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John M.
This was something I discussed with my father, and something I have
thought about a lot since he died. His opinion was non-commital except to point
out that there are more things that science doesn't know about reality than
things science DOES know. He believed that there are many aspects to living
systems and complexity in general that science hasn't even detected yet, much
less tried to study. Consciousness was one of those areas that science can't
seem to even define and hasn't found any explanation for that he felt was
reasonable. He believed consciousness is an emergent property of complexity in
the brain, that is also a new complex system. He said that while consciousness
is generated by the mind, which is generated by the brain which is generated by
the body, etc; it is a cohesive complex system that has its own
complexity-derived stability and energy patterns. He also said that there
may be all sorts of dimensions that we are either not aware of or only barely
aware of on non-conscious levels that we co-exist in, which current technologies
don't reveal and no one is looking at them. [See note on this at the end of this
message]
My own thoughts on this subject are that we cannot rule out the
possibility that a complex system based on energy, such as consciousness, might
react quite differently to the loss of what gave rise to it (like the death of
the body) than other aspects of life. Energy has all sorts of behaviors that
aren't always matter-based. Furthermore, energy changes form like a chameleon
changes color. My ultimate hope is that consciousness may be the only part of a
human life that is capable of continuing on in some form. I don't think it's the
ghost and Mrs Muir kind of thing, alas. But I do think that the cohesiveness of
that peculiar form of energy may simply transition from what depends on a
visceral source to something that exists in some other way in the universe. One
of the rules I've observed in the universe is that recycling is key! Nothing is
ever wasted and whenever there are losses, there are also gains. I think
emergent properties from complexity have unique behaviors that we are only
beginning to take a look at.
Judith
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