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Dear Judith,
thanks for the considerate reply. I have some
divergent ideas, however do not really oppose what you wrote.
"to point out that there are more things that science doesn't know
about reality than things science DOES know"
agree, verbatim. Then you mention 'consciousness
in several ways. My take is: it is an ancient, historical noumenon with no real
content of the word. What we think, how we are, what we do, etc. all come up in
the series of thousands of consciousness-scientists in the decade-long repeated
Tucson conferences and there is still no agreement, "what to include" in that
marvel. Everybody does it tailor-made according to the position one takes. It is
not the 'noun' behind 'conscious'. When I was young in the profession (1991) I
tried to identify it in the most general way I could muster and
said:
"It is acknowledgement of
and response to information - where of course info
had to be identified differently from the Shannon etc. bit craze: I identified
the 'existence' as difference and its 'accepted' form as information. I
differentiated the mere 'acceptance' from the absorption, what may make it into
knowledge. In this generalization
'Ccness' is extendable to the entire world, an
anion or an electron acknowledges a positive charge and responds to it - hence
it has Ccness. I included 'memory' into the "responding to". I had many hundreds
of posting-exchanges on diverse mind-related lists with a host of theorists in
quite different colorations. So your father was talking about the "Ccness" of
his own acceptance. As you quoted:
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.
Perfect.
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, ...
The second part sounds strange to me. Seemingly
the body, more than just flesh and bones, must be a natural system right into
the wholeness if it 'generates' the atemporal-aspatial mind. The brain
definitely means more than a neuronal construct in this
formulation
as well. You left out any explanatory remark
about the mysterious 'mind' in between. I call it the "mental aspect" of the
'complexity human' and of course do not apply any hierarchy between it, the
brain and the body: they are ALL parts of the same "complexity human" (as a
natural system) in concert, activites interrelated and not prone to {-} - {{-}}
etc. leveling. It all is ONE. All included, with the "aspects" WE model
when viewing it.
Vague? you bet.
I consider your remarks on energy- and
recycling- thoughts on the
strictly material side of us. Explanations of
science to save its face.
I believe your father went beyond that - unless
in the efforts, when
he wanted to bring the reductionstic
science-crowd closer to his ideas. You can call 'energy' whatever you need to,
just please, do not identify (exchange) the physicalistic IS-units ie. the
convertible kinds with kinds in spiritual activity - at the present flimsy
level of
our "poor
consciousness" <G>.
I always try to unmix the space - time related
concepts from the aspects of 'natural systems': going into the atemporal
aspatial ones.
Naming them by the same unidentified word does
not help much.
Best regards
JohnM
PS(I hope I use "natural system" in the right RR
sense).
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, November 29, 2003 7:31
PM
Subject: Re: Consciousness and
death
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
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, November 29, 2003 9:06
AM
Subject: Re: [ROSEN] Mycoplasma
information?
Did
RR develop a conclusion of death? Lately a friend wrote an article about
"soul, that remains after death" (not a religious theory, he is an
astronomer and did not identify an 'eternal soul') just the accumulated
experience bothered him - as energy - how and where can it go when a person
dies?
I have a different opinion (as
always<G>) about the phenomenon of living, we call: dying. The living
structure functions in its adjusted complexity, certain secondary failures
are repaired, yet when some substantial component gets busted, the
complexity does not function together anymore. Everything is there - almost
- just some essential factor stepped out. Now the experience: it is not some
sort of 'mental energy' as the reductionistic science imagines which can be
accounted for in some 'equilibrium' inventory. It is a process of
'experiencing' in the atemporal mindfunction and the act of 'remembering' is
not to scratch out a stored contraption which represents the past event,
rather a 'second look' at it within the ever changing conditions of the
world (and the brain). This accounts for 'forgetfulness' and 'shaping' of
memories, unknown in computers, where the memory is frozen into matter.
Erazing such frozen memory IS an energy-application, while the "inability to
take a second look" is not.
I wonder how Rosen adjusted the idea of
'death'? also I would appreciate opinions to the question. Please do
not include the eternal soul which goes into heaven and plays the harp: it
can be very boring after the first 30,000 years playing the same
hymns.
Apologizing for the moribund
question
John M
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