Liz, It's easy to demonstrate that consciousness is NOT its contents by the simple mental exercise of meditation in which the contents of consciousness are diminished to the point of vanishing. The more consciousness is emptied of individual contents, the clearer and brighter it becomes. Therefore there is clearly something called consciousness itself in which its contents become conscious by arising within it.
Also the contents of consciousness continually vary, but the fact of consciousness is persistent and continuous more or less the same. Therefore consciousness cannot be its contents. This is quite clear to anyone who has experienced it.... Edgar On Tuesday, December 31, 2013 4:25:25 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: > > On 1 January 2014 04:09, Edgar L. Owen <edga...@att.net <javascript:>>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. >> > > Yes, good point (and one I always make :-) Hume, Dennett and co claim > consciousness IS its contents but we know better, eh? > >> >> 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. >> > > Exactamundo. Don't listen to those materialists they realise that getting > consciousness to supervene on matter is non-trivial so they try to > eliminate it! > >> >> 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?' >> > > I hope youv'e read Tim Maudlin's "Olympia" paper before you wade into this > debate. And you should understand Bruno's comp of course. > >> >> 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. >> > > Waffle... > >> >> 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. >> > > Yep. > >> >> 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. >> > > Hang on you're the person who thinks energy is created in every moment, > and that the MWI violates the conservation of energy. Ho hum, you had me > going for a moment there, but I see it's more of the same. > > "the theory is subtle and requires some work" indeed. > >> >> -- 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.
