I was talking to my wife about the astrophysicist's notion that time (with space) began with the Big Bang. The discussion (like that of cosmologists generally) assumed a cognitive position outside of, and objectifying, the universe. I would think that, in such a discussion of the universe, we would be talking necessarily from "within" the universe, and as such our very thoughts were both hypothetically "about" and physical expressions "of" the universe (like the fact that the cosmos is on both sides of my telescope).
Our discussion even ventured into the "problem" of time before the Big Bang, finding that its existence is psychologically necessary to our "mind's eye", as you put it, even though technically "meaningless" from the mathematical perspective of cosmologists. It's painful to acknowledge that I'm psychologically like the religious fundamentalists in that respect.
JLN wrote:Hindus and other mystics seem to assume that human consciousness is an absolute cosmic phenomenon, an expression of Atman, which in turn are expressions of the absolute and eternal Brahmin, but it would seem obvious to me that HUMAN consciousness could not have existed before the evolutionary arrival of homo sapiens sapiens. Nietzsche believed, rightly or wrongly, that consciousness developed with the emergence of language.
How is human consciousness different than any other consciousness? Maybe you and I are just using different words. What you call "human consciousness" I think I would call "ego" (or "human ego").
echi wrote:How is human consciousness different than any other consciousness?
Tell me about the other consciousness...
Echi, I would call ego SELF-consciousness. The individual's awareness of, or orientation to, something that is illusory, albeit in many respects necessary.
JLN--
Okay. That sounds good. But what is meant by "human consciousness"? Does it just mean "humans being aware"?
echi, "consciousness" as experience is very mysterious, a very difficult subject for philosophical analysis and scientific research. By this, I'm referring to the inside view of consciousness, as phenomena, not a set of "variables" distilled from reports by conscious beings in response to programmatic questions and then "modeled" into a descriptive scheme, or correlated with measureable "data" to answer theoretically charged questions. The inside view of consciousness is something you and I enjoy (as the center of our lives) but cannot get a handle on intellectually.
JLNobody--
In my view, consciousness is a bit of a nonsense word. I don't believe that it comes from anything... it just is. (Or isn't.)
echi, you may be right, but my conception of the term, consciousness, pertains to not WHAT (the content of what) I am experiencing right now, but THAT I am experiencing at all. So unlike a rock, I presume. It does seem, however, that there's a trap built into the situation of a CONSCIOUS researcher studying CONSCIOUSNESS. Perhaps there's something of a Heisenberg distortion there somewhere. I'd like to know what Focus has to say on that.
I think a philosopher who studies consciousness (at the University of Arizona--I can't remember his name; I'm sure Fresco does) said something to the effect that the study of consciousness itself may be the most difficult of philosophical problems, perhaps impossible as an "object" of study by means of consciousness.
do you have conciousness when you sleep or in meditation or are they even enhanced forms of conciousness?
I would say that sleep is a form of (un)consciousness, and meditation is an enhanced form of consciousness insofar as conception is minimized while perception is emphasized.
Aha, David Chalmers. That's the name I was trying to remember the other day. This is a great link. I think I'll just pin the address on the wall near my computer and visit it on an occasional basis. Thanks, Fresco.
Are you still concious in a coma? Do you feel fear,or love, or sense death?
That would be good to know. I leave it to neurological research to answer your question.
But I would like to know precisely what is a coma.
Ok, I can understand what you are saying, and I have an idea that is very like yours, but slightly different. IF this is perhaps, just us living in our own reality, is everyone else around us real? Are they true to us, or is circumstance and chance just a piece of what our mind needs to here? Why do we live as a first person individual, and why do we even think these thoughts? There are so many questions of the version of this that I have been thinking about, that I cannot begin to answer it.
Would going into a coma mean temporarily leaving the reality in which we have made home? Would comatosic reality be mutable?
I repeat what I said above.
I dont think its one or two realities i think we change reality every secong giving us trillions of realities. What does everyone else think.
