epiphenomenalism and dual aspect theory

[Wyman]

Wyman,
For the benefit of those who do not need to kill time by following every conversation on a complex thread (as dumb as trying to participate in every conversation at a large dinner party), why not observe the courtesy of referencing whom you are responding to? It just takes a quick copy and paste of their {quote=xxx}, then, later, a {/quote} to close their part of the conversation.

Greylorn
I, like Henry, have not figured out how to do this. Although Henry may be just trying to be different.

Wyman,

I'd killed about two hours developing an explanation of how to use the {quote} function, whereupon Bubba's cousin, Bobo, threw the wrong switch at the local power plant, killing everything I wrote. So I'll try to simplify it, using { } instead of [ ] to not confuse the software that interprets this stuff.

This post from you began with: {quote="Wyman"}{quote}

Note the format of the primary quote. It is followed by an "=" sign, then a name enclosed in parentheses. Had you followed this format and written your secondary quote as {quote="Greylorn"}, it would have been perfectly clear to whom you were responding.

You do not need to type out this stuff. Paste the {quote="whatever"} from the original text that you are quoting.

Also note that every {quote=...} must be followed by a corresponding, paired {/quote}. Information between these quotes can (or must) be nested between the larger quotes that comprise their context.

Experiment a bit, using the "Preview" function, and let me know if I need to clarify this. I appreciate your willingness to query.

Greylorn

I this good? The problem was, I must have always read the threads while not signed in, and the little 'quote' button a the top of the posts are are not there unless you're signed in - there's only the 'reply' button at the end of the whole thread. So I had no idea what you were talking about. Anyway...

I appreciate your willingness to query.

I am comfortable enough in my skin to ask even silly questions (though not too many, I hope) and to put out there ideas for discussion and my own views when I have them. To that point, I appreciate Henry in this thread putting his neck out by taking a position and defending it. It is much easier to criticize and pick apart a point of view than to defend one.

[Wyman]

It's sometimes helpful (to get a thread back on track) for folks involved to re-state core positions.

Here's mine...

Consciousness (mind, self, 'I') is a response (action/reaction) of a brain (of particular and peculiar complexity), in a body, in an environment.

Is consciousness the same as the self, or is it more like what ordinary language calls 'experience' or 'perception?' When I ask this question, I realize that we can define it one way or other. I am not asking for an argument in semantics, but when you say that the brain produces consciousness or that consciousness is a function of the brain, are you saying that the brain causes the self, or that the brain causes sensory experience?

And when epiphenominalism claims that consciousness is a byproduct of brain functions, isn't it claiming that perception and subjective experience is that byproduct? I'e. not so much merely the 'self?' The self is just a part of that broader experience.

It is at this point, if you accept the above, that we go back down the Cartesian rabbit hole. As empiricists, we all know that our knowledge of the world - all of scientific knowledge - depends on observation. But if all experience is a causally inert 'byproduct' that evolution has stumbled upon by chance, it is at any rate all any of us have at our disposal to judge the world. As such, it either:

1) relates to the outside world in such a way that helps us negotiate it (the world)

or

2) is a complete fantasy

[Gee]

Wyman;

You are being interesting again.

I think we can regard self, "I", or the subjective perspective as a group of functions rather than a physical thing. Once we start attributing unity to a particular thing then we end up in the Cartesian theatre.

We only end up in the Cartesian theater if we consider all of this as residing in the brain. The Cartesian theater is about the directed rational aspect of mind, only. It is not about consciousness. If the ornery asshole, Greylorn, said anything that makes sense, it was that consciousness, or beon, tricks the mind into thinking that it is conscious. Consciousness does not come from the rational mind and neither does self.

I keep saying this, but one more time. All life is conscious, this is not disputed; all life does not have a brain, this is not disputed. All life possesses self, this is also not disputed because it is not considered. What is considered is that all life has 'instincts', which are 'behaviors', but what causes this 'behavior'?

