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A hurricane might
maintain its "cohesion" when in a different environmental context,
but the organization that is a hurricane does not maintain its
cohesion apart from its "material substrate" (air molecules, etc.);
that is the context-dependence to which I was referring.
Regards,
Tim
Of course not! The fact that we have no proof one way would
hardly suggest that the other way is correct. That doesn't logically follow.
However, what it does do is leave open the possibility: Because there is no
proof that consciousness cannot persist beyond the context by which it was
formed, it remains possible that it does persist, in some form or
other, as a cohesive system. That is the only point I was making. I don't
necessarily believe that it does, frankly. But I see the
possibility.
One example of a complex system maintaining its cohesion even
after detached from the context in which it formed would be a hurricane. In
fact, a lot of weather systems would fit that description.
Judith
Certainly we
have no proof that consciousness does not have that unique ability to
persist when separated from the context of its material substrate. But that,
in itself, does not logically lend any credence to the notion that it does
have that ability.
There is
nothing in what we do know about the qualities of
consciousness that provide any kind of evidence, or even suggestion,
that consciousness can persist as mentioned above. What precendents are
you referring to? To my knowledge, any complex systems which persist in
different environments do so by continuing their organization within
their original material substrate (basis); the organization of the
system does not persist apart from that.
To me, there
is also the basic question of whether "consciousness" is, in fact, anything
more than the behaviors associated with some system type(s). If so,
then it would not make sense for behaviors to persist apart from the
underlying causal system which generates them.
I leave it as
an open possibility that consciousness might be able to persist beyond
bodily embodiment. I simply see no evidence to support or even suggest
it is the case.
Regards,
Tim
Yes, but Tim, do we have proof that "the particular complex
system we call consciousness" DOESN'T have a unique ability "to persist
when separated from the context of its material substrate", as you put it?
In many ways, it behaves differently than other matter-based complex
systems do, so far as we are able to tell. There's a lot of room in
there for scientifically rigorous discovery that has nothing to do with
mysticism.
If you proceed from what we do know about human
consciousness: that it is unique in reality as far as we can discern, then
why is it such a leap to consider the possibility that it can retain its
cohesion or achieve some sort of metamorphosis that allows it to
maintain its cohesion once detached from the matter that gave rise to it?
There are precedents for complex systems that maintain
cohesion after disconnecting from the context which
created the systems in the first place.
Judith
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2003
6:03 PM
Subject: Re: [ROSEN] Death and
experience
My
question is: out of all the myriad complex systems in
nature, on what basis should we suspect that the particular
complex system we call "consciousness" has any unique ability to persist
when separated from the context of its material
substrate?
As much as
I would dearly wish it to be so, I see no reason besides such
wishes that we have to suppose that consciousness occupies this
unique status.
Perhaps,
though, this is where we make the transition from scientific knowledge
to another form of knowledge: mysticism, which RR
discussed in the manuscript "The Limits of the Limits of
Science".
Regards,
Tim
I just noticed that I neglected to include the note at
the end of the last post, on death and consciousness...
What I had intended to discuss was related to the fact
that one of my father's favorite things to do was point out what
"nobody knows" in many our various discussions. All my life, he did
that; talking in great depth about what some of the beliefs are and
the controversies, but pointing out not only what isn't known but how
it effects other things we THINK we know. There is often a domino
effect similar to what he discovered when he retraced the steps
leading to the current reductionist approach in mainstream science,
only to discover that some of those steps were poorly thought
out.
Many of our discussions involved human
physiology. My father talked about the fact that human
bodies are able to perceive the proximity of other
human bodies in ways not related to our conscious perceptions. He
cited as one proof of this the well-documented fact that adult women
living together will entrain their menstrual cycles. "Nobody knows how
that happens," he said. He further said he had never heard
of anyone trying to study the phenomenon, not even in
Obstetrics or Gynecology. I asked why, and he said he presumed that
nobody thought it important enough to study. However, he pointed
out that the mechanism at work behind it could be very important,
indeed. How does one human body "read" another? How does it detect
something as subtle as an internal model (an anticipatory model,
incidentally) that controls timing of a menstrual cycle-- or
perhaps even just the timing of the menstrual cycle itself? Even more
fantastic, how and why does one body make changes in its own
cycle to begin to achieve simultaneity?! How many steps are there to
achiving a synchronous cycle? (I can attest to the fact that
it really does happen, from personal experience throughout my life.)
Another aspect to the phenomenon is that one woman's cycle seems to be
"chosen" as the dominant one, and her's doesn't deviate. Instead, all
the others will alter to match hers. So, how is this subtle but
crucial complex information being communicated, back and forth???? It
is not connected to volition. It is a completely independent mechanism
from the conscious mind! If medical science can answer these
questions, it will be a breakthrough on all kinds of other things that
have so far eluded researchers.
The reason I think this pertains to the question about
consciousness and whether the organization of that particular complex
system can persist after the death of a human being's body is
because the above example is a glimpse at the kinds of
things that we don't know about something so familiar as our own
bodies and minds. I can certainly be accused of watching too much Star
Trek in my life, but the fact that the example mentioned is not even
being studied raises huge credibility issues for me with regards to
how medical science approaches learning about human physiology. It
doesn't sound all that farfetched that there may be life forms that
live off ambient energy the way plants use sunlight to make sugar. If
consciousness is a stable complex system that only requires energy to
maintain its cohesion, then the metamorphosis from using visceral
sources to ambient sources isn't out of the realm of possibility
to me.
If it IS possible, then what sort of existence would that
be like? My only certainty on that subject is that it would be very
different from what life, as we experience it, is like. So much of our
knowledge of the universe is bounded by what our human perceptions are
capable of perceiving-- and how our senses perceive it.
Judith
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