universe- why is it here?

It doesn't appear the original poster is taking an interest in this.I'll use this thread to see what the response might be to more eastern philosophy. Most debates here seem to be between the Judeo-Christian revealed faith group and the Greek rationalist science group. Both viewpoints tend to ignore the observer in favor of the observed.What is consciousness, awareness of being? Is the universe aware? Is it conscious? and if not then what is? The Buddhist formulate it without a divinity, the Advaitist call it Brahman or the Godhead yet both viewpoints are non dual, very much the same thing I think. This is one Universe of interdependant and interacting processes of one whole. None of us is separate from it though the ego idea results in a feeling of separation. Revealed western religion and other popular religions are belief structures to meet the needs of the ego. Buddha means Awake. When the illusions and fantasies of the ego disolve who or what is it can be said to wake up?Ramana Maharshi would return a philosophical question to the questioner. Who is it that wants to know why the universe is here? Who is it that is aware of being? If consciousness is the last mystery and I think it might be then who or what can solve it?I have a dim recall of an exchange of two Zen Buddhist. I don't remember their names. The first asked the second, "Where is the Buddha?". The second one called the first by name who replied, "Yes?" and was then asked, "Where are you?"Ask why the universe is here? Where would you be if it wasn't? The answer may not be out there either in revealed religion or researched science. The answer may be that that asks the question. It may be that which sees and not the seen at all, or rather that which sees is that which it sees...non dual.lfen

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What is consciousness, awareness of being?

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A self-monitoring information transaction.

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None of us is separate from it though the ego idea results in a feeling of separation.

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Correct - the ego exists so I don't get integrated into the universe through a wolfs belly.

Hi Contracycle, A cryptically succinct definition. Where and how do you see the transaction taking place? My first guess is the central nervous system?
And this definition would suggest you see consciousness as an emergent property rather than fundamental? Correct? or "Correction - etc". I was saying the ego doesn't exist except as an idea or illusion. I'm interrested in what you see as the distinction between the "ego" and "I". The atoms and molecules of our bodies are just passing through. An organism eating an organism is a transformational activity. Structures arise out of structures and change. Sooner or later all bodies die and enter new forms. Wouldn't it be more accurate if your statement read, "the ego exists to delay my getting intergrated into the universe through a wolfs belly for as long as possible hopefully until I die of old age."???

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A cryptically succinct definition. Where and how do you see the transaction taking place? My first guess is the central nervous system? And this definition would suggest you see consciousness as an emergent property rather than fundamental?

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Correct. I think consciousness is an information systems' monitoring of its own integrity and processes. And yes, thenlocus would be the CNS, with the caveat that theres probably a lot of hormonal and neurotransmitter stuff going on as well; I don;t only mean 'in the nerves'.

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Wouldn't it be more accurate if your statement read, "the ego exists to delay my getting intergrated into the universe through a wolfs belly for as long as possible hopefully until I die of old age."???

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Yes it would. But where we differ slightly is your claim that the ego is an idea or illusion. This is where, IMO, information theory lets us cut through a lot of psychobabble. A signal or message can be said to be 'an illusion' at one level, and tangibly real at another. If I see a person on TV, I am only seeing an illusion of that person... but light from the CRT is still actually falling on my retina.Thus, ego is an 'illusion', because it is a 'programme', but is also real for the same reason. To the organism, that programme has a real and useful function - self-preservation. Whether or not survival is an important issue in the grand scheme of things is a 'meaning of life' question.

