Must the First Cause be Conscious/Self-Aware?

Discuss arguments for existence of God and faith in general. Any aspect of any orientation toward religion/spirituality, as long as it is based upon a positive open to other people attitude.

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Re: Must the First Cause be Conscious/Self-Aware?

Post by QuantumTroll » Tue Oct 21, 2008 5:58 am

Metacrock wrote:before you read this answer I want you to remember in this post you said something like "why can only you think about God, why can't I think about God too." I have given a flip answer below, but I shouldn't. In thinking twice I should give a serious answer.

Of course you can think about God all you want and you have as much probability of getting it right as I do. But I know form the experinces I have had of God, what I think of "mystical" that God is not reducible to any physical qualia or any physical aspects of the universe.

trying to reduce God to that level is a huge mistake.
Says you. But you've already demonstrated that you can't fathom that a reductionist can honestly and consistently believe in the value of life. So it is no wonder that you think what you think. ;)

God is conscious and has/is a mind, correct? Then He is (or can be thought of) as an object.
NooooOOOOo, because God is not merely a conscious object. Consciousness is not like you think, a thing in each individual that is only shared by that eon individual individually one at a time. It's one thing, like a substance, and all individuals part take of it, like being itself. Thus God is that one thing, that consciousness, not an individual, one of many, but the whole the thing, the the basis of it, and all individuals who are conscious share in that one thing.

god is not an object because he's the basis of all that is. He's not just another thing among many things, but the original basic thing that makes all others be. Understand now?
Only objects can have heads. I'll just keep right on going, and if you disagree with that then you yourself ought to refrain from speaking of God as an object.
do you mean because I say "mind of God?" Obviously that's just a metaphor.[/quote]
Well, why don't you read what I'm saying as a metaphor, then? If you say, metaphorically, God is conscious, God has a mind, and existence is in God's head, then God can metaphorically be considered an object with some properties. And these properties are what we're talking about. Happy?
If it's sooo far removed, then why are you so adamantly against this other perspective? Is it a bad thing to have a concept of God that is at least somewhat consistent with our universe?
your view is not consist with the universe. Your reduces God to something less than God. it makes God into an other thing in his own creation along side ostriches and swizzle sticks.
It is not consistent with the universe to posit a big man on a throne up in the could with great imaginary powers. It is consistent with the universe to talk about Being itself.
And Being itself is conscious and loving and soforth. I don't literally mean a Big Man On Throne any more than you do when you talk about God. I'm simply talking about a few things that God supposedly does and/or has. Not my fault that turns into a view that is not consistent with the universe. Remember, I don't believe in a conscious God with a mind in the first place, I'm just exploring the consequences of theism.
If God can be characterized as "something more than information" (proof that God can be characterized as that: certainly God is not less than some mere information, is He? QED), then we can say some very definite things about God, namely that He needs to be at least a 1-dimensional bitstring. This isn't just a rule that God made up, it's a property of information. If God breaks that rule, then He is not in fact "something more than information".
you are and all atheists make some starlingly absurd arguments. It's like you somehow believe ni a secret God but you just admit that it's a god. But it controls everything, nothing can defy it, it defines all that is; laws of nature. But then when someone ways "where are these laws of nature kept? where do they come from? [snip]

why would you ever think that God doesn't invent ideas like laws of nature and information? you say "God has no control it's the nature of nature of information. It's the nature of information in a world where God created the nature of information.
Fine, God created the nature of information, and God does not in any way contain information. Great! But I don't get what we could possibly say about God in this case.

