What does "external" mean?

Ok, but just imagine if someone wanted to claim something similar for a math issue, and say things like "well, we don't have to examine what [x] means, cause we already can speak of some tangent of it". :) Consciousness itself is not explained by external stuff, unless you set out to define it specifically in such a context. And this isn't what the current question/issue set to discuss :D

'of relevant': there is a reason why (since ancient times) philosophy was divided into parts, one of which was Physics (ie about external stuff), and the other was Dialectics (internal) (to be very general in what each dealt with) (also there was the Ethics, but that isn't 'of relevant' here)

If this was a math issue, we would say "All equations seem to indicate that nothing happens before birth and nothing happens after death. But let's revisit if there's new data or breakthroughs to indicate otherwise"
 
If this was a math issue, we would say "All equations seem to indicate that nothing happens before birth and nothing happens after death. But let's revisit if there's new data or breakthroughs to indicate otherwise"

Usually in math open questions welcome new examinations, no? :)
 
Isn't this kind of a way of preemptively dismissing counterexamples?

Possibly, but I don't really see a way round that. Believing that you are in communication with other consciousnesses inside your own mind (which could be described as "hearing voices") is pretty much defined as mental illness to begin with, or at least delusional. In the absence of any other evidence, dismissing counterexamples is really the only rational thing to do. Possibly the incorrect thing to do, but the evidence suggests otherwise.
 
Possibly, but I don't really see a way round that. Believing that you are in communication with other consciousnesses inside your own mind (which could be described as "hearing voices") is pretty much defined as mental illness to begin with, or at least delusional. In the absence of any other evidence, dismissing counterexamples is really the only rational thing to do. Possibly the incorrect thing to do, but the evidence suggests otherwise.

It tells us nothing about the nature of consciousness to say that consciousness works some one way, and all examples of it working another way don't count because they're examples of it not working properly.

What I had in mind was not multiple personalities or "hearing voices" but ego death, in which the sense of self is lost. Buddhist philosophy centers on a kind of ongoing ego death in which the divide between the internal and external is acknowledged as artificial, which I actually think lends itself to TMIT's very useful and apt observation:
We make the external/internal cutoff because it has consistent practical applications, not because it carries any inherent meaning to the physical world beyond our cognition.
 
Our conception of these barriers is a bit arbitrary. Every living thing nevertheless has a causal relationship with its surroundings to the best of our understanding in physics, and the atoms that comprise living things change pretty fast.

The precise workings of consciousness isn't something we completely understand. We make the external/internal cutoff because it has consistent practical applications, not because it carries any inherent meaning to the physical world beyond our cognition.
I agree. The life/self barrier is arbitrary and convenient. Once you go deeper into the physics nature of things it gets murkier and definition dependent. Is a carbon atom "aware" of its surroundings when, if finds another carbon atom, binds to it? If you could put on quantum glasses and see things at the quarkish level, what would things look like? 12 fermions and 12 bosons in a soup bowl of Higgs! Certainly any thought of self as we envision it now would be gone.
 
It tells us nothing about the nature of consciousness to say that consciousness works some one way, and all examples of it working another way don't count because they're examples of it not working properly.

Well it does tell you a lot about it actually, it just doesn't evidence it, but it wasn't meant to be a statement that is self-evident, it's a conclusion based on what we know or would deduce from our understanding of biology, neuroscience, reality etc. You could just as easily say that it tells us nothing about the nature of the Earth to say that it's round and that anyone who says it isn't round is incorrect. The statement does tell you the nature of the Earth. Other sources provide the evidence for the statement.

Everything we know points to consciousness being an emergent property of the physical processes going on inside a single brain. We see evidence that physical changes to that brain, including to the chemistry within it, change the experience of consciousness within it, in predictable and repeatable ways. We have no evidence for consciousness existing at all outside of this model. The model doesn't provide any apparent mechanism for that to even be possible, or for multiple consciousnesses to directly interact with each other (beyond wiring brains together with some technology we don't have yet). We can also point to many, many examples of it appearing to work another way to individuals as a result of things not working properly and (as far as I'm aware) no convincing examples to the contrary.
 
Usually in math open questions welcome new examinations, no? :)

Science is really the better example here. But yes, new examinations, but not pulled out of your butt. Not to say that that's what you're doing, I am speaking generally, but you can't just imagine things and make them so. You need to have a reason - not just a thought - but some sort of concrete new information or evidence.

With life before birth or after death, there is 0 evidence or reason to think that something happens that we don't know about. So it's possible, sure, but there is no reason to think such a thing at this time, and no reason to try to formulate new theories. If there's new evidence though.. then by all means!
 
You could just as easily say that it tells us nothing about the nature of the Earth to say that it's round and that anyone who says it isn't round is incorrect.

No, this is not a good analogy, because the Earth is a specific object, not a concept. A better analogy would be that it tells us nothing about the nature of planets to declare that all planets are green, and to dismiss examples of planets that are not green as invalid.


Everything we know points to consciousness being an emergent property of the physical processes going on inside a single brain. We see evidence that physical changes to that brain, including to the chemistry within it, change the experience of consciousness within it, in predictable and repeatable ways. We have no evidence for consciousness existing at all outside of this model. The model doesn't provide any apparent mechanism for that to even be possible, or for multiple consciousnesses to directly interact with each other (beyond wiring brains together with some technology we don't have yet). We can also point to many, many examples of it appearing to work another way to individuals as a result of things not working properly and (as far as I'm aware) no convincing examples to the contrary.

I was more concerned with your mention of how we experience, or seem to experience, consciousness. Ego death is an example of experiencing consciousness, but not as an individual.
 
