Intelligence: cosmic or personal

with love,
sanjay

I think that you are confused about the way language works. It is not that there is consciousness and people are trying to properly define it. That is backwards from how language works. Things are not defined. Words and concepts are defined.

People note a trait or property and give it a name. They might not know how or why it works, but they already know WHAT it is because it is whatever they gave the name to. Most of the time, they do not clearly explain what it was that they gave the name to (aka “define it”) and thus many people back track to try to figure out what was intended when the name was first applied. So people might argue about definitions. But they are arguing about the definition of the WORD or the CONCEPT. They are NOT arguing about a definition of a THING.

The word “conscious” is formed from the English prefix “con-”, meaning “with”, and a diminutive of the root “science”, meaning “knowing” or “awareness”. “To be conscious” means “to be with-knowing/awareness”. So when anyone says “consciousness”, they are referring to the ability to be aware, ability to recognize, or to know of something. They are NOT talking about a THING that might in itself be responsible for such awareness. It is like referring to a color rather than what is displaying that color. What is causing consciousness is entirely another issue from what consciousness is. You are speaking of whatever it is that causes consciousness, not the ability that consciousness is.

In Hindi, I am sure there is a word for whatever causes a person to be able to be aware of things, causing his consciousness. In the modern West, we accept whatever that is to be what we call “the nervous system”, “brain”, or even “mind”. The West might not have that right. Perhaps there is something different causing a person’s consciousness or awareness. But don’t conflate the cause of the ability or property of awareness, whatever you believe that to be, with the awareness itself. Consciousness MEANS “the ability to remotely recognize” or “the ability to be aware”. It is an ability or property, not a thing or substance (such as brain or akasha).

And just because something hasn’t happened yet, doesn’t mean that it can’t happen, either. Such statements are irrelevant.

Try not to conflate “machines” with “mechanisms”. The Abramic religions have social/spiritual mechanisms to cause things to happen. Those mechanisms have names. Only the seriously ignorant think of those mechanisms as “machines”. Gabriel is the social mechanism for broadcasting (aka “trumpeting”) the will of God (by definition). That mechanism spans the globe (aka “flies wherever around the world”). Gabriel is a communication network mechanism/strategy/“angel”.

People are seldom conscious of the consciousness of machines (or other people for that matter). If a machine had consciousness (and I can assure you that many do), most people, by far, would not be aware of it even if engaged with the machine. People are not terribly good at recognizing consciousness when they encounter it.

I am not confused about how a language works but indicating that any any entity and its quality are two different things. If there is an effect, there must be something that would have caused it, and that is where i am disagreeing.

I do not get it, James. Explain it further.

Things and concepts are defined, not words. A word is a reference point/marker for anything. It is a construct of human mind only, not exist it reality. On the other hand, things and concepts use to have their separate existence besides names and definitions.

Agreed, but people do the same with things too. And, that is how we come up with words.

Agreed. Knowing the working or other details are not necessary in giving names. But, in such cases, one must be able to recognize and discern that from others.

Sweetness is sweetness only because it can be recognized clearly by discerning from bitterness or savoriness.

Agreed, perhaps that is what i am doing.

I understand your point. Yes, i may be a bit out of line here but as i mentioned previously, west/English does not have any proper name for that thing towards what i am indicating. That is why i am compelled to discern the quality (feeling) from the entity (consciousness), in order to name both differently.

Agreed. I understand what they mean by consciousness.

But, i am taking up the issue what causes consciousness, or enables anything to become conscious.

James, what i am trying to plead here is that let us discern mere the ability to detect or recognize from becoming conscious.

I take your point.

Agreed. It cannot be settled unless any concluding evidence comes from either side.

No, James. I understand the difference between the two very clearly. I am not talking about mechanisms only but machines also. In Hinduism, Puspak Viman was a pure machine, not any supernatural mechanism. Though, it is not clear in Islam how Gabriel was travelling up and down.

with love,
sanjay

Although you have agreed many times, I suspect that you are still not getting my point. Consciousness is not an “entity”. It is a property that an entity might have. To “dicern the quality from the entity” is like discerning the color red from the object red. There is no “object red”. There are objects that have the property of redNESS. And there are objects/entities that have the property of consciousNESS. That suffix “-ness” in English almost always refers to a property, not an entity.

I suspected that from the way you were speaking of consciousness, as if it was an entity. You probably should use the Hindu word for whatever it is that causes the property of consciousness because in the West, that is assumed to be the nervous system, thus the West doesn’t have a word for what you are talking about. “Consciousness” is NOT that word, but rather is the resultant property of whatever it is that that you are talking about.

Again, that is like saying, “Let us discern mere red from the color red” or “Let us discern the difference between mere two and the quantity two.” It is a nonsense proposal.

I don’t know the word/name “Puspak Viman”, but in the case of “Gabriel” the word was coined before the category and very idea of machines was known to Man. The closest thing to a machine was merely tools, carts, or physical puzzles, such as locking mechanisms. Automated mechanical devices such as clocks did not have a category name because there simply wasn’t enough of their variety to warrant a general category name.

And being a little familiar with the Eastern mentality, I can pretty much bet that a guru/wise man type person mentioned their name for Gabriel and it was taken to mean something much more physically concrete because that is how gurus talk and that is how the Abramic religions were founded ("Abraham was giving up on his son when he was inspired by an idea - Abraham, Isaac, and the angel). In another thread, an author of a book was explaining the universe by proclaiming that there are “forces” of order and chaos competing with each other and thus causing the universe to be what it is. That is a very ancient Eastern type of mindset - presuming the property of force (or or intellect) to a mere state of being or situation. To Westerners, that is metaphor and/or poetry (eg. “Fate whispers to the wolf”). But very many in the East and Middle East of the population presume the words to be literal, thus situations such as fate, in the minds of the population, are thought to be forces causing destiny.

