Gnomon

Did you infer from my comments in the last post that I think Matter is unreal? Not so. As far as I know, the material world is what sentient beings kn...

In my Enformationism thesis, Generic Information is all four of Aristotle's causes. As the "First Cause", it's the program that astrophysicists call T...

For philosophical purposes, I define Physics in opposition to Meta-Physics, which includes the Platonic purity of mathematics. The problem of succinct...

That's beside the point. I was just guessing that his radical political statement of solidarity with his fellow Buddhists, was intended to accomplish ...

Yes. I think Consciousness is a holistic phenomenon of the brain, and not found in any of its parts, such as neurons. So in my analogy, what you are c...

What event, in-time or in-timelessness, provoked your question? Was that event in the past? How do you know? Einstein's theory of Block Time was a hyp...

Apparently, Spencer was trying to reconcile our commonsense division of the world into Subjective (Inner ; Spirit) and Objective (Outer ; Matter). Lik...

I have no idea how "charge distribution" might work. But it could be similar to my own understanding of how quantum-scale particles can act like waves...

Self-immolation per se is not altruistic, especially if it's a cop-out on life, like some cases of suicide. But in this case, the monk sacrificed his ...

I agree. That's why my personal philosophy, based on the Enformationism worldview, is the BothAnd Principle, which can be visualized in the Yin-Yang s...

I happen to agree. But it seems that most people prefer simplistic, dare I say "fictional", narratives to complex "facts" & arcane theories of Science...

Apparently, what adepts in meditation are able to do, is to be rationally aware of the pain, without suffering the emotional sensations. Self-confiden...

I wasn't aware of Herbert ("survival of the fittest") Spencer's list of Principles. Can you express the gist of those "laws" of Nature, in light of mo...

I agree. But his martyrdom was no more miraculous than that of the Islamic Jihadiists who willingly blow their pain-feeling fleshly bodies into smithe...

Actually, there are some people, who achieve seemingly supernatural feats, not by magic, but by self-control. In the article linked below, the "spirit...

It's not just a Western "cultural taboo". Throughout history, miracle-workers, including Gandalf & Dumbledore, have warned against frivolous use of ma...

Ordinary humans can do some amazing, and disgusting, things when entranced by faith. In some Catholic countries, people celebrate holy-days by whippin...

Whenever magic is involved in super-normal claims, I become skeptical. I don't know so much about Buddhist magic, but Hinduism has a long tradition of...

The universe (one circle) is like a Venn diagram. It is the class of all real things. But there may be another circle that is the class of all possibl...

Yes, some deep meditators are supposed to be able to shut-out physical pain while they retreat into an inner world of their own. Years ago, I knew a m...

Well, "going crazy" (psychotic) might be one way to escape from awareness of the psychic sufferings of reality. But, I don't recommend it. Also, I sup...

Thanks. I was hoping some of my neutral terms were merely misconstrued as political. The links below go to blog pages that I revised due to your feedb...

For a philosopher, that may be true. But for empirical scientists, only "how" questions are relevant to their interests. Except for a few theoretical ...

Nirvana (nibbana) literally means "blowing out" or "quenching". It is the most used as well as the earliest term to describe the soteriological goal i...

That one-eyed look at history ignores the progress made by philosophers in the field of Natural Philosophy. Aristotle summarized the current state of ...

"Nirvana" literally means "snuffing-out of a candle". Which may indicate why suicidal people may find the notion of nothingness preferable to sufferin...

Only beginning? I thought you were on board from day one. :joke: “When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suf...

I'm offended that you are still laboring under that mistaken attribution. That's just the opposite of my intention. My thesis proposes a Paradigm Shif...

I'm a latecomer to this thread, and I haven't read all the other posts. But your question is pertinent to my personal worldview : Enformationism, whic...

I was surprised that you found my hierarchical worldview to be a biblical or political prejudice. So, I want to clarify my usage of the term. In my cu...

I suspect that most of the posters on this forum are aware of the philosophical position called "Naturalism". But, it's not very enlightening, because...

What if the road forks three ways? Are you forced to take the middle path, or the mathematical mean? What if there is no exact middle? Can you toss a ...

No. Scientific. And Rational. Emotion and Sentiment sometimes motivate well-intentioned, but futile, attempts to turn the stratified & ranked system u...

I agree, up to the last sentence. Closing the door to magical thinking is a basic tenet of open-minded skepticism. It's like slamming the lid on Pando...

Hey! That's just philosophy. Philosophers have been arguing over the same big questions for thousands of years. And made little progress on the really...

My last relationship with a Rock, of lower social status, was rather rocky. And it ended in stony silence. :love:

Actually, I can define "human consciousness". It's the uniquely human perspective of the world, that homo sapiens have in common. Every other worldvie...

You sound disappointed. Was it the godless, meaningless implication of "the appearance of design"? The rest of Blog Post 45 has a less mechanistic con...

I agree. But the last time I had a discussion with a rock, it had nothing interesting to say. That was a one-way conversation between Rocky & me. :raz...

I can generally agree with that assessment. But I still like to reserve the term "consciousness" for the higher levels, and use "information" or "ener...

Since I have a well-worked-out theory of how Information works in the world -- like a progressive computer program -- for me the "logical conclusion" ...

This is a side note from our current discussion. Before I found this thread on the provenance of Consiousness, I hadn't thought of that evolutionary p...

What do you suppose is "outside the system", constantly "interacting" with components of the system to cause energy exchanges to evolve into self-awar...

That's why I conclude that Human Consciousness is merely the current stage of a continuous on-going evolutionary process of complexification & integra...

The "things" I was referring to are inorganic objects, and don't have any viscera, no brains, no neurotransmitters, no subjective consciousness, etc. ...

I know what my emotions are, implicitly. But you can't know my emotional state, except by explicit descriptions of what those feelings mean to me. Or,...

In Darwinian evolution, there is no need for "awareness in molecules". As KenoshaKid pointed-out "No awareness required, just a survival advantage". H...

I agree. And I think you are referring to the self-generating systems within Nature that Deacon calls "Autogens". But, the "ordering" and "organizatio...

Nah! You're no fun anymore. Your scientific superiority schtick is wasting time on a philosophical thread about Consciousness, which has baffled scien...

I agree, but the metaphorical "awareness" of an atom or ant is not fully-developed. In my graph of cosmic progression, full Consciousness was attained...