[Nonduality Salon] Material Consciousness

[Guest guest]

cerosoul [Nonduality Salon] Re: Material Consciousness>P: Well, James, notice I didn't write thatconsciousness is life, but that consciousnessrequires life. So your syllogism is directedto a straw man of your own creation, and itdoesn't fit what I wrote.

 

May I ask how you are defining "life" exactly? What property would you say a plant or animal has that a television set doesn't that makes it "alive"?

 

To the biologist life is defined by such things as metabolism, reproduction, growth, response to stimuli and/or adapatation to the environment. (Though not all are necessarily present at the one time.)

 

What specifica process or chemical substance to you think leads to (or is equivalent with) consciousness?

 

>The fact is believerswill always find excuses to believe thatconsciousness doesn't require life because theywant to keep being conscious after death.

 

I really hope you can define how you are using the word "life" here as I'm getting confused! )))

 

Anyhow, to answer your point. Yes, wanting (raw desire or hope) to continue on in an afterlife could very easily predispose someone to believe that individual consciousness is a phenomenon distinct from the brain.

 

But, 'believers' may also 'believe' as they do due to some direct personal experience of the otherworldly or because they feel another philosophy, aside from materialism, is a better framework from which to discuss reality and experience.

<snip>

>So whyimagine omnipotent Gods that create anunnecessary mess?

 

Who's imagining things?

 

The everpresent and perpetual "Other" is apperceived in consciousness directly just as much as the "Self", while the empirical observations of phenomenal reality have to be filtered through the senses before they even reach consciousness!

 

Why should I or anyone give more credence to such secondary rather than our primary experience? (Particularly, when this whole idea inherently requires us to place our faith unquestioningly in the idea that phenomenal reality has some hidden self-perpetuating and self-generating substance or other governing it's laws.)

 

> Or divine tricksters and tests,when is so much simpler to propose that lifeand consciousness evolved from matter justbecause it was possible given change and timeenough.

 

Given that we have very direct evidence that consciousness exists (in the form of personal experience) and absolutely no evidence whatsoever that there is any fundamtal substance that exists how exactly can it be "much simpler to propose" that there actually is a substance and it's ultimately responsible for our existence and our being conscious? Surely, it is much more realistic to say there is a consciousness governing reality?>Of course, I have no proof, only the arrow ofreason pointing that way. Let believers wanderdown the twisting alleyways trying to make thecrooked ways straight.

 

You have no proof - but the other guy is the 'believer'.... Hmm.... Are you sure?

 

Regards,

Stephen