Let us take the universal "survival instinct". All life has a survival instinct and will do everything that it can to ensure it's survival; again, this is not disputed. So what is it trying to preserve? How about the "fight or flight instinct"? When it chooses to fight or flee, what is it trying to preserve, if not itself? You can think about this all day long, but if you have any intelligence at all, you will conclude that all life has a self and does whatever it can to cause that self to continue. Self is an attribute of consciousness.

How can we not attribute unity to a particular thing? It is a necessary condition for logic, mathematics and language. For example, I said an orchestra is a general type of physical thing, as distinguished from an abstract universal, like harmony. Let's disregard those abstract general concepts (adjectives and adverbs).

I think everything in consciousness relates to unity. Without unity there is no understanding, no experience, no consciousness. An easy way to understand this concept is when you learn a new language. You read a word, then learn to pronounce it, but you have no understanding of it until you can relate it to words and concepts that you already know. Once you have 'unified' your thoughts and attached them to the new word, then you have conscious understanding of that word. imo

General terms like orchestra, water, humans, trees, etc. are 'unified' terms - as in 'attributing unity to a particular thing.' A particular person is a general term describing a collection of parts, whether you are in a conceptual framework of speaking of organs, or cells, or atoms, or quarks. A 'physical object' such as an individual person or tree, therefore, is not so different, ontologically, from a collection of physical things, like an orchestra. In theory, this chain of reasoning goes all the way to the fundamental particles of physics.

Agreed. But a person is also a collection of experiences and relationships. A woman can be a mother and daughter, an aunt and niece, a grandparent and grandchild, an enemy and friend, a teacher and student, a neighbor and a stranger; and she can be all of these things while being only one of these things.

So, you build up (in theory) your ontology to higher and higher levels, from 'this is what quarks do' to 'this is what neurons do' to 'this is what the cerebral cortex does,' until you get to 'this is what the brain does.' The question is, can experience - qualia, sensations, mental images, etc. - be explained as something the brain 'does?' In short, I think the 'hard problem' of consciousness arises as a result of this materialist, scientific view of the world, just as the problem of the 'mind' arises upon other assumptions. They are two sides of the same coin - get rid of 'mind' as a mysterious entity and you can't explain experience. Explain experience and you are left with a mysterious entity called 'mind.'

Well put.

I think the Chinese brain reductio ad absurdum argument is compelling. Since you claim that our mind is a collection of individual functions of a multitude of individual physical parts, then it is possible (in theory) that if you get every Chinese person (I guess because there are so many of them) to perform the requisite function, you could in theory get a big, collective, Chinese experience or consciousness up and running.

This is another good point. I believe there is evidence that life has more than one self. There is the individual self, the family self, experiential selves, bonded selves, a species self, etc. There seems to be layers and layers of self that expand to eventually include all life, and we seem to be connected to these larger selves by identifying with them through bonding, experience, and physical properties.

G

[Greylorn Ell]

Is this good? The problem was, I must have always read the threads while not signed in, and the little 'quote' button a the top of the posts are are not there unless you're signed in - there's only the 'reply' button at the end of the whole thread. So I had no idea what you were talking about. Anyway...

Wyman,
You got it right.

I appreciate your willingness to query.

I am comfortable enough in my skin to ask even silly questions (though not too many, I hope) and to put out there ideas for discussion and my own views when I have them. To that point, I appreciate Henry in this thread putting his neck out by taking a position and defending it. It is much easier to criticize and pick apart a point of view than to defend one.

Point taken. However, I can't give someone credit for adopting a commonly-held position that has already been defended. The requisite defenses are already in place and no imagination is required to apply them.

I've also found from practice that people who take such approaches are simply dogmatists. They are incapable of defending their position on their own, and when confronted with a contradiction they behave exactly like a Jehovah's Witness. They cannot be convinced that their adopted position is false because having simply borrowed it from some authority figures and adopted it to fall in line with a common agreement base, they did not invent it, do not deeply understand it, and do not personally own it.

You wrote, "It is much easier to criticize and pick apart a point of view than to defend one."

I wonder if this belief is a result of your chosen career? An attorney is often stuck with the job of defending a false position-- such as the innocence of O.J. Simpson, or a corporation's claim that fracking is harmless to our environment. I've participated in several court proceedings. Could have been a decent attorney because I'm good at defeating illogical arguments, but would have been restricted to cases in which I defended the truth, not the client. I'd have needed a second job to survive.