As for "where is this mysterious "information" to be found? do you find it up in the sky? Is it written ot the bottoms of quarks? How can there be "information" without a mind to contain it?" . It seems bizarre to me that a mind would be the only thing that can contain information. Information is contained in the relationships between beings. If a pile of particles have nothing in common, they contain a maximum of information. This is stored with the particles themselves. Here, I use "particles" as a stand-in for literally anything, be they electrons, post-it notes, or ant colonies.
You may say that God is neither "something more than information" nor "NOT something more than information", because information is a word that does not apply outside our universe. In which case, I simply want to know how come you're allowed to say things about God and I apparently am not. So I hope this will not be in your response...
because you don't reason them out, you say them tailored to fall prey to your arguments. It makes no kind of sense at all to say God is subject to physical law.
That's not quite fair. This is the Socratic Method. We explore the space of ideas by asking pointed questions. That is reasoning them out. Don't blame me that your ideas are so crooked that I can't figure them out on my own, hey?
but show me there this strange substance called "information" is found? show me the empirical proof that it exists and where it's foudn an how you know?
First, we need a definition. Let's say that information is the state of a system. This is both intuitive, simple, and general, given that a system is well understood and its state is well-defined. The proof supplies itself when you pick a system. Let's use the planet Earth, and the strength of gravity you feel right now is information about the number of hadrons that makes up the Earth (the Earth's state). Good enough?
I did read Plato. I can appreciate the Forms as a metaphor for language, and I can appreciate the Forms as a philosophy that overcomes the problem of Becoming, and I can appreciate the Forms as a philosophy of mathematics. But Plato thought his Forms were "really real". And they're not. He didn't know about atoms and molecules, about properties like momentum and wavelength, about mathematics beyond geometry and simple fractions. While I appreciate Plato's thoughts, I accept that they fall flat as a model of reality.
you have no proof what so ever that the froms aren't real. The atomists were pre Socratic. so he did know about the atomists. Those are different systems but they could both exist at the same time. Besides. I'm not a pure Platonist, I'm an Augustinian. He put the froms in the mind of God. That's what I'm saying: God is analogous to the Platonic forms. They did not have an objective physical existence, they existed in a higher reality. This world is just like a reflection in a puddle of water to that true reality of the forms.
Sure, I can't prove that the Forms aren't real, but I can show that the philosophy of Forms is inferior in many respects at describing, explaining, and predicting aspects of our experience. I'm not directly familiar with the Augustinian take on Plato.
do you ask Buddhists "in Nirvana when everything is one and its' all just this one montlyic reality where is it stored?"
Which Buddhists? Pretty sure I could talk the Dalai Lama into a more-than-zero dimensional Nirvana if I had the chance (if he doesn't believe it already). He's open to new ideas and respects science and mathematics as valid perspectives on the world. If I told him that it is mathematically impossible for a zero-dimensional point to contain reality, then he might accept it and ponder the consequences.
aghahaha that so laughable. ahaha how absurd. you think you are going to talk this guy into giving up this tradition that's like 5000 years old (Tabitan goes back before Buddhism it's based upon Ban). that's so absurd and arrogant. totally arrogant. Don't Europeans know anything bout imperialism these days?
No, I wouldn't even try to talk the Dalai Lama into giving up Tibetan Buddhism. I would try to inform him about some mathematics, is all. Gelug Buddhists see people who achieve Buddhahood as people for whom there is no limit to helping others. Nirvana is about reaching the true self and giving up the cycle of rebirth and suffering. It is not a zero-dimensional place you "go to", so I don't see why the Dalai Lama would have any issue with the notion that existence requires some space. Moreover, the Dalai Lama constantly makes overtures to modernization and regularly has talks with scientists about the implications of their respective fields.

There's no need to be a dick, dick.
I understood Vedanta as the understanding of the true nature of reality, and Brahmin is reality. So the answer is that Brahmin is all around us, partially stored in the very chair I sit on, and Vedanta is stored in the brains of enlightened ones. Of course, in a religion like Hinduism, this is probably just one of many interpretations...
Vedanta says atom = Braman and everything is Bramin but that doesn't mean its' in your head. its' not like that's where they keep it.

Well if everything is analogs to thought in the mind of God then obviously it's everywhere and nowhere.
Can't you read? I did not say that Brahmin is in your head, I said that Vedanta, the understanding of reality is in your head. Brahmin is contained in the reality around you (and about 2 pounds in your head, of course). If it is analogous to thought in the mind of God, then it's everywhere and definitely not nowhere.
I suspect "being itself" is stored in the fabric of space-time in the form of various fields that vary across space and time. You know, physics.
that's wrong physical aspects of the universe are "the beings." They are not being itself, being itself is everywhere and no where.
Being itself is in the beings. The beings are themselves.
I further suspect that there is a manifold in which the apparent wave-like motion of quantized elements in these fields in space through time reduces to a much simpler motion of particles on some sort of graph. And this motion can be expressed as a cellular automaton on that graph. What that cellular automaton is, and what sort of "hardware" it "runs on", I haven't a clue, but this is as far as my physical and computational intuition (plus a liberal reading of some interesting papers on arxiv) goes.
you are just trying to reduce God to something you can control. But what you are describing is part of the beings it is not being itself.
This was just for entertainment purposes. My statement above still stands, the beings exist on their own.
In any case, Being Itself doesn't contain any information and doesn't do anything.
that's ludicrous. you have no right or authority to say that. show me some information? show me where it is and prove it's there.
I need a right or authority to say stuff? Who the hell are you? Who gives out authority? :roll:
It's a theoretical construct it' s really there there. But moreover, a lot of physicists have use the theory of information to try and argue that this is proves that consciousness is a basic property of nature and that information is art of god's mind. This is the basic link between God's imagination and the physical reality. A guy named Toma in j of c studies.
The notion that consciousness is a fundamental property of nature is intriguing. I've thought about that quite a bit, actually. Unfortunately, the thought didn't lead anywhere except entertaining imaginations about conscious rocks and suns and whatnot. This wasn't interesting because

