Subject: Today's Ask Philosophers From: "William J. Rapaport" Date: Fri, 9 Oct 2009 10:53:29 -0400 -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: CSE 719: Today's Date: Fri, 9 Oct 2009 10:41:04 -0400 From: dmauzyjr@buffalo.edu To: If we take a look at what we know of systems at work in the universe as a whole, granting that our perception is horrifically myopic and distorted through time, we can find evidence of only two systems at work that are as complex as the human brain. One, of course, is the human brain. The other is the universe itself, with its galaxies and star systems, planets, and, in fact, us and any life forms that have evolved to our level of mental complexity about which we know nothing. Since we are part of this universe, it would stand to reason that it therefore is more complex than we are, and I think it could be argued that it is conscious. We would be at a loss, most likely , to fully understand this consciousness, but just as a kernel sends commands to its component programs, the universe may well send commands to its constituent particles. Since there is still believed to be a balance between matter and energy in the universe, at worst we return to the great carbon cycle; however, it is plausible that information could be back loaded into the system. While this would only marginally be an afterlife, as it means the possibility of the destruction of the ego and rendering into basal information, in some sense we would survive .... Not sure where I was going with that ... but kinda "came to mind" DaveM On Thu 10/08/09 6:54 PM , "William J. Rapaport" rapaport@BUFFALO.EDU sent: > Why doesn't knowledge of the obvious causal relationship between consciousness and brains destroy any ideas of an afterlife? > > For an answer or two, link to: > http://www.askphilosophers.org/question/2912 Subject: Today's Ask Philosophers From: "William J. Rapaport" Date: Fri, 9 Oct 2009 11:02:28 -0400 William J. Rapaport wrote: > -------- Original Message -------- > Subject: Re: CSE 719: Today's > Date: Fri, 9 Oct 2009 10:41:04 -0400 > From: dmauzyjr@buffalo.edu > To: > > If we take a look at what we know of systems at work in the universe >as a whole, granting that our perception is horrifically myopic and >distorted through time, we can find evidence of only two systems at >work that are as complex as the human brain. One, of course, is the >human brain. The other is the universe itself, with its galaxies and >star systems, planets, and, in fact, us and any life forms that have >evolved to our level of mental complexity about which we know nothing. >Since we are part of this universe, it would stand to reason that it >therefore is more complex than we are, Up to here, I'm willing to agree with you. > and I think it could be argued that it is conscious. But here I'd like to see an argument. Sure, it's plausible that it might be conscious if it's at least as complex as we are, but several of the people whose work we're looking at would argue that a computational agent that was as complex as we are *and behaved as we do* would not necessarily thereby be conscious (they could be zombies). You don't even claim (at this point) that the universe behaves as we do. > We would be at a loss, most likely , to fully understand this >consciousness, but just as a kernel sends commands to its component >programs, the universe may well send commands to its constituent >particles. Maybe this is your suggestion that the universe behaves as we do? But even so, it could be a zombie agent. What do others of you think? Subject: Today's Ask Philosophers From: Dave Mauzy Date: Fri, 9 Oct 2009 11:49:12 -0400 Ok, I can see the argument for a zombie agent, and this was merely a musing that struck me. I had said that we would probably be at a loss to fully understand this consciousness, which if anything, is me saying I don't believe it behaves as we do, that if anything it would be alien to us in that regard, and that brings it back to where I began; A curious musing with which I wasn't sure where I was heading ... I shall ponder it more. Dave Subject: Today's Ask Philosophers From: Anthony Ramnauth Date: Fri, 9 Oct 2009 11:50:06 -0400 I disagree that complexity would be an approriate reason to posit consciousness. If functionalism is correct, complexity is not the only criteria for consciousness, but rather the possession to *particular* computational functions. If functionalism is incorrect, we still can't argue for a conscious universe because of other theories, such as biological identity, dualism, etc. Perhaps consciousness is a completely incorrect term to attribute to the universe. If we are conscious and we exist inside the universe, then the universe is "conscious" insofar as possessing various conscious agents. However in this case we would have to restate the issue, perhaps we would have to create a new term; the universe is a consciousplex. From a behaviorist perspective, it obviously doesn't behave as we do, because as far as we know it doesn't possess a similar physical from. The only way to save this argument is to make a metaphysical stance. If we decide to take a neutral monist account of reality, then we would not need to differentiate between physical and mental events. Mental events and physical events would only be two different aspects of the same thing. We can understand reality as not only conscious, but also physical, and perhaps in another ways as well. Anthony Ramnauth Subject: Today's Ask Philosophers From: "William J. Rapaport" Date: Fri, 9 Oct 2009 14:51:21 -0400 Here's another thought about our relationship to a possibly conscious universe: Even if the universe *were* conscious (perhaps because of its level of complexity combined with an appropriate functional organization), is there any reason that we would be aware of that? Any more than any of our neurons or other cells are aware of *our* consciousness? We'll return to some of these issues at the end of the semester.