2005-09-30
Ruminations on World Mind
Ustaath recently posted to Consciousness Cafe a link to Kevin Kelly's article We are the Web. Here is the conversation that ensued:
Bob La Bla wrote:
There was a suggestion a few weeks ago - I don't recall who posted this originally - that the Web could function as an enormous "brain". I've been thinking about this idea ever since reading that article, and I wish to explore this idea further.
On the surface, it's a tempting analogy - each of the billions of web-pages in the world acting as a neuron, with links to other neurons.... if there are enough of these sites, and enough links, could the complexity become great enough to support sentient consciousness?
Categories: psychedelic, co-intelligence
Well, although it's a cute idea, I think that it is fundamentally flawed. It's true that web pages link to each other, much like neurons form synapses, but neurons are active in a way that web pages are not - there are no "neurotransmitters" on the web, there is no way that one web page can (independent of human action) send a message to another web page - the links are all passive. They are there for
navigation, not transmission. And, even though it is only a single cell, a neuron is immeasureably more complex than even the most complex web page, or even the most complex computer for that matter. There is also the possibility (a pet theory of mine), that since neurons are so small, quantum effects might come into play - see for example Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind, where he talks about
microtubules - or see this wikipedia page (yes, they say that the theory is controversial, but I still believe that something akin to Penrose's microtubule theory is correct, even if not in its current form).
Now, computers and web pages act completely according to deterministic logic and classical physics - there is simply no room for quantum effects such as coherent states to come into play.
This led me to further thoughts - if we are going to look at large, interacting networks as models for the brain, how about human society? I mean, there are 6 billion of us, we all have various types of relationships with other human beings, and we are continuously passing messages to each other. Is it possible that we are like neurons in a world brain? And if this were true, how would we know?
Suppose, for a moment, that an individual neuron were had some sort of rudimentary unicellular consciousness (how can we know that it doesn't?). Now, the neuron *probably* would not understand that it is in fact part of a larger conscious structure, the human brain. And in fact, that larger consciousness could make decisions - say, to go and get drunk - which are known to kill brain cells - so the neuron is participating in a process which would lead to its own destruction.
This to me is somewhat tantalizing - suppose that we as humans are "neurons" in a larger consciousness - something that might exist at the level of "tribe", "corporation", "nation", "race" or even humanity as a whole - would we be aware of this, any more than a single neuron in our brain is able to "understand" that is part of something larger? And, could this larger thing, acting in ITS interest, do things that are not in our own, personal human interest? Suppose, for example, that we are to consider a nation as a conscious entity - it could decide to start a war, which would result in the destruction of many individuals - the things that are in the interests of the larger entitity are not necessarily in the best interests of its constituent parts. They are operating on different levels, just like our brain deciding to drink alcohol...
And yet another question - suppose that consciousness does inhere completely in the brain (I am not convinced that this is so) - and we had a "brain in a jar" on life-support. Now, this brain could be conscious, thinking thoughts, etc, but without any sensory organs or motor apparatus, it could not communicate with the outside world.
From the outside, a "dead" brain and a conscious brain would look the same. We are only able to recognize consciousness if it is able to communicate, to produce effects in the world. So, even if the Web were to become conscious (which I highly doubt), how would we recognize this consciousness? What would function as its eyes, its mouth? And, if in fact larger groups of humans (corporations, nations), or even the Earth itself - were to be considered as supporting consciousness - what would be its senses, and its modes of action and expression?
Summary
1) How would you recognize a conscious being which lacks any input/output facilities?
2) If individual neurons were conscious, would they understand that they are part of a larger consciousness? What if humans are in fact neurons in the World Brain?
3) Is it really enough to put a big enough neural network together and get consciousness? Does consciousness arise from any sufficiently complex structure which has enough connections? Or is there something "extra" (i.e. a "soul") involved? And if so, what is the nature of this "something extra" ?
What do you think?
Ustaath responded:
I posted the Kevin Kelly piece and the questions you raise are just too big to explore without a day or two of thought. I will print your email and think on it the rest of the week.
Please consider looming possibility of direct neural interfaces for electronic networks and how this might alter your exploration. Also the Kelly piece does include living human beings as the "neurons."
Look at the symbiosis and endosymbiosis work of Margulis, Lovelock, and others. Organisms tend to accrete on the building blocks of previous generations of organisms. A global brain would not need literal neurons because we already have them. It would be a really different kind of organism just as we are really different from unicellular organism in a really profound way. We don't need our "own" scale mitochondria, they exist at the single cell level that is still fundamentally intact within us.
Also, what happens when, in an attempt to understand the Earth's ecology/ environment/ energy flows, more and more sources of data : meteorological, oceanic, covering all aspects of Earth's processes - come online and are hooked into the global net. Doesn't this begin to look like an early sympathetic nervous system with a sense of touch (thermometric devices), vision (global satellites, networked cams, microcams on the forest floor), sound (seismometers, oceanic microphones), smell (atmospheric sensors that measure pollen, pollutants, etc.).
I feel a very tangible sense that this is what is happening; the entire planet developing a nervous system not just the human race.
The next thing would be motor skills.
Then Al X wrote:
Would it even be possible for the "World Brain" to communicate with us in a significant or meaningful manner? Can you speak to your individual neurons in a meaningful way without using a Q-tip? Would it even want to speak to us?
Let's say the world brain has some kind a/v system to interact with us, what would it have to say to us that we could understand? It seems that it might operate on level of understanding so much grander, deeper, and different to our own that talking to it would be meaningless. If you were to communicate with an individual neuron in your brain you could only do so in the language of basic stimulus and neurotransmitters, etc. but to what end? Its (the individual neuron's consciousness is so different from that of the whole (your waking life) that there is no possibility for meaningful conversation. As a conscious individual what would be the point of talking to one of your own neurons?
The same might be true of a "World Brain." A planetary consciousness may be about as interested in individual humans as I am in individual neurons when I feed myself whiskey.
I hope this is not the case, but it is a reasonable conclusion of the analogy.
To which La Bla responded:
Yeah, that's exactly how I feel about it....
Just to make my own position clear:
I personally do NOT believe that in order to have consciusness, it is enough to just have a large network of interconnected elements. I do not believe that machines will ever reach anything we could call sentience. I can't really back this up, it is just my own quasi-mystical belief that in fact there IS something "extra" required, which could be labeled with that troublesome word "soul" - I don't know exactly what it is, but I refuse to believe that consciousness is simply an epiphenomenon, something that arises in sufficiently complex network-like structures. In fact I believe that consciousness is more primordial than matter, althought I have a hard time backing this up. Understanding it fully will, I believe, require new insights into the nature of space and time, subject/object, the
role of the "observer" in quantum theory.... It's somewhat radical but I believe that the mental world gives rise to the physical world, not vice-versa...
To which Ustaath responded:
I think that everything is consciousness, but there is an infinite sea of conscious manifestation, and consciousness of one kind might not easily translate to another form of consciousness. That is, some forms of consciousness may be heavily orthogonal and beings might not recognize each other as conscious or be able to communicate or intuit each others existence.
A world overmind would probably have no direct way of communicating to its "cells". We might have to infer the content of such a consciousness, or perhaps apprehend it in altered states of consciousness in which we temporarily abandon our individual consciousness.
Ustaath wrote:
A bit more to chew on:
The cellular slime mold spends most of its life cycle as individual amoeba-like cells but when environmental stress occurs, the individual cells link up to form a superorganism called the pseudoplasmodium that is made up of more than 100,000 individual cells. The pseudoplasmodium is capable of movement and also reproduction. During reproduction the slime mold can use air currents to propagate itself.
Life on Earth from space looks nothing more than a kind of mold or lichen covering. Suppose all life is really nothing more than a kind of slime mold, in which individual species for the most part do their own thing, but under environmental stress begin to work as part of a superorganism. It might under these circumstances gain the ability to reproduce, move and otherwise spread the seed.
Of course you know where I am going with this. Space migration is a Gaian process, not really human at all. We're just the limbs/hands that build starships and orbital elevators. The rest of the DNA of the planet tags along for the ride. That's the important part.
Robert La Bla wrote:
> This to me is somewhat tantalizing - suppose that we as humans are
> "neurons" in a larger consciousness - something that might exist at
> the level of "tribe", "corporation", "nation", "race" or even humanity
> as a whole - would we be aware of this, any more than a single neuron
> in our brain is able to "understand" that is part of something larger?
> And, could this larger thing, acting in ITS interest, do things that
> are not in our own, personal human interest?
To which Ustaath responded:
I don't think superindividuals existed prior to the 21st century. I don't think they exist yet in 2005, except in nascent state. I don't think the speed of connections and scope of connectiveness prior to 2000 were sufficient to allow social organisms to act as individuals.
