Can we think of consciousness as a force of nature?

I enjoy the most adolescent forms of visual science fiction; I can regress "in the service of the ego" (as Freud put it), but I prefer those stories where the aliens are VERY exotic, when we cannot even communicate with them because they are SO different. I'm frustrated when we go into other galaxies to find humanoids distinguishing themselves from us only with tatoos or bumps on their foreheads and speaking, if not English, at least thoughts that are middle class Americanish.
That's how I feel about the belief that aliens will someday fly spaceships to earth, revealing how similar they are to us.

I have to agree with that, though I tend to enjoy science fiction simply for the adventurous feeling it inspires.

But this kind of antrhopomorphizing is prevalent in all aspects of human activity, and at times I am amazed at the inability people have to even grasp that they are doing it. Maybe it is only those people who have never meditated, who have never percieved reality without "I" doing the percieving...

Yeah, maybe they--the non-meditators--are more careless in the way they see things. They are more likely, perhaps, to see projected abstractions (classes of things) rather than the concrete particularies immediately before them. They may be suffering from "hardening of the categories". Or maybe not.

Yeah, maybe they--the non-meditators--are more careless in the way they see things. They are more likely, perhaps, to see projected abstractions (classes of things) rather than the concrete particularies immediately before them. They may be suffering from "hardening of the categories". Or maybe not.

In my opinion they are suffering from a lack of creativity and an indoctrinated belief that modern assumptions are the only true understandings. I am not referring to modern knowledge here, which is something else entirely, but rather to the observation that very many seem to believe that science has completely eliminated all assumptions in our worldview.

U don 't need science fiction for THAT, Nobody.
(R u really disembodied?? Being disembodied can be FUN, and its a quick way to lose weight.)
Right in your own town, u 'll find that u can't communicate at all well even with a pussycat, nor a robin;
even chimps present major difficulties of communication. How well can u communicate with the bacteria on your own hand??
So, I guess u enjoy that. U say that u r an adolescent ?







Well, if there is any scarcity of resources among them, then economics becomes a consideration for them.
Ever hear of "panspermia" ?








I hope that thay will never come.
Thay 'd probably use their superior power to fumigate us,
as we woud to an infestation of mosquitos.

Panspermia?

Panspermia?

Yeah, Panspermia

I mean, what is it?

I mean, what is it?

Its the notion that sperm (ALL it) originated in ONE place,
not of this Earth, and was seeded here (and elsewhere).

So we have a solution at last. It was not the chicken or the egg. It was the sperm...

Yeah, THEN the egg, then the chickon.

Panspermia theory... I guess it's a creative suggestion, but is there any indication that it is anything more than a fancy idea? Are there any facts that indicate that it is relevant to reality?

So far as I 've heard, there have been discussions of comets or meteors bearing proteins to Earth.

I believe that there exist one or more meteorites
concerning which there is controversy qua whether thay show
the basic building blocks of life or not.





David

I guess time will show...

Isn't there a problem with the term "sensual concept". I think our concept of material objects is that they exist independent of the observer. The concept of the material object occurs by denying the fact that what I am seeing is a seeing and instead saying its a something in itself - e.g. a car. Now I am saying that I "say" that and that is really not correct. Better to say I think it. But even that is wrong because that thinking interpretation affects how it looks - in the same way that the line drawing of a cube can be seen with either square forward. We can even choose to consider it one way and then a short while latter it changes. So whatever you want to call that process is what is happening when the experience of the physical world occurs and I think that the result is an "object" which "is" independent of the observer. It is not my seeing a car. It is a car.

Now the alternative ontology in which objectivity is suspended has also an absolute character. Not one independent of me but absolute in the sense that its occurrence is undeniable. There is an "it" but that "it" is not external - or "I" am an "aspect" of "it" if you prefer so there is still no relativity. I think Heidegger would have agreed with you though. I think somewhere he talked of a relation. But I never thought that was right. For a relation you need a kind of separation. I suppose it is like marriage. Is it in its ultimate form a relationship? I don't think so. I think it is just a state of being one. The symbol of the Tao was conceived to represent this problem.

Still, we do walk around in it and we can meet each other so maybe you are right? I guess I don't think so. I think that if you are talking about full awareness there is no separation and that we are all one. We are not just related. We are all one.

I am well aware that things are relational action...that´s where you get it wrong...we don´t see things or classes of things we see functions that we can classify ! And they are, let me tell you once more, true functions ! What other truth would there be in them instead ? They "work" at the level and layer at which they are observed and experienced...

Good post. "Sensation" belongs in the realm of the verbal reporter/observer (Maturana). Such an observer (Dasein) has been situationally evoked or separated out from "the flow" and from that viewpoint has temporal relational ontological status.

The problem we have is that all our communication on this matter necessarily places us in verbal observer mode and it becomes perverse to deny our separation from our "object". The holistic position ultimately suggests quiesence, since separate communicators have been transcended !