That is why there are literalists or “fundamentalists” around the world. They originally conflated properties, situations, and thoughts with living beings in their speech (“anthropomorphizing”) or forces (metaphor) and thus caused the masses to believe that they were talking about actual living beings or forces. Again, it is merely a language issue although one that many influential people wish to use to their advantage. Islamics intentionally spread the rumor that their ancient texts are referring to modern ideas, such as UFOs (or machines). Whether intentional or not, it is a deception upon the populous. The world is filled with such deceivers because it provides for obfuscation, manipulation, and justfication - tools for social engineering and management (aka “religion”).

The flying humans idea is very old in the west too, older than in the middle east, and probably also older than in the east. And the first thought about flying humans is probably as old as the human species.

Yes. That’s right. It is a typical and meanwhile old occidental wisdom.

Do you mean the “consciousness in blue”? :laughing:

So you are aying that “[color=##4080FF]the awareness is enhanced by the informed perception” and therefore claiming that the consciousness grows and develops?

:-k

with love,
sanjay

That is why I said that you should be using whatever Hindu word is appropriate, because Westerners (to my knowledge) don’t have a word for it other than brain or nervous system. Sometimes the word “soul” is used to indicate such a causal entity (along with other misuses of that word).

• The color red is a perception.
• Redness is the property of an object that yields the perception of red color
• 400–484 THz EM waves are the EM radiation required to strike the eye in order to cause the perception of red.

When they say that red is the EM spectrum from 400–484 THz (in English), they are meaning to say that the waves responsible for the perception of red color are the waves of 400–484 THz. It is common in English to refer to a unique cause of something as the something itself with the unspoken understanding of the difference (eg. “you are a pain in the ass”, “eat your greens”, “that song is blue”).

Emmm… no. Not in English although I understand that such obfuscation is common in the Middle East and primitive cultures. The West (especially the aristocracy) takes intuitive and conscious measures to distinguish a thing from the cause of that thing (hence the development of machines and processes). It is an issue of refined intelligence vs rudimentary and vague language. If one doesn’t discern the difference between causes and results, a great many concerns cannot be handled. As the West is being degenerated, the idea that there is no such thing as “cause” is part of that degeneration agenda specifically to reduce common Western mentality. I have spoken with medical doctors who profess that there is never a cause to disease, “Diseases just happen”, attempting to remove all thought concerning what is causing such high levels of diseases.

Isn’t “Chetana” the entity that has the property of Chetna?

There have been magical flying things throughout ancient history stories. They were not taught to be mechanical machines, merely magical things like flying carpets, brooms, chariots, horses, you name it. But there were no machines as we use the word today, certainly not flying machines. If you want to promote the idea that those magical entities being mentioned in ancient texts were actually super advanced flying crafts, that is your privilege, but no one of any serious intellect will be buying it (which doesn’t mean that they won’t be selling it along with many other forms of snake oil).

lols at blueness.

consciousness grows and develops?

yes exactly that. it probably grows and learns in each incarnation, which for me would explain why we kinda know more than we appear to. they say wisdom is innate, so i’d imagine that all the things we learn in each life are somehow combined via death into a single entity ~ which grows.

_

The differentiation between single and multiple entities may not exist beyond a certain level.

That level can only be even thought of from an existential level, a Being apprehended through
beyond that, through the Dasein, can not differentiate multiple entities from singular ones.

I disagree. I will explain this in this thread. I think consciousness evolves too.

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=190381

I’m not sure about that zinnat.
Have you ever heard of raised consciousness?

I think that it is consciousness itself which determines the state of the mind and how the mind is influenced. It also determines the state of being.
Did the first species which evolved have the same kind of consciousness which humans now have?
Does that say much for the evolution of the human brain and human consciousness? If their so-called brain was different, less evolved, then consciousness which stems from that brain was different and much less evolved.

What you seem to be saying is that consciousness is the same as it was when all of that star stuff began to permeate and to create the universe. Everything is a process of evolution to me.

Of course, I may be wrong in all of this since we can’t know everything or even much about consciousness when it comes to how much there is to know about it. It just somehow seems to me that consciousness gives rise to the mind and structures it.
If consciousness never evolved, then you have the same consciousness of the fly.

Let’s say, it’s more likely then not, that consciousness is aligned with general evolution, and the structure of the brain as well. Then it is equally more probable that consciousness goes through a change too, because the brain and consciousness are integrated on many levels.

Incidentally, where is Zinnat, he used to post regularly. Just wondering.

I am absolutely fine.

A lot of changes (not necessarily bad) in and around me happened in a very short span of time. And, it also took me a lot of time and commitment to adjust with those. That process is still going on. And, not being of multitasking kind of person by nature, i decided to stay away from posting unless i can do justice with that.

I may not able to post but i still often visit the forum, and will come back to posting too.

with love,
sanjay

…been wondering the same thing lately (just yesterday, in fact).

Welcome back, Sanjay. :sunglasses:

One can think of the entire universe as evidence of cosmic intelligence. Not in any nonsensical metaphysical or supernatural sense but a purely physical one
because of the sheer scale and diversity of it. And the fact it can be explained in scientific and mathematical language is evidence of this. Intelligence does
not always require a brain. And this is the most profound example. Were it incapable of being understood then one could say the universe lacks intelligence
That is not so so one can say that the universe has cosmic intelligence

What’s the difference in saying one and not the other?

St. James: Why the greeting to Sanjay, my impression of him differs, I do not see him as a sock puppet. But you never know nowadays.

?? “sock puppet”?? :confusion-scratchheadyellow: