Dear Edgar, you use words in your nicely flowing text that raise questions in my 'mind'(?) while reading them.
*Consciousness "ITSELF"?* what may be your take on consciousness (not itself)? I mean: the term Ccness as used by diverse authors in diverse contexts applied to their ways of thinking. (As I wrote several times including this list as well: my take is: *Response to Relations*, changed from Response to information, because info became hard to handle in general sense. I have no definition for 'relations' because our (infinite) inventory is incomplete (to put it mildly). No mind(?), no life, no human/animal included. I try to step out from the human-identified domains of Nature (The Everything) in spite of our ignorance. *Mind - *we use the word freely*. I.e.* free from understanding it. "Our mentality" is not much better. "Brainwork" has yet to be linked to 'thought' (thinking) beyond a blank "That's It". Our physical measurements do not specify mental domains. *How does consciousness arise from a physical world? * - Well, does it indeed? Do you have an adequate definition for a 'physical world'? with all the beliefs and suppositions (axioms etc.) we (scientists?) hold for 'physical'? Does an astrocyte have to be green to pertain to music and orange to refer to history? A neuron labelled? We ASSIGN functions because we need them. Then, - maybe - we correct ourselves. Your par "*The key to the solution..." *is above my head*. *What is an "unconscious observer"? In my agnosticism EVERY item recognizing a relation is an observer. Thermostat and all. *"...things become conscious..." r*ight. They respond to relations. In the next (heavy) par: *reality *by itself is a toughy: what do we know about it? if you epithetize reality then you may say anything about that kind. *Information computations - *e.g. G.B.Shaw was Irish (information). How would your 'brain' compute this?. *ELO: This is the best, most convincing theory of consciousness of which I'm aware. But like most of my theories it requires a big paradigm shift in understanding since it's a completely new interpretation of reality.* I don't argue, just did not find it. Not the promised 'theory' - not the interpretation of reality. Maybe it is my fault not having read your book.Mea culpa. Dear Edgar, I am not your opponent here: I am sure many list-members (if they take the time) will respond neagitvely to my ideas exposed in this (and other) posts. You wrote your own stuff, I write my own one. Liz will hit us both on the head. Best regards and a Happy New Year for ALL John Mikes On Tue, Dec 31, 2013 at 10:09 AM, Edgar L. Owen <edgaro...@att.net> wrote: > All, > > I'll present a brief overview of my theory of consciousness from my book > on Reality here. If anyone is interested I can elaborate. > > To understand consciousness we first must clearly distinguish between > consciousness ITSELF and the contents of consciousness that become > conscious by appearing within consciousness itself. > > The nature of consciousness itself, why things seem conscious, is the > subject of Chalmer's 'Hard Problem', whereas the various structures of the > contents of consciousness are the so called 'Easy Problems', the subjects > of the study of mind. > > Chalmer's formulation of the Hard Problem is 'How does consciousness arise > from a physical brain?' Let's generalized this a little to 'How does > consciousness arise from a physical world?' > > The key to the solution is understanding that the world is not 'physical' > in the sense assumed. It is not a passive clockwork Newtonian world that > just sits there waiting to be brought into consciousness by an observer. In > fact the notion of observation is intrinsic to reality itself in a manner > that reality actively manifests most of the defining attributes of reality > on its own and all the conscious observer adds is participation in that > process from a particular locus with a particular computational nformation > structure. > > I'll explain how this works though the theory is subtle and requires some > work, and there is a lot to it I don't cover here. > > In ancient times there was an extramission (emission) theory of vision, > that objects were seen because the eyes shown light on them. Today we still > have the functionally identical emission theory of consciousness, that > things become conscious because mind somehow shines consciousness on them. > > Both theories are wrong. Things are conscious because reality continually > SELF-MANIFESTS itself. It continually computes itself into existence, and > existence self-manifests. It is immanent because it is actually real, and > actually present, and has actual being. This is what I call Ontological > Energy (OE). Things are really really real, they are really actually there, > and consciousness just opens its 'eyes' and participates in this reality. > Rather than the mind shining consciousness onto things, things manifest > their actual reality, their actual real presence in reality, to whatever > interacts with them, including human brains. > > The only thing an individual observer brings to consciousness is an > interaction with reality from a particular location, and an interaction > with the information contents of consciousness filtered through its own > perceptual cognitive structure. > > Thus consciousness itself is simply the immanent actual real presence of > reality, whereas the information structures of the contents of conscious > are due to information computations of the brain interacting with > information from external reality. > > This is the best, most convincing theory of consciousness of which I'm > aware. But like most of my theories it requires a big paradigm shift in > understanding since it's a completely new interpretation of reality. > > Best, > Edgar > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. 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