For those believing that consciousness....

For those believing that consciousness (first-person subjective experience) is something that does not exist before it exists (i.e. it is something that comes into existence after previously being something that did not exist…as opposed to things that have always existed without having to come into existence from previous non-existence):

Something that does not exist that comes into existence (remember, it did not exist before it existed) does not use the substance of anything that already exists to form or contribute to its existence.

Why?

Because it is not formed using the substance of something that already exists as it comes into existence after having not existed at all the moment before, as opposed to it being something that was broken off from or formed from something that already existed or that existed throughout.

If consciousness, therefore, is something that does not exist before it exists, it is not formed from anything that existed before consciousness, as consciousness cannot be something that existed before consciousness (obviously) as consciousnesses is something that does not exist before it exists (and a particular instance or type of consciousness does not exist before the moment before it exists).

This logical deduction is a natural consequence of common godless belief regarding the nature of death.

My TV doesn’t have a picture before I turn it on, then !poof! it does.

How is that different from consciousness…?

Well if that’s the same as consciousness, then the source of your thinking is somewhere far away from your body. The source of what goes on in the mind is somewhere else, then, if your analogy is a good one. And so when you go to sleep it would be like turning off the TV, but not the broadcasters. And smashing the TV doesn’t destroy the source of the ‘thoughts’. Your analogy could lead to conclusions much like, for example, Hinduism, where Vishnu (or some other deity) is pouring out of what seems to be your body and personality. There would be no death in that scenario.

The TV analogy is actually a lovely one to support PG’s worldviews.

Gollygee, thanks Karpel Tunnel.

More to the point, as Karpel alluded the tv analog fails because the analogous broadcast signal never goes out of existence when the tv is shut off. That is, it continues to exist without ever not existing at all. Consciousness, on the other hand, in godless belief in the nature of death (that negatively alludes that consciousness does not come form or is created from that which always exist or never goes out of existence) is that consciousness is believed to cease to exist, i.e. become nonexistent.

There is nothing that, like the broadcast signal, continues to exist waiting to come back or resume a previous form.

I did mean to include that the broadcast continues which means the self, in this analogy, does not arise from the TV set. Amazing he is using an analogy that I first encountered in a wonderful book documenting just how well documented a large range of psi phenomena are. (it’s a cliche that if they were real, they experiments would have shown them to be real. With vast documentation they demonstrated that significant results indicating it is real have been found for decades, even amongst randomly chosen people). They also challenge in the book an array of physicalist arguments and theories, including using the TV example to show confusions around physicalist disimissal of variety things related to consciousness and psi phenomena. So it was almost delightful to see the analogy used ‘by the other team’ since it truly fails for that side.

“Psi” as in telekinesis and/or telepathy or “psi” as in mind or conscious?

The latter is definitely real as existence only appears in the form of first-person subjective experience

This is good. Is there some missing link between animal consciousness and human?

Yes. That is what can’t account for a mirror stage in animals. Maybe there is a partial realization , enough not to form distinct link, but enough to form an up and coming evolutionary force against the larger, animal gravity of filling that link.

If that was not true, then archaic animals could not have reified into what they are since Jurassic Park.
Snakes and other early types, alligators , etc.

It is the durability of types that are weighed down by the immutability of these creatures.

Self consciousness is pivotal here, and it begins with a myth as metaphors" for instance- the transformative power of Narcissus - as exemplified as a latent force behind the mirror of the consciousness of the self.

The man behind the mirror, is the key , and in Narcissus’s case, even the surface of a water filled pond could suffice.

Damn, lol, I’m on the wrong side. :smiley:

Ok, I agree, my anology failed. It’s just my favourite for illustrating body/mind to myself.

Perhaps better for this case then would be a pc, with a game loaded on its hard-drive, switched off - no picture - then switched on - poof picture. ie. the ‘consciousness’ appears when you add electricity to the existing hardware.

In the case of humanity, the physical topology of our neural nets and electrochemical balances in our synapses and other assorted wetware, when you run life through it, produces consciousness.

