Closer To Truth
Is consciousness something special in the universe, its own category, irreducible to physical laws, a carrier of meaning and purpose? Or is consciousness a mere artifact of the brain, a by-product of evolution, a superstition exaggerated by human misperception?
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Wow! The first really open minded, intelligent person I've heard interviewed here. No scientism. Just science.🥳
All this needless mystifying of consciousness, a neurological phenomenon, a functioning of the reticular formation in the brainstem in humans. Biology!!!
Rubbish. Philosophers are so lazy.
Great interviewer but I'm dumber for having listened to the interviewee…
Or is it the physical that is the illusion?
If consciousness is just an illusion, who is the one being fooled?
I believe we are meat bags but I still have gut feeling we are more than that
A quack
Religious lunatics never go away, right? They are going to stay here forever.
I love this interviewer, he's incredibly relatable. Great guest too!
Hogwash!
A para-psychologist.
It is rare to find as much skepticism and open-mindedness together as he has.
But I don't like what she says about materialism denigrating our inner experience. As a materialist I don't think I am denigrating it at all. But by saying that, she is the one denigrating matter. Just like in a computer there is only matter. There is only the hardware and electrons moving to different places. The software, what we think of as a kind of virtual reality inside the computer is the product of the functioning of the hardware but has no existence per se. Only the hardware exists but it works in a logical way so as to produce a result that is best understood by us by imagining it was produced by virtual entities. In reality only matter is needed, and only matter is there. But saying that is absolutely not denigrating the work of the people who use the software. They do use it, and it works, it does things that are good. Saying that ultimately, physically, it is only electrons does not mean we should look at the software in this way at all time and ignore the virtual and lose all sense of practicality. It does not mean that we should denigrate it and not use it because electrons are not important. It is only electrons and at the same time we do use it to produce something meaningful. And there is no reason to compare the two or prefer one of them. They are the exact same thing viewed from two different perspectives. The perspective of what is existing (matter) and the perspective of how to make sense of the functioning of the material stuff (the software).
She talks about meaningful communication between consciousnesses. Actually the computer analogy still works. We can communicate through a computer and communicate true meaning to another person and yet we know there are only electric signals in the Ethernet cable, no immaterial atoms of meaning. Same for speach. Words are only words. Ultimately they are vibrations of air that trigger nerves in our ears. Just like for the software, the meaning they convey is virtual and has no existence per se. Yet it is possible to know this and still consider that what people say is important.
She sells Schlitz while slitting sheets by the seashore.
Consciousness is consciousness. I can't even think what the question in the title might mean.
There is the possibility that consciousness is not the bottom line. We give a word, a name for now.But eventually it wold be deeper than that. It's like you at a coin. A penny. A penny itself has no time….Until an ant, a germ walks across the coin and then we say, that there is a time between when the antwas on the south side of the penny and it "later" in 3.56 seconds arrives on the north side of the brain andthe germ takes 5 minutes…all of a sudden there time ( or else , how do I cook my spaghetti right)Same thing, of course there is "consciousness" , or else, how do sound write or speak about consciousness.So what is it that refers to having consciousness…Are we "Being conscioused?"
these people have to stop speculating and wait until the brain has been mapped. if science over the past 500 years has proven anything… it has demonstrated that there is no ghost in the machine everytime we examine natural phenomena that special place that humans have or the supernatural had to explain it, it can be explained by natural forces. therefore, there is no reason to evoke the supernatural to explain consciousness until the science is done.
what is the name of the host?
i think that whether it is an illusion is perhaps the worst and most outdated question of them all, because it makes the least amount of sense i think out of all the questions..
thats why dan dennets idea is really quite backwards and silly thinkining, because he must realise that he is automatically undermining his own logic…haha
She is just another example of the psychologically immature trying to aggrandizethe self-importance and value of personal identity by imbuing it with some manner of independent amorphous ontology beyond the body. Same kind of superstitious idiocy by which theists delude themselves – seems some people are just too cowardly or dishonest to accept the world as it is found to be but instead retreat into ancient mythologies about how the world was imagined to be thousands of years ago. Ho hum
If I hit you in the head with a baseball bat you will lose consciousness. Sorry, the brain and consciousness are not separate entities. What this woman describes is nothing but arm-waving fluff.
