On 12/9/2014 2:04 PM, seerdope wrote:
>
1) The Process of Hypothesis Generation is Distinct and Separate from
Testing and Validating such Hypotheses via Scientific Methods.
>
According to Sam Harris, /"there is no scientific evidence that
consciousness exists in the physical world."/
Consciousness is the ultimate reality - without it people would not be
conscious - there would be no perception. This is a dirt simple fact of
life requiring no further proof. No rational person would claim that
don't exist, unless they were insane or demented - it's just not
rational. We are conscious of ourselves enough to know that we exist and
are self-conscious. We are our self and hardly anyone denies that they
are sometimes self conscious. So, we all have a constructed character of
knowing that is conscious of itself.
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2) Traditional Practices and Models and their Potential Partial
Validation (via demonstrated adaptive evolutionary advantage over tens
of thousands of experiments over 1000's of years)
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My position, and the position of most idealistic transcendentalists, is
that we infer, from the fact of being conscious, that consciousness
itself is the ultimate reality - because without consciousness, we would
not exist. And we accept that inference is a valid means of knowledge.
Thoughts and ideas, not being material objects, cannot be perceived;
they can only be inferred.
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3) Personal Observation and Experience (sorting out spurious
correlations, cognitive biases, misinterpretation, to identify
effective heuristics in ones own life (and possibly applicable for others)
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If consciousness means self-consciousness, then it cannot be identified
by logic with the human body. Animals also possess a physical body, but
not rational consciousness. If consciousness is a property of the body,
it must be perceived like other material properties. But consciousness
is neither seen, smelt or tasted nor touched nor heard. Consciousness is
private and cannot be shared by others - it is the very constructed
character of knowing - knowledge is structured in consciousness.
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4) Processes of Personal Validation and Acquiring Trust of Insights
from Specialized Mentors
>
There is no consciousness other than consciousness, or not!
Work cited:
*Sam Harris on the Mystery of Consciousness*
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-mystery-of-consciousness