When they develop the individual neurons/nodes will be human beings only linked and lubricated by machines. I do not consider this a machine intelligence, just a biological superorganism united by phenotypical artificial structures, machines. Machines are just phenotype.
Again I think the topscale entity is Gaia not the human species itself.
When superindividuals develop, how will we know? I suggest a few signs:
A couple more thoughts:
The mere act of reflection on whether this superorganism exists, and study of its behavior, may be a specialized function of self-awareness on the part of the superorganism. People who question whether the superorganism exists may be in a sense a specialized lobe of its new brain.
Also, if the superindividual is about to be birthed, its first actions may be bumbling, nonsensical, like an infant's first days. It may take some time to find its bearing. This may manifest as strange forms of social chaos and tumult.
Bruce wrote:
Actually, this anthropologist Gregory Bateson wrote about global minds and so forth back in the 60's and 70's - he may have been the first "serious" scientist who brought the issue up. Ahhh, how quickly the younger generation forgets..... :)
Quote from this website:
To which Ustaath responded:
REALLY let's get down to brass tacks and remember both Teilhard de Chardin and Sri Aurobindo (Overmind, Supermind) with very similar concepts and much older work.
Bruce G then wrote:
Yeti raises some interesting questions.
I think there IS something worthwhile in the idea of a "global mind":
I'm reading A Different Universe - Reinventing Physics From the Bottom Down by Robert Laughlin.
The main point of the book is that reductionism is far less effective in physics than most people imagine - Laughlin claims that physicists are unable to predict even the simplest properties of matter from "basic principles", and when matter get complex enough, entirely new and unexpected properties arise. (I'm inclined to listen to him, since he has a Nobel Prize and I don't :) ) When you get zillions of atoms all interacting, things happen that can't be explained just from understanding the properties of a single atom.
So it might be entirely possible that a computer network, for example, might start exhibiting unexpected properties when it gets large and complex enough. How this might manifest in the outside world is a good question....
To which Ustaath responded:
The real point should be, these aren't networks of computers. They are networks of human beings, living minds, connected in ways as never before. We're not talking about machines becoming sentient; but sentient and biological beings initiating a cascade of awareness and cognition due to their heavy interconnectedness, grounded in known and existing awareness.
BruceG. wrote
This is what I think about understanding consciousness:
No one born before 1990 will ever understand consciousness, because (no matter how much we deny it!) we're hopelessly mired in the idea of reductionism. We want to understand something as a function of the properties of its parts. It's the stuff we were taught as kids, and our entire mental apparatus is built around it. Struggle as we might this will always be what "undertanding" means for us.
As for the folks born after 1990 - they're going to learn the physics that's being developed now, which is non-reductionistic. People born after 1990 will have the mental machinery necessary for understanding what consciousness is. But us - we're all washed up!
In response to Ustaath saying
REALLY let's get down to brass tacks and remember both Teilhard de Chardin and Sri Aurobindo (Overmind, Supermind) with very similar concepts and much older work.
La Bla responded
Oh, I'm well aware that none of these concepts are new.
For me the first exposure was the sci-fi classic (written way back in 1937) "Starmaker" by Olaf Stapledon, which I could suggest as recommended reading for everyone on this list. (It belongs to the "philosophical" branch of sci-fi, not the "space opera" branch). In this book, the narrator takes a disembodied voyage through the Cosmos (no spaceships or other technical contrivances) and encounters many types of consciousness in many different setting. One planet features flocks of bird-like creatures who have a group consciousness - as an ensemble, they exhibit intelligence, but when any individual gets separated from the flock, they are almost totally helpless, unable to do anything except to attempt to rejoin the flock.
Of course this is just warm-up for the climax of the book (OK, I'm giving it away, but the book is still very much worth reading) - a moment described as "The Supreme Moment of the Cosmos" - where, our disembodied narrator (able, without the burden of a physical body to travel in both space and time) witnesses the awakening of the cosmic mind - all of the stars and intelligences in the Universe, connected, becoming aware - forming a cosmic mind which is able to do what none of us could achieve as individuals - direct contact with the Star Maker (aka GOD). In Stapledon's picture, only the Cosmic Mind has the intelligence and power to do this. But, seeing God face to face, the Cosmic Mind realizes that God doesn't care - like a child bored of a plaything - the Star Maker is utterly unimpressed with the Cosmic Mind, and is already making plans for his next creation, for which this present reality is merely a warm-up...
Anhyow - a little bit of a tangent there, but a really great and influential book (Arthur C Clarke read it when he was young, and he said it changed his life) - anybody with even a passing interest in sci-fi should really read it.
In the Stapledonian view, the Cosmic Mind and the Star Maker (God) were two distinct entities. In the LaBlasian view, they are one and the same... to me, if God is anything at all, God IS the mind of the cosmos.
But Stapledon, interestingly, places God OUTSIDE the cosmos. Well, I guess if he MADE the cosmos, he must sit outside of it. But I think he IS the cosmos...
And - yes - none of these ideas are new. You could say Spinoza had leanings in this direction... All of this has been discussed before, many times, but it's still valid for us to speculate here on the CCC list. We are bringing a unique blend of perspectives and backgrounds to these questions. We've had our own mystical experiences and our own glimpses of "Higher Consciousness". And I don't think any of us are presumptuous enough to believe that we have answers, or even much hope of ever finding them. We are just exploring for the pure joy of exploration.
Well, the big question for me - and one that I haven't really seen anybody address here - is the question of whether consciousness is an "emergent phenomenon" or whether it is of a completely different nature.
(And now we're getting into philosophy... Mind/body duality and all of that.) But basically, all of this World Mind stuff rests on the idea that consciousness is a property which will arise when you have a complicated enough network of interacting parts - whether they be neurons, computer chips, human beings, etc... the idea is that if you just get ENOUGH of them, with enough interconnections, the system will just somehow spontaneously "wake up" and become aware of itself and become a sentient being. This downplays the messy, unscientific notion of a "soul" or "spirit", something other than the pure physics of the network. If this view is correct, then it seems pretty obvious that consciousness should be popping up all over the place - it has plenty of opportunities to do so!
As much as I believe in Darwinian evolution, am basically Anti-Christian and don't want to see "Intelligent Design" taught in the schools, I also have a hard time with this strict materialist reductionist view which considers Mind/Consciousness to be merely an emergent phenomenon of a sufficiently complex network. To me, this view just fails to explain a lot of the mystery and magic of what it means to be alive, to be able to perceive and observe and have INTENTION, WILL, etc. Schopenhauer suggested that the world is not made of matter it is made of pure WILL.
I think there's something to that...
La Bla then added
here's an excerpt from an interview with one of my favorite avant-garde musicians, the great drummer Charles Hayward. Taken from this website.
Q: People need to categorize to make sense of the world, otherwise we feel that we're lost and there's no purpose.
A: We need to give matter more of an ability to manifest the mind. Your brain is made of matter. My drum kit is made of matter. So where does mind stop? The mind doesn't stop. The mind is less nimble, less able to jump from one place to another when it's a drum. But it's more able to manifest drum-ness than a piece of unshaped wood. So when one guy is carving it with love and care, he's given consciousness to material form. That's what we do.
Our obligation is to be consciousness, the whole of matter and to give some of it shape. That's why we need to give things shape. So when we break a window, it's not just an act of vandalism, it's an act of breaking mind. We're breaking form and shape. Destruction of anything is always a bad idea. All these guys who are anti-globalization, I'm all behind them except when they start smashing windows and breaking form. They're not respecting what they are, which is the same as everything else, which is matter.
I'm just completely free associating here but I also wanted to say that this act of everything going in and out of existence 30 million times a second or whatever is an act of will to come back in again. Every time we are alive, it's an act of our will to keep moving forward. Matter actually has a will to stay here. It's going into non-existence and coming back in- it's a constant re-affirmation of life.
The cosmos is expanding and yet it's spaced together. The personality which is you, Jason, is intact. The cosmos is expanding and yet I am still me. My wife and kids will still be in the same place on the other side of the Atlantic. This is love. The entire cosmos loves every other point in the cosmos to the point where even though it's being torn apart, we are still together, intact.
La Bla wrote
in an earlier posting I talked about the novel "Star Maker" here's a little quotation from the text. Bear in mind that this was written in 1937!
- Olaf Stapledon, "Star Maker"
La Bla wrote:
Ustaath responded
Thank you. I will be reading that soon, thanks to you, also his "First and Last Man". I understand that some of H.G. Wells' writings also has visionary elements.
La Bla wrote
Ustaath responded
My feeling is just the obverse - Phenomena is Emergent Consciousness.
