28 Mar 20
@torunn saidIt's a strange thing to confess but I feel like I do live forever. I mean you can't 'be' dead because death is not a state of 'being'. All you can know and all you can 'be' is alive. We are human beings and cannot 'be' human not beings. Our time lasts as long as we do and we can never know anything other than that time. Maybe everybody knows that, but doesn't like talking about it?? it doesn't really matter if you believe that includes 'after life' or not. All you can be is in a state of being and you will never 'be' or experience 'not being' as that is by definition impossible.
"Who wants to live forever...?"
29 Mar 20
@hope said1. "Free will" is a self-concept which is necessary for humans to feel that they are themselves. Anyway the world is complex and we just can't imagine that it just "goes through the motions".
1. Free will is an illusion
2. The idea of "I could have said or done something different" in any given situation is preposterous. No one in the history of the world has ever said or done "something different". They did or said what they did.
3. Everyone is doing the best they can. Sometimes the best they can is crap. These two assertions are not mutually exclusive.
2. What is is. We have to deal with it (oh and that is another act of free will 😉 )
3. Everbody tries to go for their goals regardless. But having personal goals sounds again like free will, only if these "goals" are just another trick of "them".
@petewxyz saidWe are all part of the universe - it's where we came from and it's where we will return. That's what we all know, and then, if we can imagine an existence beyond that, that's where we differ. I can, it is my personal reality.
It's a strange thing to confess but I feel like I do live forever. I mean you can't 'be' dead because death is not a state of 'being'. All you can know and all you can 'be' is alive. We are human beings and cannot 'be' human not beings. Our time lasts as long as we do and we can never know anything other than that time. Maybe everybody knows that, but doesn't like talking ab ...[text shortened]... tate of being and you will never 'be' or experience 'not being' as that is by definition impossible.
@torunn saidStar Trek: Picard E10 S01
"Who wants to live forever...?"
Data, the android who had spent his whole life trying to become more human, tells his old captain that he would like to be switched off once and for all...
Picard: "You want to die?"
Data: "Not exactly. I want to live - however briefly - knowing my life is finite. Mortality gives meaning to human life. Peace, love, friendship, these are precious because we know they cannot endure. A butterfly that lives forever is really not a butterfly at all."
29 Mar 20
2 edits
@torunn saidSomething I was thinking of saying when @hope raised the hard problem of the seat of consciousness fits well with what you are saying so I thought I would share some thought I had whilst reading the Christof Koch book Consciousness (I should be on a commission)
We are all part of the universe - it's where we came from and it's where we will return. That's what we all know, and then, if we can imagine an existence beyond that, that's where we differ. I can, it is my personal reality.
In essence it occurs to me that if every understood area of brain is subservient to consciousness as opposed to housing it then maybe we look for the seat in the patterns of information within the rapid flowing pathways through the substance of the brain. If you consider the speed with which the digital information carrying this post is travelling round the world and you compare the size of the world to the size of your brain you get a picture of a blur of movement such that you would think of percentage occupancy of different brain areas in a sort of probability of where you might be as opposed to exact location kind of way. This would be a good fit with functional MRI scans showing different areas of brain in play to lesser or greater extents in different states of emotion and different contexts. It would also be a good fit with psychodynamic observations of different layers of meaning with different aspects of mind contributing to thought and communication (contributions from the more primitive and more executive in varying proportions through time) in different contexts and states of emotion.
So the fit with what @Torunn is saying, is that it separates consciousness from physical structure and moves it into electrochemical patterns that are using physical structure. I couldn't possibly get there as elegantly as the book for the next bit which isn't my thinking, but if you then apply the scientific notion that you can't get something from nothing it gets you into all kinds of curious questions about where it has come from within new life and of course where it then goes!
The other possibility is that I should drink less coffee although I already never drink it!
29 Mar 20
@ponderable saidI have to ask you for your opinion, ponderable. It's not a rhetorical question I ask, as there is no way I know the answer.
1. "Free will" is a self-concept which is necessary for humans to feel that they are themselves. Anyway the world is complex and we just can't imagine that it just "goes through the motions".
2. What is is. We have to deal with it (oh and that is another act of free will 😉 )
3. Everbody tries to go for their goals regardless. But having personal goals sounds again like free will, only if these "goals" are just another trick of "them".
We humans (and all creatures) are gifted with such things as pain, hunger, and thirst to guide us to survive. The senses, the intelligence, the opposable thumb and digits is how we "accomplish" but our pain/hunger/thirst are clearly the tugs and stimulus that steer us in the right direction. I see it as the humans (and all creatures) were designed to survive. That is our fate, so to speak.
With that said... Of what purpose is a sense of being? What, a biological blob like a human robot can't survive without this sense? of course it can.
So why the sense of "self"?? I am not sure I get this. Any ideas?
29 Mar 20
1 edit
@earl-of-trumps saidIf I may, I think it is interesting that all of the literature ascribing a desire to have a sense of being, or a sense of purpose, was written by a species who has that same sense of being and/or purpose. We love to assign a desire to be "fully" human to non-human replicants (I use this precise word for this inspired by the movie Blade Runner ). I suppose it is our way of celebrating a feeling of being "alive", and we feel non-alive androids would desire this.
I have to ask you for your opinion, ponderable. It's not a rhetorical question I ask, as there is no way I know the answer.
We humans (and all creatures) are gifted with such things as pain, hunger, and thirst to guide us to survive. The senses, the intelligence, the opposable thumb and digits is how we "accomplish" but our pain/hunger/thirst are clearly the tugs an ...[text shortened]... t this sense? of course it can.
So why the sense of "self"?? I am not sure I get this. Any ideas?
29 Mar 20
@suzianne saidWhy did Philip Dick write 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' in the first place? (and I really wish Blade Runner had kept that title). For me he was exploring exactly what I was referring to in terms of the search for the seat of consciousness within the anatomy of the human being. If you think of the human being using a software and hardware paradigm then I was sort of speculating that the seat of consciousness was in the software which for me takes you straight into Philip Dick's question, if you load the android with enough material from the memory of a different human existence do they take on human existence, such that consciousness has been derived from what was loaded in rather than the structures containing it?
If I may, I think it is interesting that all of the literature ascribing a desire to have a sense of being, or a sense of purpose, was written by a species who has that same sense of being and/or purpose. We love to assign a desire to be "fully" human to non-human replicants (I use this precise word for this inspired by the movie Blade Runner ). I suppose it is our way of celebrating a feeling of being "alive", and we feel non-alive androids would desire this.
30 Mar 20
@petewxyz saidIt's a sci-fi story. I find it interesting that we think the human condition is so great that we even start believing that non-humans would desire to be human. But then, we can only see through the window from our side.
Why did Philip Dick write 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' in the first place? (and I really wish Blade Runner had kept that title). For me he was exploring exactly what I was referring to in terms of the search for the seat of consciousness within the anatomy of the human being. If you think of the human being using a software and hardware paradigm then I was sort of ...[text shortened]... hat consciousness has been derived from what was loaded in rather than the structures containing it?
30 Mar 20
@suzianne saidYou are a prime example for seeing things from your side of the window! 😉
It's a sci-fi story. I find it interesting that we think the human condition is so great that we even start believing that non-humans would desire to be human. But then, we can only see through the window from our side.
-VR