This would appear to go along the lines Damasio and Crick are exploring each in their own way. And this is very important research and will be very useful. This is looking to find consciousness as an emergent property of complex systems. For myself I can see how complex systems can represent themselves but I can't yet imagine how that results in the awareness that I am. This is partly the issue of how we experience "qualia" but perhaps more importantly how we have a sense that I know that I am. Looking at an organism it suddenly strikes me that almost all its functions are self preservative or specie perservative. I recently read an author who was a specialist in the immune system where he disagreed with another writer who said that the immune system was part of the brain and nervous system. He disagreed only because the immune system was far older and he thought it would be more proper to regard the brain and nervous system as part of the immune system. Unfortunately I can't remember the author's name at the moment but I like that idea.We may be using differing definitions of the consciousness and ego. I'll just note now that ego is not the only self preservation process and it may not be the most reliable process. I'm not sure I would use illusion in that sense of the word. Few people would mistake the television image for a person actually being in the room. I'm thinking of illusion more in the sense of a distortion of information processing or false conclusions about information. I'll grab a quick example and it may not be the best, but I'm trying to keep this witht he t.v. example. What if I talked to the image because I thought it was a person? The illusion of the ego that I'm speaking about is that the processes of the organism are experienced by an entity, a permanent entity. I'm using concepts from Buddhism and Advaita which you may find flawed but I wouldn't characterize their philosophy as psychobabble as it's not based on western pyschological theory or practise. Self preservation until DNA has been replicated and propagated. Organisms as DNA's way to make more DNA. But I'm not identifying the ego with the self preservation programs. My claim is that the organism can preserve it's self and function quite well without the illusion that it consistutes a permanent entity. I'm not saying without an ego, but without the illusion that the ego is a permanent entity.If consciousness is an emergent property of highly compex organisms then it disappears when that complexity ceases its function. An eastern based position that I am favoring here asserts conscious, not what it's aware of, but simply that it is aware is a fundamental, perhaps the fundamental property of the universe. At this point I don't belive there are any proofs of this or of the emergent notion. But the eastern approach factors in the observer, whereas the religious and scientic approach don't pay as much attention to the role the observer plays in these questions.I'm guessing Wittgenstein could easily demostrate that "Universe - why is it here" is a meaningless sentence. I'm pointing out that the more fundanmental questions to be addressed are why am I here, how do I know I am here, and what or who am I. Am I information? Information about information? Or am I awareness itself looking at the contents of this nervous system and body, but not identical with those contents and that body.edited because I clicked on the wrong button when attempting to preview.lfenThis message has been edited by lfen, 07-07-2004 06:24 PM

I've said it to a lot of people before, and I'll be more than happy to say it again(directed at the proverbial Feynman, not you ofcourse):NO AMOUNT OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE CAN CHANGE THE FACT THAT YOUR PHILOSOPHY IS FULL OF SHITand honestly, I want a bumpersticker that says that. No offense against scientists in general so PLEASE DON'T start calling me a fundie who is biased against science or anything, but what you showed me just reinforced my observations that scientists aren't philosophers...This message has been edited by Born2Preach, 07-07-2004 07:28 PM

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Wanna feel God? Step onto the wrestling mat and you'd be crazy to deny the uplifting spirit. http://www.BadPreacher.5u.com (incomplete, but look anyway!)

B2P Good bloody thing. No real progress would ever be made otherwise.

Yeowch.(Edited in) You do realize that I was NOT saying philosophers were better than scientists, right?This message has been edited by Born2Preach, 07-07-2004 08:56 PM

what if all consciousness resides in a hidden dimension of string theory such that certain strings passing thru that dimension acquire by vibration difference a kind of 10111010 code that when combined with other strings goes towards programming/software to operate us complex systems/hardware in our 4d universe......now wouldn't that be a theory of everythingIf buddha were around now what would he do for a job ???

Bout the same as: I suppose.What mathematics are you studying?lfen

Sidelined, I'd have to agree with B2P here. You are using the "appeal to inappropriate authority" fallacy.Here is an example of one:World famous pediatricians doctor Thomas and doctor Smith are absolutely convinced that today's youths have no morals whatsoever.See anything wrong with this sentence?

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The Laminator

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a rose by any other name still smells like pooh......part of the joy of free will in life is making it up as you go

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For myself I can see how complex systems can represent themselves but I can't yet imagine how that results in the awareness that I am. This is partly the issue of how we experience "qualia" but perhaps more importantly how we have a sense that I know that I am.

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Based on prior conversations, I'm not dure that 'qualia' is a meaningful category, becuase it seems purely definitional rather than observational. But putting that aside, if the machine REFERENCES ITSELF - like doing a table lookup of some kind - and also has a mechanism to monitor that self reference, then it MUST be self aware. Thats what the system is built to do. And that, I contend, is the sense of knowing that you are.

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We may be using differing definitions of the consciousness and ego. I'll just note now that ego is not the only self preservation process and it may not be the most reliable process.

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Sure; but it does not need to be reliable or universal in application. A foot will not save you in all circumstances, but still contributes to your survival.

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I'm not sure I would use illusion in that sense of the word. Few people would mistake the television image for a person actually being in the room. I'm thinking of illusion more in the sense of a distortion of information processing or false conclusions about information. I'll grab a quick example and it may not be the best, but I'm trying to keep this witht he t.v. example. What if I talked to the image because I thought it was a person?