I think everything, all the Taoism's "10,000 Things" comes out of base/foundation consciousness, Void and Clear Light, spiraling inward upon itself, recursively generating internal entities which then act as a community. "Eventually" members of the community "forget" their origins and imagine that the other entities are independent.
So-called matter is a form of entity and consciousness. Conscious entities collaborate and form new structures, eventually new entities, in doing so. The cycle repeats itself eternally.
Mind is a form of consciousness but consciousness need not be Mind.
Incarnated entity is a collaboration between matter entities and non-matter consciousness entities. It is all still consciousness evolving new forms.
The Global Brain or Gaian Mind that is currently evolving is not a new consciousness but a transformation of existing consciousness. I think that a Gaian consciousness has existed throughout the span of this planet's existence but we might be seeing the emergence of a variant of self-awareness and even a kind of ego body; an ability to decide and choose which I think did not exist before.
La Bla wrote
Bruce G wrote
That's true! I am one of those people, and Dennett annoys the hell out of me!
I read his "Consciousness Explained" a few years ago. The only conclusion I could reach after reading it is that Dennett is actually some kind of zombie robot, he is unqualified to write about Consciousness because he doesn't seem to have any direct experience of SUBJECTIVITY - QUALIA - the INEFFABLE - the mystic/divine aspects of the soul/spirit etc.
I don't think Dennett experiences consciousness the way I do, or at least he's not willing to admit it, trying to wrap everything up in his tidy, mechanistic, reductionist explanations. There is NOTHING in neurobiology that can ever explain why only I get to have the subjective experience of being ME, I have a certain privileged position in MY universe, which is the one that *I* experience...
Would love to see Dennett's position after some heavy mystical experiences. Wonder if he'd stick to his bio-mechanical guns or if he'd be forced to admit that there's something MORE going on.
Ustaath wrote
One of the odd things about "reductionism" seems to be that they truly do not reduce to the primary fact, the primary experience that I know is true - that I am Conscious, I Am. Everything else I "know" is a guess. Neurons, brains, flesh, these are all myths told to me by other (what I presume are) separate entities and authority figures. The only thing I know for certain is that I AM. I am not even really sure there is an "outside". Or that Dennett exists, or that the whole myth body of science is what it seems to be.
That is why I think panpsychism and the Tao, David Bohm's undivided wholeness, comprise the best path for me to walk at this time.
Isn't it clear that consciousness is FOUNDATION not a derived element?
La Bla reponds
Ustaath wrote
Well said!
I like your concept of everything being "myths". I've been saying for a while, along the same lines, that everything is just a "story". Like, the other day, I was talking to someone who said that everything is made of atoms, and I asked - how do you know this? Have you ever experienced any of these atoms? Or were you just told about it? "The world is made of atoms and molecules" is just a story. Now, it's a damn good story, and we shouldn't stop telling it. But, coming from my own subjective experience of the world (which I have no choice but to regard as THE MOST FUNDAMENTAL THING) it's just a story...
And I'm happy to be walking along that same path, in such excellent company.
Well that would depend on who you ask! If you ask me, the answer is OF COURSE. But if you ask Dennett, he'll tell you a whole different story. Which is why I have to conclude that Dennett and other "radical materialist" philospers are just a different species than myself - kind of like the way I feel about Republicans!
Ustaath added
I have a feeling that the perceived linearity of time flow is the result of tens of thousands of years of storytelling. I think storytelling is one of the few things that may distinguish us cognitively from other sentients. I have a feeling that without narrative structure we would perceive process, and construct time, completely differently. I think storytelling may be KEY to understanding how we built this whole samsara machine and why it is still important yet insubstantial.
Spirituality as it evolves from this point forward may, by self-referentially and intentionally spinning its web as a myth structure, avoid the traps of dogmatism and lack of doubt that seems to have infected the religions of the planet.
Devorah first turned me on to Joseph Campbell and I think that his attempts to build a Myth of Myths is one of the keys to future spirituality and New Culture.
Bruce G writes
Ok, enough with the philosophizing about consciousness - I'd like to ask you all a really interesting question, but I should warn you that in my experience a lot of people would prefer to avoid this completely, because it's deeply revealing about them. Here goes:
Let's say that tomorrow the computer scientists announced that they had cracked the mystery of consciounsess, and they published instructions on how to create a conscious mind from off the shelf parts at Radio Shack. Just hook up the transistors this way, and you'd get a machine that experienced fear at the thought of being shut off! A machine that experienced anxiety during brownouts! And let's say that you were convinced (reluctantly, no doubt) that they were right.
How would you feel about this turn of events? Happy? Sad? Disappointed? Angry? Let down? C'mon, let's be honest now....
Aurora responds
And so many of us play with the notion of extinguishing that duality and abandoning consciousness for comunnion with Other.)
How about extinguishing the other and having full communion with the
"I"? I suspect this would feel the same as abandoning the "I"
How would you feel about this turn of events? Happy? Sad? Disappointed? Angry? Let down? C'mon, let's be honest now..
In Dennet's defense, there was some joke I read , where two zen
masters were meditating and one turns to the other one, points and
says "They call that a 'tree' "
HA HA HA HA!
all these things are postulations in words. The proof is in the
pudding kids. If you meditated enough, is it possible you could do
neat universal consciousness tricks like levitate and astral project,
and you can throw some alchemy in there too! This would seem like
things that would come less out of feeling a separation and a self,
and more out of recognizing that if you really are part of some giant
biomachine which includes "air", you can change your perspective into
becoming air etc, and that maybe what he is saying is worth a second
thought, dear masters of the universe.
My dad was explaining that he thought this is how jesus walked on
water, through ego death, rearranging his molecules to be lighter than
water by becoming mostly air.
Maybe the experience of being without a body has the power to hold
space and matter in the biomachine, just in a different way that human
perception has not grown to accomodate, but that being without a body
is just as subjective as being with a body, and "souls" who have died
are suffering from ego problems, and that they aren't looking 'within'
just the same as if they had a body? Like they haven't moved on so to
speak... to the awareness that they are all of the biomachine...
that it takes more than just dying and being born to accept all of oneself...
If we are all really one biological machine, then death of the
chocolate dragon pudding conscious computer plant sea monkey (however
interpreted as an emotional boon or loss) is, like birth, neither good
nor bad. That was the mayan's greeting to one another "I am another
you" Can you imagine saying that to everyone all day long? woah...
that is n.l.p. mind altering.
Although "I" would certianly think "someone" was a big fat dickhead
if "they" tried to kill "me" and "I" would have brownout anxiety, the
part of "me" that invented "me"
would have no problems whatsoever at "my" loss, leaving space for the
endless permutations of change we all witness in our "subjectivity".
There is this other concept of "co creation" which purports that by
using language to assert that you already are the subjective
experience of something then your "external" reality is forced to meet
the new paradigm of thought that you have created. For instance
saying things like "I have monetary abundance" and reveling in the
emotional intention of that you are creating, the monetary abundance
would show up, but you wouldn't be surprised by it because you already
created the state within yourself. The buddah says "we are our
thoughts, with our thoughts we make the world"
Would you believe me if I told you that one day I woke up and lived a
day in the life of a different body, still with the feeling of being
"me", a beautiful african woman in a different place and time, and
the next day I woke up and resumed life in the body you now know as
"me" caucasian Aurora in the chicago place and time? And that no
changes in my subjectivity took place?
Ustaath responds
There's no doubt in my mind that human beings will soon be working with a host of intelligences that would not by current standards be considered human.
But the whole history of life and consciousness on this planet has been a history of the transformation of one form of nucleic acid based life to some other form of nucleic acid based life. So I would suspect that the new minds of the coming decades and centuries, at least those we encounter in this solar system, will be nucleic acid based. I suspect spores carrying basic DNA have been migrating around the solar system for millions of years, and anything we encounter around Sol will be some form of life that is based on carbon and the basic principles that we recognize here.
Likewise what arises in the near future will be a derivation or evolution of nucleic acid based life. Unless Radio Shack starts selling electronics based on organic chemistry, so-called wetware, I don't see new intelligence forming out of Radio Shack components.
So I think it is more plausible that the new minds of the new millenium will be developed based on nucleic acid-based biological mutations and enhancements. I believe it is likely that humans, plants and other animals will be linked by our machines, new organic chemistry, and technology into new biological superorganisms, erotically intermeshed living soup, with new senses and cognitive abilities, and while human beings may be the most prominent in those organisms we may barely recognize ourselves at that point.
Obviously machines will play a huge role but I still see machines as McKenna calls them "epigenetic excretions" of the human and post-human species, not independent entities. It's just the shell of the oyster, or the hive of the termite. It's not the Thing. DNA is it. We just live to propagate it. Why would DNA be interested in propagating some other potentially competitive replication vehicle?