A) It is one "thing" explaining one observable phenomenon (human consciousness), which is not a very general explanation at all. Occam frowns and starts sharpening his razor, you know?
B) It doesn't help us characterize consciousness at all. I just don't see what this hypothesis teaches us, except that computers really can become conscious and perhaps there are consciousnesses that we haven't found yet. But I already suspected both of those are true.
C) No proof, no falsifiability, at least not AFAIK.

It doesn't (to me) even hint at any independent existence, so the question of where it is stored is completely arbitrary. Might as well stick it with that which is, then no?
don't do an HRG. that's what you are doing. Here's a ooky spooky term you are willing to bet I don't know about, it' makes you feel like you are on your turf. so you will use in a very invalid way playing little smoke and mirror games to make me think and to convene yourself that you said something that disproves God.
Huh? First of all, who is disproving God? Second of all, which ooky spooky term? All I'm doing is putting the Ground of Being with the beings that are instead of (as you suggest) in some separate category with ultraspecial importance.

but you can't show any kind of link to God from information without demonstrating the existence of God.[/quote]

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Re: Must the First Cause be Conscious/Self-Aware?

Post by KR Wordgazer » Wed Oct 22, 2008 3:03 pm

QuantumTroll wrote: Then I have just one question: in a "space" of no space or time, no dimensions at all, how/where is this mind stored? A non-dimensional object is a mathematical point. A point has no room for anything, let alone an expansive array of cognitive states. Perhaps more importantly, why is this concept of God so important when it seems to be logically and mathematically impossible? Why not allow your God a few space-time dimensions to exist?
I'd be interested to know what you think of Peter Russell's ideas, Quantum.

http://www.peterrussell.com/SG/IONS.php

It seems to me that if he's right, and consciousness is something differeent-- an anomoly to physics-- and if time is not the steady moment-by-moment thing we experience-- then consciousness may not require a physical space-time world to "move around" in. The Mind of God may function according to its own internal logic, which has nothing to do with physics.
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Re: Must the First Cause be Conscious/Self-Aware?

Post by Metacrock » Wed Oct 22, 2008 7:03 pm

KR Wordgazer wrote:
QuantumTroll wrote: Then I have just one question: in a "space" of no space or time, no dimensions at all, how/where is this mind stored? A non-dimensional object is a mathematical point. A point has no room for anything, let alone an expansive array of cognitive states. Perhaps more importantly, why is this concept of God so important when it seems to be logically and mathematically impossible? Why not allow your God a few space-time dimensions to exist?
I'd be interested to know what you think of Peter Russell's ideas, Quantum.

http://www.peterrussell.com/SG/IONS.php

It seems to me that if he's right, and consciousness is something differeent-- an anomoly to physics-- and if time is not the steady moment-by-moment thing we experience-- then consciousness may not require a physical space-time world to "move around" in. The Mind of God may function according to its own internal logic, which has nothing to do with physics.

that's what I've been saying.
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Re: Must the First Cause be Conscious/Self-Aware?

Post by KR Wordgazer » Wed Oct 22, 2008 7:55 pm

I know, Joe. So I found this other guy-- apparently he worked directly with Steven Hawking-- as additional support. :D
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Re: Must the First Cause be Conscious/Self-Aware?

Post by Metacrock » Wed Oct 22, 2008 8:25 pm

KR Wordgazer wrote:I know, Joe. So I found this other guy-- apparently he worked directly with Steven Hawking-- as additional support. :D

that's great, thanks. I could use it.
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Re: Must the First Cause be Conscious/Self-Aware?

