Each of us is a temporal agent of the eternal. By the eternal, I mean that which is, the single mass-energy, spacetime totality which has at least four internal dimensions and is conscious of itself through us. A temporal agent is someone who acts in time. Time is the only medium in which anyone can act unless, maybe, the existence of everything is regarded as a single transtemporal act.
Temporal agents do not need to be time travellers although we sometimes imagine and read about them. We will probably return to Anderson's "Flight to Forever" later today.
21 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
The universe is not "conscious of itself through us." The universe, as such, does not know we exist except a few persons on this planet called Earth. Only self aware and conscious beings can know the universe exists.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
The universe is one and we are part of it, its conscious part.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
We are parts of the universe and also separate from it.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I don't think that anything is or can be separate. We are part of the all but there are qualitative differences, e.g., between consciousness and unconsciousness.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
No, there are absolute differences. A man, because he is a self aware and conscious being, is absolutely different from the Sun, which is merely a giant ball of blazing gas.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
A man and the Sun are both composed of energy. The elements of which we are composed were fused inside stars. A man is matter that has become living, then conscious, then intelligent. The same matter takes different forms with different qualities.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
No, any man, every conscious being, is absolutely different from anything that is unconscious.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
It is a qualitative difference. We are not composed of different substances.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Qualitative difference can become so "different" they become. Intelligent beings are absolutely different from being merely material.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
It is quantitative changes that increase until they become qualitative. A quantitative change in temperature/molecular motions becomes the qualitative change from ice to liquid water to steam.
You believe in immaterial souls.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Of course! For reasons based on divine revelation and philosophical arguments of the kind discussed by Wright in his blog.
Ad astra! Sean
Naturally selected organismic sensitivity to environmental alterations quantitatively increased until it was qualitatively transformed into conscious sensation. How else could consciousness have originated?
Sensation is organismic sensitivity in which the qualitative, not merely quantitative, transition from unconsciousness to consciousness has occurred.
How did organisms arise? Energized complex molecules changed randomly until one became self-replicating: the first cell. Cells interacted randomly until, after a very long time, one or more became complex cells capable of combining, through natural selection, into multicellular organisms.
Pleasure and pain (i) require consciousness, (ii) have survival value and (iii) are possible, as we now from experience. Therefore, it was only a matter of time before organismic sensitivity became bodily sensation, the earliest and most immediate level of consciousness. This evolutionary explanation fits all the evidence. Otherwise how did consciousness originate?
Sean,
The Bible teaches bodily resurrection, not Platonic immortality of souls.
Correct me if I am wrong: Wright's arguments amount to saying that there is a qualitative difference between mental states and brain states such that the former cannot be logically deduced from any empirically discernible neuronic firings or interactions. I agree with this. Mental states are not reducible to brain states. They are emergent.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Holy Scripture and the Tradition of the Church also taught the existence of the soul after death. Because either salvation/damnation would not otherwise be possible.
Except, for that "emergent" part I think you got Wright's view about right. But you should ask him yourself.
Ad astra! Sean
as we know from experience
Kaor, Paul!
As a lawyer/ philosopher/SF writer Wright could respondstill far better than I can as regards philosophy.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Church Tradition is influenced by Greek philosophy.
See Ecclesiastes 9:10. The Bible does not present a single set of doctrines about a hereafter. The idea grew. God's covenant was with the living and collective people of Israel, not with individual dead souls.
If I have got Wright's view right, then he does not prove his case. He rightly disproves reductionism. Philosophical materialism is not reductionist. It does not maintain that consciousness is simply identical with and entirely reducible to neuronic interactions. These interactions somehow cause/generate consciousness. We do not understand how and maybe can't but should keep trying. To stop trying would be obscurantist.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I also go by the NT, which made explicit what was often only prefigured in the OT. Such as what Christ said in Matthew 25 about salvation/damnation.
Neither have you proven your case, as regards philosophical disputes. Philosophy alone can never come to decisive conclusions on all questions.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Neither have I proven my case?! What case have I not proven?
I do not claim that philosophy or anything else can come to decisive conclusions on all questions.
All that any of us can do is to state what we think and why we think it and to respond to alternative views and this process continues. If there is any idea that we are obliged to prove our case to the satisfaction of everyone else, no matter how deeply entrenched some other people's views are, then that idea must be discarded and indeed should not have been on the table in the first place.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
But I think you come close to believing your views are at least provable.
We can agree rival philosophers can only propose solutions they believe to be more likely true than not.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Don't you think that your views are provable? (This does not mean that we expect everyone to accept our views. That is another matter. But my views have at least changed completely and discussion of them continues.)
When I said that someone had not proved his case, I meant more than just that he had not convinced me yet. (Our not being convinced happens all the time!) I meant that, if all that he has done is to refute mechanistic reductionism, then this falls far short of proving mind-body dualism which I think is what he is trying to do. He still has to address dialectical materialism which recognizes that:
quantitative changes become qualitative in ways that are unpredictable;
there is spiral development towards more complex structures which have new, irreducible, emergent properties, including consciousness;
quantitatively different electromagnetic wavelengths cause perception of qualitatively different colours, unpredictable by anyone blind from birth;
air molecules vibrating at different rates cause us to hear sounds as diverse as wind, speech and music;
too much or too little salt changes and spoils the taste of a meal;
quantitative changes in temperature cause sensations of heat or cold;
different quantities of different molecules in the air cause different scents, smells, stenches etc;
organismic sensitivity became conscious sensation (an organism needing sustenance began to FEEL hunger);
therefore, consciousness is an emergent property of complex, sensitive organisms, not an immaterial entity or substance.
If anyone proposes to contradict all this evidence and to argue that consciousness exists and functions independently of material organisms and their environments, then the onus of proof is on him.
Paul.
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