Al-x responds
This question assumes that the cantankerous collection of cogs and circuits
has a consciousness that is recognizable as similar or the same as ours just
because it fears being turned off. I disagree; this characteristic does not
mean that its consciousness is the same as ours. A rabbit runs from a wolf
and is anxious when it hears the wolf howl but I do not see a consciousness
that is the same as mine (excepting for the possibility that all are the
same through the oneness of the universe, but I shall ignore this for now).
A believable and convincing emotional survival behavior does not suggest to
me that an awareness or consciousness is the same as mine. How could it be?
There is little doubt that its experience of the world would be extremely
different than mine. After all, we have extremely different methods of
interacting with the reality around us. It with wires circuits and me with
squishy liquid-filled bits. For the sake of this argument I am assuming that
consciousness is an emergent property of a sufficiently complex system. At
any rate, I think this question (besides being an introspective exercise)is
unanswerable without first answering the following:
What is consciousness? Can anyone give a concise definition that isn't
"Consciousness is the state of being that is not asleep."? If we can agree
on some kind of definition then we may be able to discuss this question
rigorously. (forgive me if this as already been discussed ad nauseum)
In answer to the question:
I, for one, can't wait to talk to a box that thinks it's alive. I'm
interested to see what insights its unique perspective might have in to the
experience of being. Will it understand jokes? If it understands them, will
it laugh?
Consider this:
If a simulation is sufficiently detailed as to be indistinguishable from
reality is it reality? How could you tell?
Brian responds
i assume when you say 'understand consciousness in some kind of 'rational' or 'scientific'way' your presuming in that statement that that rational or scientific understanding will also be complete in it's understanding?
i imagine that will happen about as soon as we discover a unified theory of everything.
and i'm skeptical that will ever happen.
but i wonder how complete a theory can be when it is handed, pre-fabricated, from one person to the next.
again i'm skeptical that can ever happen, either.
but which do i prefer? it would be exciting to see a mind that could puzzle out and then model precisely human consciousness. however, i am not too excited about the prospect of even *more* sentient beings who consider their thoughts worth espousing and their ideas worth fighting for and their thrill seeking meaningful enough to make the lines even longer than they are now at six flags.
so, yeah, i prefer b.
Bruce G. wrote
Wow, I just had an amazing experience - I saw the eye doctor this afternoon, and he's trying out different lenses, asking me which ones I prefer...all of a sudden, out of the blue, he says:
Mr. Gould, there are two possibilities:
a. sometime in the 21st century we're going to understand consciousness in some kind of "rational", "scientific" way.
b. we're not
Now which do you prefer, a or b? That's all I need to know..a? or b?
La Bla responds
Well, I think "A" would be really, really interesting and if it were true, I'd want to know all about this theory. I'm sure it would be quite enlightening, and I wouldn't shy away from this knowledge.
But I also believe that "A" is impossible, if we were placing bets I'd have to put my money on "B". Not that I *prefer* it, just that that's how I believe things are.
I just discovered the term "New Mysterian" (found it in Wikipedia) which pretty much describes my point of view on this...
Shaman responds
The answer is, and will always be 'b.'
Consciousness lies outside the realm, or paradigm of the ‘rational.’ It is not that the rational does not exist, or it is not useful, it is simply that other modes of experiencing or realization exist. It is much the same as multiplication tables. They exist, and are useful at a certain level of experience or way of perceiving, but once you have graduate to the world of calculus and differential equations, they no longer carry the same meaning.
In order to ‘understand,’ (and this word is used only to assist in conveying a certain idea) consciousness, one needs to move from the world of duality and linearity, to a paradigm of nonlinearity and nonduality. This is a difficult leap because it truly causes the underpinnings of what we, or more rightly stated, our egos, believe is true to collapse—and the ego does not want to see that happen.
To ask, “How would you feel if Radio Shack parts could be put together to create a being that feels fear at the termination of it’s existence?” is asking your ego how it would feel. An answer is a projection of your feelings about you in a similar situation, and discussion of the answer only fuels the ego’s need for fulfillment and supports its identity. All thought experiments such as this serve a similar purpose to the ego, which lives and thrives by gathering, sorting, and categorizing information. The more it has, the more it is, and the less likely it is of not being—so it believes. The ego is part of the world of duality, and by necessity, must dissolve in order for the experience of the world of nonduality, the realm of consciousness which is not rational, to be experienced.
Many spiritual teachings state that at the moment of death, in order to pass through the ‘barrier,’ one must hold firm in the believe that, “I cannot die, death is only an illusion.” It is this ‘I’ that must be dissolved.
Thought experiments, which like multiplication tables are useful at some point in everyone’s evolution, can become a hindrance because they feed the ego’s need for information and activity. Rather than thought experiments, it is useful to begin seeking experiences that open up ones awareness (a function or attribute of consciousness) to the nonlinear, nondual realm.
Find a place where you are comfortable, preferably outside. It does not have to be quiet or secluded, just a place where you feel safe and peaceful. Gaze forward and then begin to allow your awareness to encompass more and more of your peripheral vision. Keep allowing your awareness to expand until you begin getting a greater and greater sense of everything around you. Observe without judgment or comment. As your awareness expands you will begin to achieve a sense of wonder that everything simply is, and is complete and whole in and of itself. This sensation cannot be explained by logic, nor described in rational terms. This is an entry into the realm of consciousness, beyond duality.
Ustaath responded
I had a similar conversation as an undergraduate at U of W with a philosophy professor. A very long time ago.
The idea of the ineffable is key to Eastern and Western mysticism. The idea that there are important aspects of existence that can not be reduced to symbol manipulation is fundamental to a basic ontological mystical apprehension. Tao is not Tao, labels can only take you so far. Rationalism requires symbol manipulation.
So, in the sense that consciousness is a superset of the labelable, world of Tao's 10,000 Things, it cannot be "understood" in a rational/scientific/dualistic fashion. Science only leads so far before new faculties and methods must be embraced. Rationalism is a useful tool in the world of dualistic consciousness and monkeys playing games and building stuff. Seeing more the Monkey Play-Eat-Fuck-Fight-Make Money-Die plane of existence you need to fall back on other vision. This is not transcendentalism, I just don't think we see very far with the three-dimensional flesh eyes.
Bob La Bla wrote:
There was a suggestion a few weeks ago - I don't recall who posted this originally - that the Web could function as an enormous "brain". I've been thinking about this idea ever since reading that article, and I wish to explore this idea further.
On the surface, it's a tempting analogy - each of the billions of web-pages in the world acting as a neuron, with links to other neurons.... if there are enough of these sites, and enough links, could the complexity become great enough to support sentient consciousness?
Categories: psychedelic, co-intelligence
Well, although it's a cute idea, I think that it is fundamentally flawed. It's true that web pages link to each other, much like neurons form synapses, but neurons are active in a way that web pages are not - there are no "neurotransmitters" on the web, there is no way that one web page can (independent of human action) send a message to another web page - the links are all passive. They are there for
navigation, not transmission. And, even though it is only a single cell, a neuron is immeasureably more complex than even the most complex web page, or even the most complex computer for that matter. There is also the possibility (a pet theory of mine), that since neurons are so small, quantum effects might come into play - see for example Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind, where he talks about
microtubules - or see this wikipedia page (yes, they say that the theory is controversial, but I still believe that something akin to Penrose's microtubule theory is correct, even if not in its current form).
Now, computers and web pages act completely according to deterministic logic and classical physics - there is simply no room for quantum effects such as coherent states to come into play.
This led me to further thoughts - if we are going to look at large, interacting networks as models for the brain, how about human society? I mean, there are 6 billion of us, we all have various types of relationships with other human beings, and we are continuously passing messages to each other. Is it possible that we are like neurons in a world brain? And if this were true, how would we know?
Suppose, for a moment, that an individual neuron were had some sort of rudimentary unicellular consciousness (how can we know that it doesn't?). Now, the neuron *probably* would not understand that it is in fact part of a larger conscious structure, the human brain. And in fact, that larger consciousness could make decisions - say, to go and get drunk - which are known to kill brain cells - so the neuron is participating in a process which would lead to its own destruction.
This to me is somewhat tantalizing - suppose that we as humans are "neurons" in a larger consciousness - something that might exist at the level of "tribe", "corporation", "nation", "race" or even humanity as a whole - would we be aware of this, any more than a single neuron in our brain is able to "understand" that is part of something larger? And, could this larger thing, acting in ITS interest, do things that are not in our own, personal human interest? Suppose, for example, that we are to consider a nation as a conscious entity - it could decide to start a war, which would result in the destruction of many individuals - the things that are in the interests of the larger entitity are not necessarily in the best interests of its constituent parts. They are operating on different levels, just like our brain deciding to drink alcohol...