Science is really the better example here. But yes, new examinations, but not pulled out of your butt. Not to say that that's what you're doing, I am speaking generally, but you can't just imagine things and make them so. You need to have a reason - not just a thought - but some sort of concrete new information or evidence.

With life before birth or after death, there is 0 evidence or reason to think that something happens that we don't know about. So it's possible, sure, but there is no reason to think such a thing at this time, and no reason to try to formulate new theories. If there's new evidence though.. then by all means!

Well, life and death sort of were your own examples, so i am not seeing what those have to do with myself in this topic (and i am not seeing anyone accepting them as parallel to the topic either). And math sort of was what i mentioned, not physics or similar, likely with some reason ;)
 
The initial claim I was responding to was another poster (sorry don't remember who atm) saying that since we don't know much about consciousness, we can just make up things about it - more or less. I disagree with that because assumptions can be fine, but they need to be founded in reality, and not just pure imagination.
 
The initial claim I was responding to was another poster (sorry don't remember who atm) saying that since we don't know much about consciousness, we can just make up things about it - more or less. I disagree with that because assumptions can be fine, but they need to be founded in reality, and not just pure imagination.

I guess that unlimited imagination being stronger than the internalised external reality would for sure be a very negative factor in our evolutionary survival.
Have a better alignment with our tribe members about that external reality would for sure be a positive factor in our evolutionary survival.
(shared reality, words, approaches, comforting approaches, etc)

raising the question whether this was one of the original evolutionary drivers for group conformism: a tool to stay better in control over our mind in prehistoric times overwhelmed by dreams, visions, demons, etc.
raising also the question whether the reason that religion pushed out animism was because it allowed for better coherent group reality when the group size scaled up because of better techs and other social cultural innovations (like code of law)

I think that happened even to that degree that group conformism as social driver (instinct and/or culture) is even overcooked and stronger than optimal for objective realty perception.
(consider the ease at which religious believe constructs can be imposed on us; the same with ingroup fake news)
 
I guess that unlimited imagination being stronger than the internalised external reality would for sure be a very negative factor in our evolutionary survival.
Have a better alignment with our tribe members about that external reality would for sure be a positive factor in our evolutionary survival.
(shared reality, words, approaches, comforting approaches, etc)

raising the question whether this was one of the original evolutionary drivers for group conformism: a tool to stay better in control over our mind in prehistoric times overwhelmed by dreams, visions, demons, etc.
raising also the question whether the reason that religion pushed out animism was because it allowed for better coherent group reality when the group size scaled up because of better techs and other social cultural innovations (like code of law)

I think that happened even to that degree that group conformism as social driver (instinct and/or culture) is even overcooked and stronger than optimal for objective realty perception.
(consider the ease at which religious believe constructs can be imposed on us; the same with ingroup fake news)

agreed on all points. this is more or less what I hinted at one page earlier: consciousness changes as humans change, not just biologically, but also culturally/socially. we adapt different models of "being" depending on how useful they are in the societal context. the model proposed ITT, backed by "neuroscience" and such fits well with the current narrative, hence why we see it as something rational, "natural", a fact of life.
 
I think it would be a mistake to assume that evolutionary process selected for accurate perceptions of external reality. Evolution has clearly equipped us to lie to ourselves endlessly.
 
It understands that the object thrown behaves according to the laws of gravity,
LOL

I can just imagine a dog with a calculator working out where the object is going to land.

They really are that obsessive about balls, for no good reason I know of.
 
No, this is not a good analogy, because the Earth is a specific object, not a concept. A better analogy would be that it tells us nothing about the nature of planets to declare that all planets are green, and to dismiss examples of planets that are not green as invalid

Well the fact that picked an analogy that is false and I picked one that is true probably indicates that we shouldn't bother with analogies here. Just forget the analogy part I think.

I was more concerned with your mention of how we experience, or seem to experience, consciousness. Ego death is an example of experiencing consciousness, but not as an individual.

Well altered states of consciousness are all very interesting and everything, but they don't support the notion that consciousnesses can exist independently of the brain (or some physical analogue). I actually can't even remember what the original claim about multiple consciousnesses was, so I'd have to go back and re-read that.
 
LOL

I can just imagine a dog with a calculator working out where the object is going to land.

They really are that obsessive about balls, for no good reason I know of.

That's the beauty of a complex central nervous system, it's able to do all those calculations without you even know what's going on.

If we had to carry a calculator and do calculations when walking, to figure out where to put our weight, how to angle our feet, etc. lions would have eaten all of us pretty quickly. Your brain does all the calculations for you while you're running,so you don't have to think about it, and instead you just rely on your "gut" feeling and "instinct"
 
Well altered states of consciousness are all very interesting and everything, but they don't support the notion that consciousnesses can exist independently of the brain (or some physical analogue). I actually can't even remember what the original claim about multiple consciousnesses was, so I'd have to go back and re-read that.

I was responding specifically to your claim about experiencing consciousness as an individual. I am not making any claims about consciousness existing anywhere.
 
Well I was talking about the idea of our consciousnesses being able to commune directly with other, genuinely separate ones (or "not being sheltered from them" as Mr Yung put it), not about entering some different state of consciousness where you percieve yourself as not one individual, or whatever.
 
Well I was talking about the idea of our consciousnesses being able to commune directly with other, genuinely separate ones (or "not being sheltered from them" as Mr Yung put it), not about entering some different state of consciousness where you percieve yourself as not one individual, or whatever.

I don't understand but that sounds more like Star Wars
 
Yes... when I say I was talking about that, I mean I was talking about that being nonsense.
 
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