Defending a solid position is easy, and I love doing it because I am lazy. Refuting a faulty position is easy in the early stages of that opinion, but once it becomes intrenched in the brains of the mindless, one might as well try to extract a bad tooth with your fingers, after dipping them in bacon fat.

For example, my book needed to deal with evolution. Explaining my own theory was a two-week, single chapter project. However, while the Darwinist theory is completely absurd and mathematically intractable, I killed two years and wrote three chapters to demonstrate that, because of the vast agreement base that Darwinism has co-opted.

My experience was the opposite of your assertion. I am certain that this is a function of circumstances, and that you will have a very difficult time picking apart Darwinian Theory, Big Bang theory, all religious theologies, and socialism-- all of which are piss-poor theories with a huge agreement-base. Similarly I suspect that when you yourself freely choose an idea to defend, you will find its defense as easy and natural as farting during a Texas chili festival.

[Ginkgo]

edit

[uwot]

It exhibits these behavious without the need to be self aware. All of this was just speculation until independent teams of scientists confirmed that microtubules do carry out quantum fluctuations.

Ah, yes, but they didn't show the protozoa wasn't self aware.
Actually, I thought I was just being silly, but is there a ball park number of neurons that is associated with self awareness?

[Ginkgo]

edit

[Greylorn Ell]

If the ornery asshole, Greylorn, said anything that makes sense, it was that consciousness, or beon, tricks the mind into thinking that it is conscious. Consciousness does not come from the rational mind and neither does self.

Gee,
One of the few things that I expect from thread correspondents is honesty. You have made up some shit from your own little mind and attributed it to me. I recommend one only of these courses of action:

1. Show by precisely quoting my words, in full context, from either my book or some threads, indicating that I so stupidly and incompetently misrepresented my own theories.

2. Retract your lie and apologize.

3. Insist upon the truth of your misrepresentation, and condemn yourself to a life of intellectual worthlessness.

Greylorn

[Greylorn Ell]

I keep saying this, but one more time. All life is conscious, this is not disputed; all life does not have a brain, this is not disputed. All life possesses self, this is also not disputed because it is not considered. What is considered is that all life has 'instincts', which are 'behaviors', but what causes this 'behavior'?

You can say that your turds smell like spring roses and taste like prime rib all you want, but don't start a restaurant that features your dorsal output. Saying and reiterating doesn't make it so.

That all life is conscious is strongly disputed except by New Age religionists.

Throwing in a couple of irrelevant but true comments (life does not have a brain) is a neurolinguistic ploy-- a tidbit of obvious truth added to the paragraph to establish a "truth" that is irrelevant to the paragraph, in hopes that readers with 2-digit IQs will not see the ploy.

Your "all life possesses self.." is a comparable piece of irrelevant nonsense. Why include something that is not considered into a statement that you want to be considered? You should apply for a job as B.O.'s scriptwriter. Given your complete absence of intellectual integrity, you'd fit right in.

Your final comment about behaviors is off your own point and irrelevant to it, unless you want to answer your own question. "Digital Universe-- " does that, of course, but your personal opinions will prevent you from getting there.

Let us take the universal "survival instinct". All life has a survival instinct and will do everything that it can to ensure it's survival; again, this is not disputed. So what is it trying to preserve? How about the "fight or flight instinct"? When it chooses to fight or flee, what is it trying to preserve, if not itself?

In his book, "The Selfish Gene" Richard Dawkins (of whom I'm not a fan) explained what "life" is trying to preserve-- its DNA. "Itself" is an irrelevant concept (ask any lemming).

You can think about this all day long, but if you have any intelligence at all, you will conclude that all life has a self and does whatever it can to cause that self to continue. Self is an attribute of consciousness.

Playing the old "agree with me or don't get laid" ploy is woman's bullshit, and it only works when the woman is sharing space. You aren't and will never be.