And yet another question - suppose that consciousness does inhere completely in the brain (I am not convinced that this is so) - and we had a "brain in a jar" on life-support. Now, this brain could be conscious, thinking thoughts, etc, but without any sensory organs or motor apparatus, it could not communicate with the outside world.
From the outside, a "dead" brain and a conscious brain would look the same. We are only able to recognize consciousness if it is able to communicate, to produce effects in the world. So, even if the Web were to become conscious (which I highly doubt), how would we recognize this consciousness? What would function as its eyes, its mouth? And, if in fact larger groups of humans (corporations, nations), or even the Earth itself - were to be considered as supporting consciousness - what would be its senses, and its modes of action and expression?
Summary
1) How would you recognize a conscious being which lacks any input/output facilities?
2) If individual neurons were conscious, would they understand that they are part of a larger consciousness? What if humans are in fact neurons in the World Brain?
3) Is it really enough to put a big enough neural network together and get consciousness? Does consciousness arise from any sufficiently complex structure which has enough connections? Or is there something "extra" (i.e. a "soul") involved? And if so, what is the nature of this "something extra" ?
What do you think?
Ustaath responded:
I posted the Kevin Kelly piece and the questions you raise are just too big to explore without a day or two of thought. I will print your email and think on it the rest of the week.
Please consider looming possibility of direct neural interfaces for electronic networks and how this might alter your exploration. Also the Kelly piece does include living human beings as the "neurons."
Look at the symbiosis and endosymbiosis work of Margulis, Lovelock, and others. Organisms tend to accrete on the building blocks of previous generations of organisms. A global brain would not need literal neurons because we already have them. It would be a really different kind of organism just as we are really different from unicellular organism in a really profound way. We don't need our "own" scale mitochondria, they exist at the single cell level that is still fundamentally intact within us.
Also, what happens when, in an attempt to understand the Earth's ecology/ environment/ energy flows, more and more sources of data : meteorological, oceanic, covering all aspects of Earth's processes - come online and are hooked into the global net. Doesn't this begin to look like an early sympathetic nervous system with a sense of touch (thermometric devices), vision (global satellites, networked cams, microcams on the forest floor), sound (seismometers, oceanic microphones), smell (atmospheric sensors that measure pollen, pollutants, etc.).
I feel a very tangible sense that this is what is happening; the entire planet developing a nervous system not just the human race.
The next thing would be motor skills.
Then Al X wrote:
Would it even be possible for the "World Brain" to communicate with us in a significant or meaningful manner? Can you speak to your individual neurons in a meaningful way without using a Q-tip? Would it even want to speak to us?
Let's say the world brain has some kind a/v system to interact with us, what would it have to say to us that we could understand? It seems that it might operate on level of understanding so much grander, deeper, and different to our own that talking to it would be meaningless. If you were to communicate with an individual neuron in your brain you could only do so in the language of basic stimulus and neurotransmitters, etc. but to what end? Its (the individual neuron's consciousness is so different from that of the whole (your waking life) that there is no possibility for meaningful conversation. As a conscious individual what would be the point of talking to one of your own neurons?
The same might be true of a "World Brain." A planetary consciousness may be about as interested in individual humans as I am in individual neurons when I feed myself whiskey.
I hope this is not the case, but it is a reasonable conclusion of the analogy.
To which La Bla responded:
Yeah, that's exactly how I feel about it....
Just to make my own position clear:
I personally do NOT believe that in order to have consciusness, it is enough to just have a large network of interconnected elements. I do not believe that machines will ever reach anything we could call sentience. I can't really back this up, it is just my own quasi-mystical belief that in fact there IS something "extra" required, which could be labeled with that troublesome word "soul" - I don't know exactly what it is, but I refuse to believe that consciousness is simply an epiphenomenon, something that arises in sufficiently complex network-like structures. In fact I believe that consciousness is more primordial than matter, althought I have a hard time backing this up. Understanding it fully will, I believe, require new insights into the nature of space and time, subject/object, the
role of the "observer" in quantum theory.... It's somewhat radical but I believe that the mental world gives rise to the physical world, not vice-versa...
To which Ustaath responded:
I think that everything is consciousness, but there is an infinite sea of conscious manifestation, and consciousness of one kind might not easily translate to another form of consciousness. That is, some forms of consciousness may be heavily orthogonal and beings might not recognize each other as conscious or be able to communicate or intuit each others existence.
A world overmind would probably have no direct way of communicating to its "cells". We might have to infer the content of such a consciousness, or perhaps apprehend it in altered states of consciousness in which we temporarily abandon our individual consciousness.
Ustaath wrote:
A bit more to chew on:
The cellular slime mold spends most of its life cycle as individual amoeba-like cells but when environmental stress occurs, the individual cells link up to form a superorganism called the pseudoplasmodium that is made up of more than 100,000 individual cells. The pseudoplasmodium is capable of movement and also reproduction. During reproduction the slime mold can use air currents to propagate itself.
Life on Earth from space looks nothing more than a kind of mold or lichen covering. Suppose all life is really nothing more than a kind of slime mold, in which individual species for the most part do their own thing, but under environmental stress begin to work as part of a superorganism. It might under these circumstances gain the ability to reproduce, move and otherwise spread the seed.
Of course you know where I am going with this. Space migration is a Gaian process, not really human at all. We're just the limbs/hands that build starships and orbital elevators. The rest of the DNA of the planet tags along for the ride. That's the important part.
Robert La Bla wrote:
> This to me is somewhat tantalizing - suppose that we as humans are
> "neurons" in a larger consciousness - something that might exist at
> the level of "tribe", "corporation", "nation", "race" or even humanity
> as a whole - would we be aware of this, any more than a single neuron
> in our brain is able to "understand" that is part of something larger?
> And, could this larger thing, acting in ITS interest, do things that
> are not in our own, personal human interest?
To which Ustaath responded:
I don't think superindividuals existed prior to the 21st century. I don't think they exist yet in 2005, except in nascent state. I don't think the speed of connections and scope of connectiveness prior to 2000 were sufficient to allow social organisms to act as individuals.
When they develop the individual neurons/nodes will be human beings only linked and lubricated by machines. I do not consider this a machine intelligence, just a biological superorganism united by phenotypical artificial structures, machines. Machines are just phenotype.
Again I think the topscale entity is Gaia not the human species itself.
When superindividuals develop, how will we know? I suggest a few signs:
- Things will start happening on the planet that appear purposive or directed, but nobody can really explain why it is happening
- We may feel that we are being manipulated in some direction, but be unable to explain by what or whom. theories will abound about political conspiracies, aliens, etc. We will know that we don't quite get what is going on, a sense of some secret plan. We may suffer periods of time loss or unconsciousness, when we were not aware of what we were doing or why.
- Apparently unconnected events around the planet will turn out to be connected and related, if we take the time to look and understand.
- "Amazing coincidences" will occur with greater frequency. "Magic" will become part of our world. We may personify these inexplicable forces in our world using old myths such as angels, aliens, faeries, etc. New religions may emerge to lubricate the ability of people to understand these new forces in their world.
- Spontaneous and mass emergence of empathy or telepathy.
- Some areas of society will prosper, without apparent reason. Other areas will shrivel and die (atrophy), again without easy explanation.
- It will become harder to understand anything about human society. Money, politics, memes of all kinds will be become more opaque and multi-layered. We will think we understand, only to realize we only saw one layer.
- Human society will begin to specialize into distinct "organs" which fulfill needed tasks. We probably won't see it happening unless we are looking.
- Don't be surprised if interspecies symbiosis begins to occur. Again without explanation. Strange developments in the plant and animal world will be noticed and will not be explained.
- The superindividual may have a radically different time scale of consciousness, either "thinking" much faster or much slower, or a combination of both, than we do. So events on that scale may emerge either too quickly or slowly for observers to notice.
- Machines will behave unpredictably. Machines as a group may act or misbehave in coordination and at a distance.
- Most people won't give a crap. They will continue to go to school, work, breed, recreate and die without having a clue that it wasn't all about them all along. Just like now.
A couple more thoughts:
The mere act of reflection on whether this superorganism exists, and study of its behavior, may be a specialized function of self-awareness on the part of the superorganism. People who question whether the superorganism exists may be in a sense a specialized lobe of its new brain.
Also, if the superindividual is about to be birthed, its first actions may be bumbling, nonsensical, like an infant's first days. It may take some time to find its bearing. This may manifest as strange forms of social chaos and tumult.
