Mind and Matter

Reply to Pantagruel
I think that your idea of energy giving rise to consciousness is interesting but it might be hard to show. I think that it might involve vibrational frequencies. You would probably need to show that the way in which the translation of energy from matter takes place. It would probably involve quantum physics and if you were able to put all this together it would be a bit new theory.

Reply to Jack Cummins Hmmm. I'm thinking it is evident from the general principles I outlined. I mean, it's either matter, or energy, or...something else. It's that "something else" that has been causing grief for centuries now. I'm not sure why it should. As complex systems evolve, the nature of the energy that they manifest changes, but, fundamentally, it is still energy. I don't see any reason in principle to doubt that, whatever may be the actual nature of psycho-social mechanisms, whatever dynamisms they involve must ultimately be energy of some kind.

Reply to Pantagruel
It is a bit like the missing link of physics. The point at which the spark of consciousness appears is what glares out from all the discussions I have seen.

Reply to Jack Cummins Yes, except that it isn't really "missing," is it? It's right here. That's why I stand by many of Descartes' fundamental insights.

Reply to Pantagruel
But don't forget that Descartes thought that the pineal gland was important. Of course, this is recognised as the third eye chakra within some Eastern views of thought.

Reply to Jack Cummins Yeah, not that part. ;) Let's not forget the state of medical science, science in general, at that time.

But utilizing radical metaphysical doubt to eliminate everything that is not cogito. I just read some Max Scheler and he also had a kind of eliminative project, very much like Husserl's phenomenological reduction but of a more transcendental bent.

Reply to Pantagruel
Perhaps it might be worth you writing a fuller discussion of this and creating a thread on it in the main discussion area, as it is a central aspect of philosophy debate. Connecting phenomenology and the transcendent has a lot of scope.

Reply to Jack Cummins I like the energy in the Lounge.

Quoting Pantagruel

Is there any reason not to suppose that consciousness is just a manifestation of energy occurring under specific conditions?

I think you are missing information from your fundamentals. Information gives energy and matter form. Once something has form, it becomes integrated information :nerd: so consciousness. Human consciousness, in the moment, is a very complicated instance of integrated information. It has enormous complexity, but it is still an instance of integrated information, enabled by energy, and embedded in matter.

Reply to Pop Quoting Pop

I think you are missing information from your fundamentals. Information gives energy and matter form. Once something has form, it becomes integrated information :nerd: so consciousness. Human consciousness, in the moment, is a very complicated instance of integrated information. It has enormous complexity, but it is still an instance of integrated information, enabled by energy, and embedded in matter.

:up:

Reply to Pop :100:

Quoting Pop

I think you are missing information from your fundamentals. Information gives energy and matter form. Once something has form, it becomes integrated information :nerd: so consciousness. Human consciousness, in the moment, is a very complicated instance of integrated information. It has enormous complexity, but it is still an instance of integrated information, enabled by energy, and embedded in matter.

I'd take this even further. In Ideology and Utopia, Mannheim repeats ad nauseum how scientific and theoretical knowledge is, by its very nature, abstracted and insulated from the world of practical human concerns; conversely, political knowledge is explicitly a creature of this world, the Weltanschauung

But it is clear that scientific and theoretical knowledge do play a part in the commerce of thought. So, if you expand the concept of the Weltanschauung beyond that of mere pragmatics, you can think of the entire world, the entire universe, as essentially a medium and a mechanism for the propagation of consciousness. Which reaches its most precise formulation in the concept of information theory, the transmission of a message. But includes and encompasses all modalities of knowledge (transmissible thought).

Quoting Pantagruel

you can think of the entire world, the entire universe, as essentially a medium and a mechanism for the propagation of consciousness. Which reaches its most precise formulation in the concept of information theory, the transmission of a message. But includes and encompasses all modalities of knowledge (transmissible thought).

:up: Yes, information theory provides an insight into information being the fundamental element, and the universe thus being an information processing system.