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But exactly. You say few people will mistake a TV image for a person; thats true, but thats only brecuase we know what TV is and someething about how it works. Without that knowledge, it would be quite easy to come to 'false conclusions' about the image you see.And under certain circumstances, you'd be foolish not to talk to the image you see; if you were looking at a video intercom system as might be found on secure buildings, talking to the image exactly as if it were a person would be the right thing to do.

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The illusion of the ego that I'm speaking about is that the processes of the organism are experienced by an entity, a permanent entity. I'm using concepts from Buddhism and Advaita which you may find flawed but I wouldn't characterize their philosophy as psychobabble as it's not based on western pyschological theory or practise.

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Well, I'll grant that but claim that the theistically informed language which buddhism uses is vague in much the same way as western psychobabble. This is what I am addressing with the 'illusion' issue. The construction we are dealing with is one in which illusion is used as indicative of false-ness, misunderstanding, but with a more sophisticated understanding of information theory we can make more intelligent use of concepts like illusion. Its not as cut and dried a disinction as the buddhists believed, becuase information is as real as matter.

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Self preservation until DNA has been replicated and propagated. Organisms as DNA's way to make more DNA. But I'm not identifying the ego with the self preservation programs. My claim is that the organism can preserve it's self and function quite well without the illusion that it consistutes a permanent entity. I'm not saying without an ego, but without the illusion that the ego is a permanent entity.

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Ars longa, vita brevis. The illusion that we have of ourselves as a permanent entity is limited by the fact we recognise our own mortality. Sure, subjectively, the ego does not feel that it will be truncated, but its always difficult for something to comprehend the context in which it is set. Despite the ego's denial, I submit most people do not have a sense of being a permanent entity, as we are well aware of death.

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If consciousness is an emergent property of highly compex organisms then it disappears when that complexity ceases its function.

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Exactly right.

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An eastern based position that I am favoring here asserts conscious, not what it's aware of, but simply that it is aware is a fundamental, perhaps the fundamental property of the universe.

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OK, but why. Why should it be fundamental, and how have we come to this conclusion?You see, this is exactly the sort of confusion I think arose in pre-technical societies grappling with information theory; the only language by which they could discuss entities that existed as process rather than matter was to construct 'spirit'.

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At this point I don't belive there are any proofs of this or of the emergent notion. But the eastern approach factors in the observer, whereas the religious and scientic approach don't pay as much attention to the role the observer plays in these questions.

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Correct, and IMO, rightly. Why SHOULD we 'factor in the observer'; the whole point of developing a rigorous explorative process is to extract insights from the world we experience that apply to all observers. Again I say 'factor in the observer' amounts to psychobabble without a methodological claim as to why we should and what is meant by the term. I mean,t I would argue that science does exactly factor in the observer by requiring independant reproducibility. The obsewrver is acknowledged as part of the process, but that introduces some problems which we address procedurally.

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I'm pointing out that the more fundanmental questions to be addressed are why am I here, how do I know I am here, and what or who am I. Am I information? Information about information? Or am I awareness itself looking at the contents of this nervous system and body, but not identical with those contents and that body.

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Well you see, I would think that 'awareness... looking at the contents of this nervous system' is exactly 'information about information', or indeed the 'self-monitoring transaction' I initially indicated. But 'awareness itself' s a meaningless concept; awareness is a property of physicality.

LamSorry Lam I should have placed a smiley face at the end of that sentence. I do believe that science is hardly non-philisophical but that scientists do not concern themselves with the things that philosophers do.When science discovers phiosophers argue the ramifications of the discovery like tourists following the explorers.
They seldom pick up on the just how much a change of the view of the world is involved in the discovery of new knowledge.Of course scientists are no better than phlosophers as people in their relations with the world.

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You see a book lying on a table. You know there's a force due to gravity acting on that book. If you take that force (on the book and due to gravity) as the "action," what then is the "reaction" as required by Newton's third law?

contra,
A very thought provoking reply. I've too little time this morning to reply to it. I'm wondering if you could recommend a book or two that you consider a good introduction to information theory? I did a brief google search and found some sites on the internet. The impression I got was that it was very mathematical analysis of entropy, noise, and data transmission arising from the computer field. But that is a first impression based on maybe 10 minutes of poking around on the net.now I must get ready to be off to work.
edit adding this: I'll respond to your post most likely this evening.lfenThis message has been edited by lfen, 07-08-2004 09:22 AM