Bruce wrote:
Actually, this anthropologist Gregory Bateson wrote about global minds and so forth back in the 60's and 70's - he may have been the first "serious" scientist who brought the issue up. Ahhh, how quickly the younger generation forgets..... :)
Quote from this website:
Gregory Bateson [1904 - 1980] - Anthropologist, Social Scientist, Cyberneticist - known as Gregory - was one of the most important social scientists of this century. Strongly opposing those scientists who attempted to 'reduce' everything to mere matter, he was intent upon the task of re-introducing 'Mind' back into the scientific equations - writing two famous books Steps to an Ecology of Mind, and Mind & Nature as part of this task. From his point of view Mind is a constituent part of 'material reality ' and it is thus nonsensical to try to split mind from matter. Before being championed by the counter-culture of the 1960's Bateson had been busy in the 20's and 30's as an anthropologist in Bali, and in helping to found the science of cybernetics among many other things. Adopted by many thinkers in the anti-psychiatry movement because he provided a model and a new epistemology for developing a novel understanding of human madness, and also for his invention of the theory of the double bind.
To which Ustaath responded:
REALLY let's get down to brass tacks and remember both Teilhard de Chardin and Sri Aurobindo (Overmind, Supermind) with very similar concepts and much older work.
Bruce G then wrote:
Yeti raises some interesting questions.
I think there IS something worthwhile in the idea of a "global mind":
I'm reading A Different Universe - Reinventing Physics From the Bottom Down by Robert Laughlin.
The main point of the book is that reductionism is far less effective in physics than most people imagine - Laughlin claims that physicists are unable to predict even the simplest properties of matter from "basic principles", and when matter get complex enough, entirely new and unexpected properties arise. (I'm inclined to listen to him, since he has a Nobel Prize and I don't :) ) When you get zillions of atoms all interacting, things happen that can't be explained just from understanding the properties of a single atom.
So it might be entirely possible that a computer network, for example, might start exhibiting unexpected properties when it gets large and complex enough. How this might manifest in the outside world is a good question....
To which Ustaath responded:
The real point should be, these aren't networks of computers. They are networks of human beings, living minds, connected in ways as never before. We're not talking about machines becoming sentient; but sentient and biological beings initiating a cascade of awareness and cognition due to their heavy interconnectedness, grounded in known and existing awareness.
BruceG. wrote
This is what I think about understanding consciousness:
No one born before 1990 will ever understand consciousness, because (no matter how much we deny it!) we're hopelessly mired in the idea of reductionism. We want to understand something as a function of the properties of its parts. It's the stuff we were taught as kids, and our entire mental apparatus is built around it. Struggle as we might this will always be what "undertanding" means for us.
As for the folks born after 1990 - they're going to learn the physics that's being developed now, which is non-reductionistic. People born after 1990 will have the mental machinery necessary for understanding what consciousness is. But us - we're all washed up!
In response to Ustaath saying
REALLY let's get down to brass tacks and remember both Teilhard de Chardin and Sri Aurobindo (Overmind, Supermind) with very similar concepts and much older work.
La Bla responded
Oh, I'm well aware that none of these concepts are new.
For me the first exposure was the sci-fi classic (written way back in 1937) "Starmaker" by Olaf Stapledon, which I could suggest as recommended reading for everyone on this list. (It belongs to the "philosophical" branch of sci-fi, not the "space opera" branch). In this book, the narrator takes a disembodied voyage through the Cosmos (no spaceships or other technical contrivances) and encounters many types of consciousness in many different setting. One planet features flocks of bird-like creatures who have a group consciousness - as an ensemble, they exhibit intelligence, but when any individual gets separated from the flock, they are almost totally helpless, unable to do anything except to attempt to rejoin the flock.
Of course this is just warm-up for the climax of the book (OK, I'm giving it away, but the book is still very much worth reading) - a moment described as "The Supreme Moment of the Cosmos" - where, our disembodied narrator (able, without the burden of a physical body to travel in both space and time) witnesses the awakening of the cosmic mind - all of the stars and intelligences in the Universe, connected, becoming aware - forming a cosmic mind which is able to do what none of us could achieve as individuals - direct contact with the Star Maker (aka GOD). In Stapledon's picture, only the Cosmic Mind has the intelligence and power to do this. But, seeing God face to face, the Cosmic Mind realizes that God doesn't care - like a child bored of a plaything - the Star Maker is utterly unimpressed with the Cosmic Mind, and is already making plans for his next creation, for which this present reality is merely a warm-up...
Anhyow - a little bit of a tangent there, but a really great and influential book (Arthur C Clarke read it when he was young, and he said it changed his life) - anybody with even a passing interest in sci-fi should really read it.
In the Stapledonian view, the Cosmic Mind and the Star Maker (God) were two distinct entities. In the LaBlasian view, they are one and the same... to me, if God is anything at all, God IS the mind of the cosmos.
But Stapledon, interestingly, places God OUTSIDE the cosmos. Well, I guess if he MADE the cosmos, he must sit outside of it. But I think he IS the cosmos...
And - yes - none of these ideas are new. You could say Spinoza had leanings in this direction... All of this has been discussed before, many times, but it's still valid for us to speculate here on the CCC list. We are bringing a unique blend of perspectives and backgrounds to these questions. We've had our own mystical experiences and our own glimpses of "Higher Consciousness". And I don't think any of us are presumptuous enough to believe that we have answers, or even much hope of ever finding them. We are just exploring for the pure joy of exploration.
Well, the big question for me - and one that I haven't really seen anybody address here - is the question of whether consciousness is an "emergent phenomenon" or whether it is of a completely different nature.
(And now we're getting into philosophy... Mind/body duality and all of that.) But basically, all of this World Mind stuff rests on the idea that consciousness is a property which will arise when you have a complicated enough network of interacting parts - whether they be neurons, computer chips, human beings, etc... the idea is that if you just get ENOUGH of them, with enough interconnections, the system will just somehow spontaneously "wake up" and become aware of itself and become a sentient being. This downplays the messy, unscientific notion of a "soul" or "spirit", something other than the pure physics of the network. If this view is correct, then it seems pretty obvious that consciousness should be popping up all over the place - it has plenty of opportunities to do so!
As much as I believe in Darwinian evolution, am basically Anti-Christian and don't want to see "Intelligent Design" taught in the schools, I also have a hard time with this strict materialist reductionist view which considers Mind/Consciousness to be merely an emergent phenomenon of a sufficiently complex network. To me, this view just fails to explain a lot of the mystery and magic of what it means to be alive, to be able to perceive and observe and have INTENTION, WILL, etc. Schopenhauer suggested that the world is not made of matter it is made of pure WILL.
I think there's something to that...
La Bla then added
here's an excerpt from an interview with one of my favorite avant-garde musicians, the great drummer Charles Hayward. Taken from this website.
Q: People need to categorize to make sense of the world, otherwise we feel that we're lost and there's no purpose.
A: We need to give matter more of an ability to manifest the mind. Your brain is made of matter. My drum kit is made of matter. So where does mind stop? The mind doesn't stop. The mind is less nimble, less able to jump from one place to another when it's a drum. But it's more able to manifest drum-ness than a piece of unshaped wood. So when one guy is carving it with love and care, he's given consciousness to material form. That's what we do.
Our obligation is to be consciousness, the whole of matter and to give some of it shape. That's why we need to give things shape. So when we break a window, it's not just an act of vandalism, it's an act of breaking mind. We're breaking form and shape. Destruction of anything is always a bad idea. All these guys who are anti-globalization, I'm all behind them except when they start smashing windows and breaking form. They're not respecting what they are, which is the same as everything else, which is matter.
I'm just completely free associating here but I also wanted to say that this act of everything going in and out of existence 30 million times a second or whatever is an act of will to come back in again. Every time we are alive, it's an act of our will to keep moving forward. Matter actually has a will to stay here. It's going into non-existence and coming back in- it's a constant re-affirmation of life.
The cosmos is expanding and yet it's spaced together. The personality which is you, Jason, is intact. The cosmos is expanding and yet I am still me. My wife and kids will still be in the same place on the other side of the Atlantic. This is love. The entire cosmos loves every other point in the cosmos to the point where even though it's being torn apart, we are still together, intact.
La Bla wrote
in an earlier posting I talked about the novel "Star Maker" here's a little quotation from the text. Bear in mind that this was written in 1937!
Two lights for guidance. The first, our little glowing atom of community, with all that it signifies. The second, the cold light of the stars, symbol of the hypercosmic reality, with its crystal ecstasy. Strange that in this light, in which even the dearest love is frostily asserted, and even the possible defeat of our half-waking world is contemplated without remission of praise, the human crisis does not lose but gains significance. Strange, that it seems more, not less, urgent to play some part in this struggle, this brief effort of animacules striving to win for their race some increase of lucidity before the ultimate darkness.
- Olaf Stapledon, "Star Maker"
La Bla wrote:
For me the first exposure was the sci-fi classic (written way back in 1937) "Starmaker" by Olaf Stapledon, which I could suggest as recommended reading for everyone on this list.
Ustaath responded
Thank you. I will be reading that soon, thanks to you, also his "First and Last Man". I understand that some of H.G. Wells' writings also has visionary elements.
La Bla wrote
Well, the big question for me - and one that I haven't really seen anybody address here - is the question of whether consciousness is an "emergent phenomenon" or whether it is of a completely different nature.
Ustaath responded
My feeling is just the obverse - Phenomena is Emergent Consciousness.
I think everything, all the Taoism's "10,000 Things" comes out of base/foundation consciousness, Void and Clear Light, spiraling inward upon itself, recursively generating internal entities which then act as a community. "Eventually" members of the community "forget" their origins and imagine that the other entities are independent.
So-called matter is a form of entity and consciousness. Conscious entities collaborate and form new structures, eventually new entities, in doing so. The cycle repeats itself eternally.
Mind is a form of consciousness but consciousness need not be Mind.
Incarnated entity is a collaboration between matter entities and non-matter consciousness entities. It is all still consciousness evolving new forms.
The Global Brain or Gaian Mind that is currently evolving is not a new consciousness but a transformation of existing consciousness. I think that a Gaian consciousness has existed throughout the span of this planet's existence but we might be seeing the emergence of a variant of self-awareness and even a kind of ego body; an ability to decide and choose which I think did not exist before.
La Bla wrote
Bruce G wrote
This book is guaranteed to annoy the living hell out of all those folks who think consciousness can't possible be "merely" physical
That's true! I am one of those people, and Dennett annoys the hell out of me!
I read his "Consciousness Explained" a few years ago. The only conclusion I could reach after reading it is that Dennett is actually some kind of zombie robot, he is unqualified to write about Consciousness because he doesn't seem to have any direct experience of SUBJECTIVITY - QUALIA - the INEFFABLE - the mystic/divine aspects of the soul/spirit etc.
I don't think Dennett experiences consciousness the way I do, or at least he's not willing to admit it, trying to wrap everything up in his tidy, mechanistic, reductionist explanations. There is NOTHING in neurobiology that can ever explain why only I get to have the subjective experience of being ME, I have a certain privileged position in MY universe, which is the one that *I* experience...
Would love to see Dennett's position after some heavy mystical experiences. Wonder if he'd stick to his bio-mechanical guns or if he'd be forced to admit that there's something MORE going on.
Ustaath wrote
One of the odd things about "reductionism" seems to be that they truly do not reduce to the primary fact, the primary experience that I know is true - that I am Conscious, I Am. Everything else I "know" is a guess. Neurons, brains, flesh, these are all myths told to me by other (what I presume are) separate entities and authority figures. The only thing I know for certain is that I AM. I am not even really sure there is an "outside". Or that Dennett exists, or that the whole myth body of science is what it seems to be.
That is why I think panpsychism and the Tao, David Bohm's undivided wholeness, comprise the best path for me to walk at this time.
Isn't it clear that consciousness is FOUNDATION not a derived element?
La Bla reponds
Ustaath wrote
One of the odd things about "reductionism" seems to be that they truly do not reduce to the primary fact, the primary experience that I know is true - that I am Conscious, I Am. Everything else I "know" is a guess. Neurons, brains, flesh, these are all myths told to me by other (what I presume are) separate entities and authority figures. The only thing I know for certain is that I AM. I am not even really sure there is an "outside". Or that Dennett exists, or that the whole myth body of science is what it seems to be.
Well said!
I like your concept of everything being "myths". I've been saying for a while, along the same lines, that everything is just a "story". Like, the other day, I was talking to someone who said that everything is made of atoms, and I asked - how do you know this? Have you ever experienced any of these atoms? Or were you just told about it? "The world is made of atoms and molecules" is just a story. Now, it's a damn good story, and we shouldn't stop telling it. But, coming from my own subjective experience of the world (which I have no choice but to regard as THE MOST FUNDAMENTAL THING) it's just a story...
That is why I think panpsychism and the Tao, David Bohm's undivided wholeness, comprise the best path for me to walk at this time.
And I'm happy to be walking along that same path, in such excellent company.
Isn't it clear that consciousness is FOUNDATION not a derived element?
Well that would depend on who you ask! If you ask me, the answer is OF COURSE. But if you ask Dennett, he'll tell you a whole different story. Which is why I have to conclude that Dennett and other "radical materialist" philospers are just a different species than myself - kind of like the way I feel about Republicans!
Ustaath added
I have a feeling that the perceived linearity of time flow is the result of tens of thousands of years of storytelling. I think storytelling is one of the few things that may distinguish us cognitively from other sentients. I have a feeling that without narrative structure we would perceive process, and construct time, completely differently. I think storytelling may be KEY to understanding how we built this whole samsara machine and why it is still important yet insubstantial.
Spirituality as it evolves from this point forward may, by self-referentially and intentionally spinning its web as a myth structure, avoid the traps of dogmatism and lack of doubt that seems to have infected the religions of the planet.
Devorah first turned me on to Joseph Campbell and I think that his attempts to build a Myth of Myths is one of the keys to future spirituality and New Culture.
Bruce G writes
Ok, enough with the philosophizing about consciousness - I'd like to ask you all a really interesting question, but I should warn you that in my experience a lot of people would prefer to avoid this completely, because it's deeply revealing about them. Here goes:
Let's say that tomorrow the computer scientists announced that they had cracked the mystery of consciounsess, and they published instructions on how to create a conscious mind from off the shelf parts at Radio Shack. Just hook up the transistors this way, and you'd get a machine that experienced fear at the thought of being shut off! A machine that experienced anxiety during brownouts! And let's say that you were convinced (reluctantly, no doubt) that they were right.
How would you feel about this turn of events? Happy? Sad? Disappointed? Angry? Let down? C'mon, let's be honest now....
Aurora responds
And so many of us play with the notion of extinguishing that duality and abandoning consciousness for comunnion with Other.)
How about extinguishing the other and having full communion with the
"I"? I suspect this would feel the same as abandoning the "I"
How would you feel about this turn of events? Happy? Sad? Disappointed? Angry? Let down? C'mon, let's be honest now..
In Dennet's defense, there was some joke I read , where two zen
masters were meditating and one turns to the other one, points and
says "They call that a 'tree' "
HA HA HA HA!
all these things are postulations in words. The proof is in the
pudding kids. If you meditated enough, is it possible you could do
neat universal consciousness tricks like levitate and astral project,
and you can throw some alchemy in there too! This would seem like
things that would come less out of feeling a separation and a self,
and more out of recognizing that if you really are part of some giant
biomachine which includes "air", you can change your perspective into
becoming air etc, and that maybe what he is saying is worth a second
thought, dear masters of the universe.
My dad was explaining that he thought this is how jesus walked on
water, through ego death, rearranging his molecules to be lighter than
water by becoming mostly air.
Maybe the experience of being without a body has the power to hold
space and matter in the biomachine, just in a different way that human
perception has not grown to accomodate, but that being without a body
is just as subjective as being with a body, and "souls" who have died
are suffering from ego problems, and that they aren't looking 'within'
just the same as if they had a body? Like they haven't moved on so to
speak... to the awareness that they are all of the biomachine...
that it takes more than just dying and being born to accept all of oneself...
If we are all really one biological machine, then death of the
chocolate dragon pudding conscious computer plant sea monkey (however
interpreted as an emotional boon or loss) is, like birth, neither good
nor bad. That was the mayan's greeting to one another "I am another
you" Can you imagine saying that to everyone all day long? woah...
that is n.l.p. mind altering.
Although "I" would certianly think "someone" was a big fat dickhead
if "they" tried to kill "me" and "I" would have brownout anxiety, the
part of "me" that invented "me"
would have no problems whatsoever at "my" loss, leaving space for the
endless permutations of change we all witness in our "subjectivity".
There is this other concept of "co creation" which purports that by
using language to assert that you already are the subjective
experience of something then your "external" reality is forced to meet
the new paradigm of thought that you have created. For instance
saying things like "I have monetary abundance" and reveling in the
emotional intention of that you are creating, the monetary abundance
would show up, but you wouldn't be surprised by it because you already
created the state within yourself. The buddah says "we are our
thoughts, with our thoughts we make the world"
Would you believe me if I told you that one day I woke up and lived a
day in the life of a different body, still with the feeling of being
"me", a beautiful african woman in a different place and time, and
the next day I woke up and resumed life in the body you now know as
"me" caucasian Aurora in the chicago place and time? And that no
changes in my subjectivity took place?
Ustaath responds
There's no doubt in my mind that human beings will soon be working with a host of intelligences that would not by current standards be considered human.