Did you get your "if you have any intelligence..." line from your local Democrat party nits? Must be. Genuinely intelligent people would never attempt to intimidate anyone from a platform tottering beneath them.

Before you try to present yourself as intelligent, learn to read a dictionary.

I apologize, not to you, but to everyone following any of our shared threads for taking so long to recognize you for the nincompoop you are. Henry Quirk and his neurolinguistic programming helped me to recognize you for one of the same.

You have devised your own definition of the word "consciousness," and have cleverly applied it to conversations in which other participants used common definitions. For you, the term means whatever you want it to mean. Let's get clear on the meaning, not for your benefit because you'll not accept corrections to your beliefs, but for the clarification of others who might peruse this thread.

Googling "consciousness definition" brings up this watered down definition of consciousness:

con·scious·ness
ˈkänCHəsnəs/
noun
noun: consciousness

the state of being awake and aware of one's surroundings.
"she failed to regain consciousness and died two days later"
the awareness or perception of something by a person.
plural noun: consciousnesses
"her acute consciousness of Mike's presence"
the fact of awareness by the mind of itself and the world.
"consciousness emerges from the operations of the brain"

While this is a weak definition no doubt created by the considerable confusion surrounding notions of consciousness created by nitwits who want to push their own opinions, no part of it includes your broad definition, which amounts to New Age religion. The weak definition relates consciousness to human beings, not to other critters.

In "Digital Universe.." I was careful to use a specific definition of consciousness throughout the book. This is definition #1 from page 289 of the Random House Webster's College Dictionary, copyright 1991:

conscious adj. aware of one's own existence, sensations, thoughts, surroundings, etc.

The word "consciousness" is, of course, defined as the state of being conscious. This is a strong, unequivocal definition, the kind of definition that men use when discussing ideas.

No part of this clear and straightforward definition supports the attributes that you wish to append to the definition, to suit yourself.

I see no point in engaging in further communications with someone who is intellectually dishonest. Thank you for some previous exchanges.

Greylorn

[Wyman]

Googling "consciousness definition" brings up this watered down definition of consciousness:

con·scious·ness
ˈkänCHəsnəs/
noun
noun: consciousness

the state of being awake and aware of one's surroundings.
"she failed to regain consciousness and died two days later"
the awareness or perception of something by a person.
plural noun: consciousnesses
"her acute consciousness of Mike's presence"
the fact of awareness by the mind of itself and the world.
"consciousness emerges from the operations of the brain"

While this is a weak definition no doubt created by the considerable confusion surrounding notions of consciousness created by nitwits who want to push their own opinions, no part of it includes your broad definition, which amounts to New Age religion. The weak definition relates consciousness to human beings, not to other critters.

In "Digital Universe.." I was careful to use a specific definition of consciousness throughout the book. This is definition #1 from page 289 of the Random House Webster's College Dictionary, copyright 1991:

conscious adj. aware of one's own existence, sensations, thoughts, surroundings, etc.

The word "consciousness" is, of course, defined as the state of being conscious. This is a strong, unequivocal definition, the kind of definition that men use when discussing ideas.

Greylorn

This is, more or less, the point I was making above, about consciousness being more like 'experience' and 'perception' than 'mind.' Perhaps 'awareness' is also good. We got off track when I tried to rebut Henry's assertion that his 'self' was a unified thing, rather than a collection of functions. Or maybe just I got off track, no use blaming others.

It doesn't matter whether we take consciousness as unified or not.

Whether consciousness is unified or not, an epiphenomenon or not, physical or not, are scientific questions and the theories thrown about, as Greylorn points out, are mostly highly speculative with little evidentiary support at this point in history. And putting forward our own theories on the topic is just armchair neurophysics and pseudo-science.

We all know what consciousness is, since it is just our subjective experience of the world. In a sense, nothing whatsoever lies outside this subjective experience except what we (imperfectly) infer.