Post by Metacrock » Wed Oct 22, 2008 8:33 pm

look it Kristen. here's what he says here:
I realized that the hard problem of consciousness was not a problem to be solved so much as the trigger that would, in time, push Western science into what the American philosopher Thomas Kuhn called a "paradigm shift."
exactly what I was arguing on carm when the fool ass wipe said "everything single thing you say is so stupid."

so I guess this must be so stupid. It's exactly what my materialism vanishes argument says!

thanks for showing me this article! :mrgreen:
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Re: Must the First Cause be Conscious/Self-Aware?

Post by KR Wordgazer » Wed Oct 22, 2008 10:17 pm

Yeah, it surprised me how much he sounded like you. :D

Of course, he references Chalmers too, so you share an influence.

I think he makes too big a jump when he decides that all consciousness is God; but a lot of what he says really makes sense to me.
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Re: Must the First Cause be Conscious/Self-Aware?

Post by Metacrock » Thu Oct 23, 2008 12:22 am

KR Wordgazer wrote:Yeah, it surprised me how much he sounded like you. :D

Of course, he references Chalmers too, so you share an influence.

I think he makes too big a jump when he decides that all consciousness is God; but a lot of what he says really makes sense to me.

but I have said God is the source of consciousness and our individual consciousnesses share in it just as our individual beings share in being itself. He's making an "itself" he just doesn't have the theological vocabulary to say it in Tillichese.
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Re: Must the First Cause be Conscious/Self-Aware?

Post by KR Wordgazer » Thu Oct 23, 2008 12:26 am

But you don't say, "I am God," which is what he says, Metacrock. To him, that's what it all boils down to. That consciousness is God-- therefore he is God.
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Re: Must the First Cause be Conscious/Self-Aware?

Post by QuantumTroll » Thu Oct 23, 2008 6:49 am

KR Wordgazer wrote: I'd be interested to know what you think of Peter Russell's ideas, Quantum.

http://www.peterrussell.com/SG/IONS.php

It seems to me that if he's right, and consciousness is something differeent-- an anomoly to physics-- and if time is not the steady moment-by-moment thing we experience-- then consciousness may not require a physical space-time world to "move around" in. The Mind of God may function according to its own internal logic, which has nothing to do with physics.
I've read the webpage you linked to, it was nice. A lot of what he says there is exactly the same as what I've come to realize in my own way, including meditation by releasing the mind until it shuts up and finds itself in comfort and self-acceptance. The main difference is perhaps that I haven't done meditation so thorough, and I did it in a completely different context (starting with what I later learned was mindfulness meditation, which turned silent after a time). The end result is that I interpret the state of the silent mind differently. The idea that consciousness must be a primary quality of the cosmos is something I thought a lot about during my first two undergrad years at college. My conclusions then were basically that this assumption is really hard to confirm or deny, it does answer a big question, but it also poses more big questions, so I tentatively decided to be skeptical of the notion.

I like the way he points out that this state is experienced identically by all people, that's not something I have thought of before. While I accept the idea that the meditative state is a "state of consciousness" in its own right, I'm not sure I agree with his characterization of it as something totally pure and free of thinking, and therefore universal. But again, I doubt that I reached the same mental state Russel did, and this article has convinced me I ought to resume practicing more seriously.

Since I think that thinking and brain activity are one and the same, I think fMRI scans would be an objective way to determine whether we're literally not thinking during transcendent meditation, and here and here are such studies. There are many more, some of which I've browsed. From these, it seems to me more likely that Russel's perception of the meditative state is not correct. While meditation is a special state of mind and is characterized by the lack of perceived thought, the mind is not really quiet after all.

Putting aside all these specifics for the moment, what I do I think about the main thesis of Russel's article, namely the analogy between physical light and consciousness? It's an attractive notion, but Russel makes the photon seem more mysterious than it really is. Light is very precisely and concretely known by its mathematical description. If consciousness were a fundamental part of the universe, on par with space-time and energy, then it should be possible to formulate a similarly concrete description of consciousness. The way this would be done is by figuring out how the physical and consciousness are connected. Regardless of the nature of consciousness, somehow the brain does something that sends sensory information and memories to your consciousness, and that connection will tell us a lot about what consciousness is. The bottom line is that I'm agnostic on the question of consciousness and optimistic that we'll get some answers in the future. And when I'm agnostic (i.e. suspending final judgment) on something, my habit is to apply Ockham's Razor. In this case that means I think that consciousness is not an additional fundamental element of the universe, but rather a product of the known elements. This was a very interesting article, but in the end it didn't provide me with anything new to change my mind on this question. We'll see if more meditation does the job ;)

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