I much prefer science. It may not be perfect, but is the best thing that we have. There is no proof of ESP.
For someone who is supposed to be so well educated and intelligent, he seems to only get further from the truth. Oh wait, is the name supposed to be ironic and I just didn't get it? I wonder if a conversation with someone like Bernardo kastrup would help?
Classic intellectual hyperbole from Schlitz. I see from the thumbs down, many agree.
Our individual consciousness is created within the computing technology that our Creator used to speak his simulation program into existence. In other words, our consciousness is the result of our Creator's thoughts stored as information in the form of invisible waves that are processed by the computing technology called the Word of God.
John 1
1: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2: He was in the beginning with God;
3: all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.
4: In him was life, and the life was the light of men.
There's nothing beyond except angels.
The subjectivity of our experience sometimes blinds us from seeing the universal truth or the entire picture of the realities of existence. We judge too closely by what we experience that we forget our experiences are barely a tiny piece of the vast universe of all that exists, and by learning to detach from our material preassociations we can rise above into a greater sense of divine revelation or cosmic oneness with infinite intelligence. Far more than 99% of our world is stuck viewing all that is from experience and fewer than 1% have this ability to rise above it and to see truth that encapsulates all of the virtually infinite variations we live in our lives.
But what is truly rare, if not utterly unheard of is the ability to walk on this earth through our experience, but also to see life through the experience of others AND to still be able when needed to rise above it all or not. This is the ultimate state of spiritual evolution—to master your consciousness and its focus. To be able to tap into the divine or to ground yourself in the moment of the material world at will. So rare this is, that I have never met anyone with this ability, and neither have I spoken to anyone who fully understood this power. Usually I am left to muse this dichotomous reality in my solitary transitive state.
2:52 Laugh out loud – he said "I don't think" 'Snickers!!!' Who's the I, if there's no such thing as consciousness???
we are meat popsicle with over developed neurons.
I declare a new law throughput the land. No one can call consciousness an illusion without first giving their definition of "consciousness" and "illusion".
There is an extra dimension that helps both sides of this argument come to grips with this. That dimension emerges when we consider, carefully consider in a very nuanced way just what tool we are using to analyze this phenomena. It is necessarily the case that there are fundamental and very precise limitations to how clearly a tool can analyze itself. In this case the subjective experience of the phenomena so overwhelms our attempts at objective analysis that we inflate the phenomena way beyond where it should be. Consideration of the consciousness of other animal species is a great starting point in completely understanding this idea. This type of consideration is ongoing and I think promises to complete illuminate this.
It doesn't denigrate. It makes life more interesting and comprehensible. I just want to know what the fuck is going on here before I am dead.
Modern science currently deduces all matter down into quarks and electrons, (along with the current known forces of nature). So, everything that is and that we experience would then have to be a factor of those it would seem to me. (Unless we are missing at least one thing).
1. Energy interacting with energy causes things to occur, including our consciousness, memories and thoughts.
2. If we can have consciousness, memories and thoughts due to energy being arranged in a certain way with certain energy interactions, then why couldn't at least one other entity exist in this universe with energy and energy interactions that would allow it to have consciousness, memories and thoughts? Even possibly on a more universal level or at least elsewhere in this universe? To me there would seem to be no reason why there couldn't be, given all the energy and energy interactions in this universe.
3. In other words, we are most probably not alone in this universe.
Just want to say I think you're doing a great job. I'm always impressed at the quality of guests and your interview style. you always ask the right questions in a very calm and reasonable way. Keep up the good work!