Descartes foresaw this problem and was honest enough not just to shrug it off and say, well, so what. Hume didn't add anything to Descartes' idea, but laid it out more explicitly, logically and completely (as the turtle walks). Kant was bothered by it, as were twentieth century positivists. But after the later Wittgenstein, philosophers such as Sellers (the 'Myth of the Given'), Quine ('Ontological Relativity' and 'Holism') and Rorty ('Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature' arguing after Wittgenstein that philosophy is therapeutic and truth is contextual) tried to put the idea of absolute truth or certainty to rest. And they were right in one sense: that without the idea of absolute certainty, philosophy is dead and useless. Indeed, Dennett seems to be just an armchair scientist who hasn't gotten the word yet.

Subjective experience does seem to carry with it absolute certainty (despite Sellars' arguments to the contrary). Descartes believed this, the positivists believed it and almost every person on the street believes it.

How do these epistemological issues relate back to the problem of consciousness? I am pretty sure they do, but have a hard time articulating it. It seems to me that materialism fundamentally denies absolute certainty and that this relates to the problem it has of explaining consciousness.

[Greylorn Ell]

Googling "consciousness definition" brings up this watered down definition of consciousness:

con·scious·ness
ˈkänCHəsnəs/
noun
noun: consciousness

the state of being awake and aware of one's surroundings.
"she failed to regain consciousness and died two days later"
the awareness or perception of something by a person.
plural noun: consciousnesses
"her acute consciousness of Mike's presence"
the fact of awareness by the mind of itself and the world.
"consciousness emerges from the operations of the brain"

While this is a weak definition no doubt created by the considerable confusion surrounding notions of consciousness created by nitwits who want to push their own opinions, no part of it includes your broad definition, which amounts to New Age religion. The weak definition relates consciousness to human beings, not to other critters.

In "Digital Universe.." I was careful to use a specific definition of consciousness throughout the book. This is definition #1 from page 289 of the Random House Webster's College Dictionary, copyright 1991:

conscious adj. aware of one's own existence, sensations, thoughts, surroundings, etc.

The word "consciousness" is, of course, defined as the state of being conscious. This is a strong, unequivocal definition, the kind of definition that men use when discussing ideas.

Greylorn

This is, more or less, the point I was making above, about consciousness being more like 'experience' and 'perception' than 'mind.' Perhaps 'awareness' is also good. We got off track when I tried to rebut Henry's assertion that his 'self' was a unified thing, rather than a collection of functions. Or maybe just I got off track, no use blaming others.

It doesn't matter whether we take consciousness as unified or not.

Whether consciousness is unified or not, an epiphenomenon or not, physical or not, are scientific questions and the theories thrown about, as Greylorn points out, are mostly highly speculative with little evidentiary support at this point in history. And putting forward our own theories on the topic is just armchair neurophysics and pseudo-science.

We all know what consciousness is, since it is just our subjective experience of the world. In a sense, nothing whatsoever lies outside this subjective experience except what we (imperfectly) infer.

Descartes foresaw this problem and was honest enough not just to shrug it off and say, well, so what. Hume didn't add anything to Descartes' idea, but laid it out more explicitly, logically and completely (as the turtle walks). Kant was bothered by it, as were twentieth century positivists. But after the later Wittgenstein, philosophers such as Sellers (the 'Myth of the Given'), Quine ('Ontological Relativity' and 'Holism') and Rorty ('Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature' arguing after Wittgenstein that philosophy is therapeutic and truth is contextual) tried to put the idea of absolute truth or certainty to rest. And they were right in one sense: that without the idea of absolute certainty, philosophy is dead and useless. Indeed, Dennett seems to be just an armchair scientist who hasn't gotten the word yet.

Subjective experience does seem to carry with it absolute certainty (despite Sellars' arguments to the contrary). Descartes believed this, the positivists believed it and almost every person on the street believes it.

How do these epistemological issues relate back to the problem of consciousness? I am pretty sure they do, but have a hard time articulating it. It seems to me that materialism fundamentally denies absolute certainty and that this relates to the problem it has of explaining consciousness.

Wyman,

I like your style of thought. Your understanding of fundamental philosophical ideas runs more deeply than anyone else I've encountered on this or other "philosophy" forums. May I offer a small correction? Read on, only if.

Certainty must be reserved as a purely theoretical concept. For example, are the three fundamental Principles of Thermodynamics certain, or approximate? My theory treats them as certainty. The U.S. Patent office does likewise.

However, the measurement of events taking place in the material world is always subject to the kind of uncertainty known as "measurement error." Measurements have always been an issue in physics. Galileo derived what is now known as Newton's 2nd Law by rolling more-or-less spherical wooden balls down grooved inclined planes, measuring their rate of motion with a water clock-- a simple dripper system that was turned on when the ball was released, turned off when the ball reached its destination. The amount of water released became a proportionate measure of the time required for the ball to roll downhill.

Clearly these were crude measurements that did not even bother to measure time, as Galileo provided no translation between what we know as "seconds" of time and the quantity of water left in his teacup. Since then, people have made more precise measurements. Today, such measurements would observe the fall of a single atom in a gravitational field, to a precision of a few nanometers per nanosecond. What that means is that technology has greatly reduced measurement error.

But here's what's curious. Galileo's crude measurements lead to the exact same theoretical principle (Newton's 2nd Law) as today's precise measurements.

This tells us that a good theory is precise. Data will remain an approximation of the theory.

To me this means that despite measurement error, there is precision in physics theory.

Quantum mechanics is built upon the principle that subjective measurement uncertainty determines objective reality. For that reason, I put QM in the same category as Catholic dogma, and entirely unscientific. (Yes, this is an arrogant assertion. I can defend it, but this is not the place for such a defense.)

Finally, let's return to your opening, where you wrote, "This is, more or less, the point I was making above, about consciousness being more like 'experience' and 'perception' than 'mind.' Perhaps 'awareness' is also good. We got off track when I tried to rebut Henry's assertion that his 'self' was a unified thing, rather than a collection of functions. Or maybe just I got off track, no use blaming others."

Information facilitates consciousness, but cannot create it.

I contend that experience and perception are components leading to consciousness, but without an entity capable of making use of the memory and data, what good are they? You can feed E & P into your computer for years and I promise that you will never wake up to a video screen that reads, "Cogito Ergo Sum."

[Wyman]

GE wrote:

Certainty must be reserved as a purely theoretical concept. For example, are the three fundamental Principles of Thermodynamics certain, or approximate? My theory treats them as certainty. The U.S. Patent office does likewise.

The following is not completely on point, your post merely reminded me of it(the last couple sentences below) and it is otherwise of interest to the thread in general. It is Einstein responding to a query from a group of psychiatrists:

It would be very helpful for the purpose of psychological investigation to know what internal or mental images, what kind of “internal words” mathematicians make use of; whether they are motor, auditory, visual, or mixed, depending on the subject which they are studying. Especially in research thought, do the mental pictures or internal words present themselves in the full consciousness or in the fringe-consciousness …? MY DEAR COLLEAGUE: In the following, I am trying to answer in brief your questions as well as I am able. I am not satisfied myself with those answers and I am willing to answer more questions if you believe this could be of any advantage for the very interesting and difficult work you have undertaken. (A) The words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any rôle in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be “voluntarily” reproduced and combined. There is, of course, a certain connection between those elements and relevant logical concepts. It is also clear that the desire to arrive finally at logically connected concepts is the emotional basis of this rather vague play with the above-mentioned elements. But taken from a psychological viewpoint, this combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought—before there is any connection with logical construction in words or other kinds of signs which can be communicated to others. (B) The above-mentioned elements are, in my case, of visual and some of muscular type. Conventional words or other signs have to be sought for laboriously only in a secondary stage, when the mentioned associative play is sufficiently established and can be reproduced at will. (C) According to what has been said, the play with the mentioned elements is aimed to be analogous to certain logical connections one is searching for. (D) Visual and motor. In a stage when words intervene at all, they are, in my case, purely auditive, but they interfere only in a secondary stage, as already mentioned. (E) It seems to me that what you call full consciousness is a limit case which can never be fully accomplished. This seems to me connected with the fact called the narrowness of consciousness (Enge des Bewusstseins).

GE wrote"

You can feed E & P into your computer for years and I promise that you will never wake up to a video screen that reads, "Cogito Ergo Sum."

I tend to agree, but it is a conjecture, there is no theory in which to place it.

If certainty, as well as 'full consciousness,' are limiting cases, then what is the nature of 'limiting cases' in general? Now we seem to be in the area of theories of universals.

Sorry for the aimless/loose post; just throwing thoughts and questions out there in case it stimulates someone else's thoughts enough to respond.

[Greylorn Ell]

GE wrote:

Certainty must be reserved as a purely theoretical concept. For example, are the three fundamental Principles of Thermodynamics certain, or approximate? My theory treats them as certainty. The U.S. Patent office does likewise.

The following is not completely on point, your post merely reminded me of it(the last couple sentences below) and it is otherwise of interest to the thread in general. It is Einstein responding to a query from a group of psychiatrists: (Einstein's thoughts about thinking followed; not reproduced. G.E.)

This was an interesting quote, relevant to any conversation about the mechanisms of thought. Thanks.

It would be interesting to get a sense of how others create new ideas. Mine require first some focus and study on a particular problem which remains unresolved, about which I've developed a sense that it should be resolved or interpreted differently than an accepted perspective. Then I go on to examine other problems and research related issues. Eventually the resolution will appear, unbidden, as if from the aether. Neither time nor language are involved in the resolution. It appears in an instant in the form of what I can only call a "pure concept," a full and complex resolution that comes without language.

Such ideas must be quickly put into language so as to establish them in the brain. This can be done by sharing them in conversation. Lacking other participants, one's little brain-voice will serve nicely. Concepts that cannot be translated will be lost. Some time ago I understood, briefly, how our relationship to "time" explains the occasional precognitive information that comes our way now and then, but its translation required a level of mathematical expertise that I do not own.

Patience is important. While some ideas appear with an overnight turnaround time, it took me over 30 years to figure out dark energy.

Your personal experiences in this would be worth sharing, and might motivate others to do the same.

]You can feed E & P into your computer for years and I promise that you will never wake up to a video screen that reads, "Cogito Ergo Sum."

I tend to agree, but it is a conjecture, there is no theory in which to place it.

You mean, no theory that you've examined.

Beon Theory proposes that no mechanism subject to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics can acquire consciousness, and that if a form of consciousness was to be introduced into such a mechanism (e.g: brain or computer), it would be unsustainable.

If certainty, as well as 'full consciousness,' are limiting cases, then what is the nature of 'limiting cases' in general? Now we seem to be in the area of theories of universals.

In the paragraph above I've defined one limiting case. I have no idea what "universals" means, so have no theories about them. Or perhaps I do, but have yet to describe them in philosophical jargon. Besides, I have no particular interest in philosophy as a field of study; to me it a simply a formal methodology with only one real purpose-- to secure high salaries for third-rate professors who couldn't have made it through a good trade school.

No one is paying me to worry about generalizations, so I get to solve actual problems.

You seem to have a genuine curiosity about the issues related to consciousness, so eventually you'll read my book-- or perhaps the revised version. I'm looking for highly critical reviewers. In the meantime, I recommend that you study the nature of energy, and the relationship between energy and entropy. I believe that you will not regret such forays into fundamental classical physics.

Sorry for the aimless/loose post; just throwing thoughts and questions out there in case it stimulates someone else's thoughts enough to respond.

Written like a well-practiced provocateur who is prepared to hide in the bushes if called to task. If you were really sorry, you'd have deleted the post.
Greylorn

[uwot]

Beon Theory proposes that no mechanism subject to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics can acquire consciousness, and that if a form of consciousness was to be introduced into such a mechanism (e.g: brain or computer), it would be unsustainable.

Do you know of any examples of consciousness that has been shown to be sustainable beyond any natural lifetime?

[Greylorn Ell]

Beon Theory proposes that no mechanism subject to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics can acquire consciousness, and that if a form of consciousness was to be introduced into such a mechanism (e.g: brain or computer), it would be unsustainable.

Do you know of any examples of consciousness that has been shown to be sustainable beyond any natural lifetime?

I've done a fair amount of past life regression work, so, yes.