> On 20 Jan 2015, at 11:43 pm, Telmo Menezes <[email protected]> wrote: > > These models tend to have something in common: they suggest that we are not > what we appear to be, that we are not mortal or immortal because time itself > is a dream. That there is only one consciousness and we are all fundamentally > the same entity, from the amoeba on. Quantum immortality. This sort of thing. > They start with consciousness as the brute fact, as you posit. > > I have no intellectual reason to reject such ideas, but I definitely feel a > resistance to them.
Do you equally feel a resistance to the mainstream, standard, canonical, textbook, safe, establishment versions of reality? I only ask because it appears there are definitely good intellectual reasons to stand up and challenge some of those. > > So it also occurred to me that believing in such things appears maladaptive. > Intuitively, such beliefs may lead you to be less preoccupied with survival > and reproduction. That is a thought that has crossed my mind, too. People who sit around pulling bongs and studying shadows on cave walls tend not to go on and have business empires, large families and lots of possessions and become captains of industry, no. Survival and reproduction is indeed the name of the game. I also note that we are currently surviving and reproducing ourselves straight to oblivion and catastrophe so, Houston - we have a problem. > So it's not so surprising that we evolved to reject such ideas but this leads > to a terrible doubt: can we trust ourselves to do science? While the exact and human sciences remain at loggerheads I would say no. Science is forever a blunt instrument because it wants to say there are places where science cannot go. So, the Aristotelian universe seems to run out of steam at a certain point and leaves the important stuff about the human soul to madmen, criminals, charlatans and the merely credulous. K -- 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 [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