But the whole history of life and consciousness on this planet has been a history of the transformation of one form of nucleic acid based life to some other form of nucleic acid based life. So I would suspect that the new minds of the coming decades and centuries, at least those we encounter in this solar system, will be nucleic acid based. I suspect spores carrying basic DNA have been migrating around the solar system for millions of years, and anything we encounter around Sol will be some form of life that is based on carbon and the basic principles that we recognize here.
Likewise what arises in the near future will be a derivation or evolution of nucleic acid based life. Unless Radio Shack starts selling electronics based on organic chemistry, so-called wetware, I don't see new intelligence forming out of Radio Shack components.
So I think it is more plausible that the new minds of the new millenium will be developed based on nucleic acid-based biological mutations and enhancements. I believe it is likely that humans, plants and other animals will be linked by our machines, new organic chemistry, and technology into new biological superorganisms, erotically intermeshed living soup, with new senses and cognitive abilities, and while human beings may be the most prominent in those organisms we may barely recognize ourselves at that point.
Obviously machines will play a huge role but I still see machines as McKenna calls them "epigenetic excretions" of the human and post-human species, not independent entities. It's just the shell of the oyster, or the hive of the termite. It's not the Thing. DNA is it. We just live to propagate it. Why would DNA be interested in propagating some other potentially competitive replication vehicle?
Al-x responds
This question assumes that the cantankerous collection of cogs and circuits
has a consciousness that is recognizable as similar or the same as ours just
because it fears being turned off. I disagree; this characteristic does not
mean that its consciousness is the same as ours. A rabbit runs from a wolf
and is anxious when it hears the wolf howl but I do not see a consciousness
that is the same as mine (excepting for the possibility that all are the
same through the oneness of the universe, but I shall ignore this for now).
A believable and convincing emotional survival behavior does not suggest to
me that an awareness or consciousness is the same as mine. How could it be?
There is little doubt that its experience of the world would be extremely
different than mine. After all, we have extremely different methods of
interacting with the reality around us. It with wires circuits and me with
squishy liquid-filled bits. For the sake of this argument I am assuming that
consciousness is an emergent property of a sufficiently complex system. At
any rate, I think this question (besides being an introspective exercise)is
unanswerable without first answering the following:
What is consciousness? Can anyone give a concise definition that isn't
"Consciousness is the state of being that is not asleep."? If we can agree
on some kind of definition then we may be able to discuss this question
rigorously. (forgive me if this as already been discussed ad nauseum)
In answer to the question:
I, for one, can't wait to talk to a box that thinks it's alive. I'm
interested to see what insights its unique perspective might have in to the
experience of being. Will it understand jokes? If it understands them, will
it laugh?
Consider this:
If a simulation is sufficiently detailed as to be indistinguishable from
reality is it reality? How could you tell?
Brian responds
i assume when you say 'understand consciousness in some kind of 'rational' or 'scientific'way' your presuming in that statement that that rational or scientific understanding will also be complete in it's understanding?
i imagine that will happen about as soon as we discover a unified theory of everything.
and i'm skeptical that will ever happen.
but i wonder how complete a theory can be when it is handed, pre-fabricated, from one person to the next.
again i'm skeptical that can ever happen, either.
but which do i prefer? it would be exciting to see a mind that could puzzle out and then model precisely human consciousness. however, i am not too excited about the prospect of even *more* sentient beings who consider their thoughts worth espousing and their ideas worth fighting for and their thrill seeking meaningful enough to make the lines even longer than they are now at six flags.
so, yeah, i prefer b.
Bruce G. wrote
Wow, I just had an amazing experience - I saw the eye doctor this afternoon, and he's trying out different lenses, asking me which ones I prefer...all of a sudden, out of the blue, he says:
Mr. Gould, there are two possibilities:
a. sometime in the 21st century we're going to understand consciousness in some kind of "rational", "scientific" way.
b. we're not
Now which do you prefer, a or b? That's all I need to know..a? or b?
La Bla responds
Well, I think "A" would be really, really interesting and if it were true, I'd want to know all about this theory. I'm sure it would be quite enlightening, and I wouldn't shy away from this knowledge.
But I also believe that "A" is impossible, if we were placing bets I'd have to put my money on "B". Not that I *prefer* it, just that that's how I believe things are.
I just discovered the term "New Mysterian" (found it in Wikipedia) which pretty much describes my point of view on this...
New Mysterianism is a philosophy proposing that certain problems (in particular, consciousness) will never be explained or at the least cannot be explained by the human mind at its current evolutionary stage.
Owen Flanagan noted in his 1991 book "Science of the Mind" that some modern thinkers have suggested that consciousness might never be completely explained. Flanagan called them "the new mysterians" after the rock group ? and the Mysterians. The term originated with the Japanese alien-invasion film The Mysterians. The "old mysterians" are thinkers throughout history who have put forward a similar position. They include Leibniz, Dr Johnson, and Thomas Huxley. The latter said, "How is it that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of the Djin, when Aladdin rubbed his lamp." [6, p. 229, quote]
Noam Chomsky distinguishes between problems, which seem solvable, at least in principle, through scientific methods, and mysteries which do not, even in principle. He notes that the cognitive capabilities of all organisms are limited by biology, e.g. a mouse will never speak. In the same way, certain problems may be beyond our understanding.
Shaman responds
The answer is, and will always be 'b.'
Consciousness lies outside the realm, or paradigm of the ‘rational.’ It is not that the rational does not exist, or it is not useful, it is simply that other modes of experiencing or realization exist. It is much the same as multiplication tables. They exist, and are useful at a certain level of experience or way of perceiving, but once you have graduate to the world of calculus and differential equations, they no longer carry the same meaning.
In order to ‘understand,’ (and this word is used only to assist in conveying a certain idea) consciousness, one needs to move from the world of duality and linearity, to a paradigm of nonlinearity and nonduality. This is a difficult leap because it truly causes the underpinnings of what we, or more rightly stated, our egos, believe is true to collapse—and the ego does not want to see that happen.
To ask, “How would you feel if Radio Shack parts could be put together to create a being that feels fear at the termination of it’s existence?” is asking your ego how it would feel. An answer is a projection of your feelings about you in a similar situation, and discussion of the answer only fuels the ego’s need for fulfillment and supports its identity. All thought experiments such as this serve a similar purpose to the ego, which lives and thrives by gathering, sorting, and categorizing information. The more it has, the more it is, and the less likely it is of not being—so it believes. The ego is part of the world of duality, and by necessity, must dissolve in order for the experience of the world of nonduality, the realm of consciousness which is not rational, to be experienced.
Many spiritual teachings state that at the moment of death, in order to pass through the ‘barrier,’ one must hold firm in the believe that, “I cannot die, death is only an illusion.” It is this ‘I’ that must be dissolved.
Thought experiments, which like multiplication tables are useful at some point in everyone’s evolution, can become a hindrance because they feed the ego’s need for information and activity. Rather than thought experiments, it is useful to begin seeking experiences that open up ones awareness (a function or attribute of consciousness) to the nonlinear, nondual realm.
Find a place where you are comfortable, preferably outside. It does not have to be quiet or secluded, just a place where you feel safe and peaceful. Gaze forward and then begin to allow your awareness to encompass more and more of your peripheral vision. Keep allowing your awareness to expand until you begin getting a greater and greater sense of everything around you. Observe without judgment or comment. As your awareness expands you will begin to achieve a sense of wonder that everything simply is, and is complete and whole in and of itself. This sensation cannot be explained by logic, nor described in rational terms. This is an entry into the realm of consciousness, beyond duality.
Mr. Gould, there are two possibilities:
a. sometime in the 21st century we're going to understand consciousness in some kind of "rational", "scientific" way.
b. we're not
Now which do you prefer, a or b? That's all I need to know..a? or b?
Ustaath responded
I had a similar conversation as an undergraduate at U of W with a philosophy professor. A very long time ago.
The idea of the ineffable is key to Eastern and Western mysticism. The idea that there are important aspects of existence that can not be reduced to symbol manipulation is fundamental to a basic ontological mystical apprehension. Tao is not Tao, labels can only take you so far. Rationalism requires symbol manipulation.
So, in the sense that consciousness is a superset of the labelable, world of Tao's 10,000 Things, it cannot be "understood" in a rational/scientific/dualistic fashion. Science only leads so far before new faculties and methods must be embraced. Rationalism is a useful tool in the world of dualistic consciousness and monkeys playing games and building stuff. Seeing more the Monkey Play-Eat-Fuck-Fight-Make Money-Die plane of existence you need to fall back on other vision. This is not transcendentalism, I just don't think we see very far with the three-dimensional flesh eyes.
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