But fine, I don’t know, it could be magic also. “More things in heaven and earth Horatio” etc.

Tab:

Regardless, if consciousness is believed to not exist before it exists, there is no logic to why it should respond to things that exist, like electrons in the plastic and copper wires of a pc or biological neural wires in a brain.

The ‘mystery’ of consciousness?

get hackered

Not really for those who are more likely to appreciate the architecture of parallel universes implicit in pan psychism.

Meno:

In a sense every person is a parallel universe or pocket dimension.

Yes but parallel pan-psychism places man’s position at the top of a pyramid, or, rather a calculable vanished point~ the : presentation of pure simulated cognitive construction. > the base (inverse) of most stable optimally calculable geometric measurement, based on maximum curvature.

Comment: instability at the highest level appears in a neo-cognitive sense, of calculable effects, where max. radial congruoty of the smallest observable particles ( the base-line) nears perfect parallel identity with the smallest cognitively apprehandleable
at the apex.

The apex approximates a logical certainty, while the base consists mathematically phenomenal sensational probability.

Similarity through the Tree of life and the Tetragramaton.

In that, everything is a universe unto itself… universes, within universes, within universes, within universes.

The ancients represented this with innumerable turtles on each other’s back

What else would it have to notice or respond to…? An eye, however primitive, responds to light. I think you are imagining that what we dub consciousness emerged fully formed from the forehead of Zeus. Why would it not have emerged incrementally…?

However conciousness comes into being it’s all only in our imaginations how this is done. We can only make things up that we come to believe.

I’m just saying that anything that does not exist then comes into existence did not derive its existence from anything that exists, as the thing that comes into existence did not exist to come from or be mined or extracted out of something that exists. Things that have existed for eternity according to the first law of thermodynamics, therefore, logically cannot use themselves or extract part of themselves to make something that did not exist before it came into existence.

Also, there is probably no such thing as light, that is, light not made up of the first person subjective experience of a person as existence only appears in the form of a person and that which the person experiences. Anything that is not a person or is not first-person subjective experience is fictional and probably exists only in the imagination.

There is the principle of emergence. Plastic for example, never existed in nature.

I agree there is and can be nothing new under the sun, only the surprising outcomes of serendipitous combinations. Consciousness, for example.

We may take a naive look: consciousness is like a film, it has a negative that the brain re-produces, and then runs it continuously, in a movement to create an effect.
There is no differences. In animal and human consciousness except at the point of self perceptive image, there the infant has through the mirror test.
Animals have a tough time with self reflection , they can not go beyond the production of the film, the backing of the translucency , which will give rise to the reflective ability of translating image into con-cept.
Was this attribute evolutionary?
The myth of Narcissus is defied, and historically defied, and the connection between factual and mythical sequencing is lost.
There is Still , no argument that can contravene the evolutionary movement as casual one way or another, : whether an exogenic outer directed introjection, or a projectively indigenous process, of transformation takes place.
It may be, that it is a process which is like the surface problem as a moebius effect.

I’ve wondered if animals and insects are philosopher’s zombies: probably not.

I think it’s important to remember that existence only appears and has only appeared in the form of first person subjective experience, that is, it only appears (and one might infer, can only appear) in the form of a person and that which the person experiences. Thus, we only have evidence of the existence of a person experiencing something. Death, especially the atheistic concept of death, negatively reveals that this experience is a closed system: the world, things, and people experienced by the person are actually composed of the subjective experience of the person, as experienced persons, things, and the world disappears at death.

As existence only appears in the form of a person and that which the person experiences (i.e. it only shows up as first person subjective experience), there is no evidence of the existence of anything that does not appear before and is experienced by a person, that is not made up of the subjective experience of a person, or that is not materially composed of first person subjective experience.

Thus, when we’re talking of things and processes in the external world that purportedly predates consciousness, such as external world matter or brains not made up of subjective experience, we’re only inventing things in the mind: that is, we’re only making stuff up and stating to others this made-up stuff is true.