guess is beyond meaning.
This was just rehashed Schopenhauer. I would suggest to start with some semantics first. I couldn't make heads or tails of all the claims being made. I am at the point where i want to excise experience from my vocabulary. This such a looose concept with no determinate content.
"I couldn't make heads or tails of all the claims being made"
Must be their fault.
@@infov0ynobody's fault but more precisely claims were just stated and I didn't see any reasons provided. People who already agree wouldn't care about that so for them it would surely be intelligible
@@ReflectiveJourney These are academic analytic philosophers mate. Unlike your average opinion (mine included), their claims are laid out in excruciating detail in the academic papers they publish in philosophy journals, in many cases in more accessible form in the books they publish, and often in even more accessible terms in pieces on the web. They can't be expected to lay out all the terms and arguments surrounding them before every discussion; the onus is on you to do some simple searching on the endless resources available and discover that for yourself
@@infov0y Keith and Phillip are fine. I understand where they are coming from and know where i disagree. My comment was more in reference to the guest and the loose language of it is all just experience and mostly quasi-mystical claims in the vicinity using "experience".
Disappointing
It is.
Life?
When Philip says that everything else comes from consciousness: that sounds like a God argument.
Saying the addition of conscious experience is no different than saying electric eels had an additional property of electricity to stun their prey. Why that modality and not another, is evolutionary
When one goes to sleep or passes out, consciousness is lost, so consciousness can not be fundamental. In dreamless sleep there is no world and no time, so it is said, no consciousness.
To fix this I have defined consciousness as: "Awareness of something." So in my model, awareness is fundamental and consciousness, is all experience (thoughts and sensations).
Take the waking state (the life of the character 'your name here') to be a novel. Self (God. Yes, Divinity or a transcendent state is required in the final model) is the reader of the book, and the ego, the false sense of self, is the protagonist. The reading of the book is the Observer (true Self). So consciousness is coming through the book and that Awareness of the Observer is what animates the story. The reading of the book is consciousness. Consciousness is what is occurring while the Observer/God/Self is reading the book. The reader is transcendent of the book realm. This is where Annaka's theory fails. Divinity is REQUIRED in the model. The reality is not detectable in the thought and sensational realms. This is why my triune Fundamental Model of Reality is the ONLY, SINGULAR complete final theory. The body-mind problem CAN NOT be resolved without the inclusion of SPIRIT or Divinity.
I understand everything
🙏
You might want to get the basics right before you become so assertive. Claiming there is no consciousness during sleep, passing out, or dreamless sleep is counter to all neurological data. It is correct to say that consciousness is lost during those instances in layman terms, as per norms, but it does not correlate with scientific observation. If you are basing your further claims on this simple fallacy, you might want to reconsider.
@@_thenyounoticeyourethinking Are you conscious of the world while you are asleep?
@@Nonconceptuality Are you conscious during dreams? Are you conscious during the dreams that you don't remember? If you answer yes to those, then you must consider that you may be conscious during deep sleep as well.
@dungeon_architect *sigh*
During dreamless sleep you do not have experience and yet you exist. Therefore the world arises and passes within you.
Assuming any perspective other than first-person is hearsay and assumption
@@Nonconceptuality
> During dreamless sleep you do not have experience and yet you exist.
I'm not convinced that during dreamless you do not have experience. There are many conscious states that you can have that you don't remember. There's every possibility that experience is happening during dreamless sleep and you just don't remember it.
Further, there are humans who have completely lost their short term memory. Every waking moment for them is like they just woke up. But we wouldn't say that they weren't conscious five minutes ago. Similarly, when you wake up, you can't remember what happened during your sleep unless you dreamt, but again, it doesn't necessarily mean that you weren't conscious during sleep.
So you have to concede the possibility that experience happens during dreamless sleep.
If scientists ever successfully attribute some brain process to pure consciousness, then we'll be able to find out whether experience / consciousness is possible during dreamless sleep. But right now you couldn't say one way or the other.