Who is going to hell? An argument for the Bible, Religion and God.

[Dent]

The quote touches on Map?territory relation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
If our ancestors had a bad map they were eaten.
I think we agree with "the map is not the territory"?
Or maybe not.

Haven't seen the film i'll download it now
Edit : "Evolution suffices" is a good way of thinking about natural selection

[Mr. Blonde]

Originally Posted by Dent

If our ancestors had a bad map they were eaten.
I think we agree with "the map is not the territory"?
Or maybe not.

The territory appears to be infinite, the map is constantly expanded by conscious beings capable of doing so.

[Dent]

LAYPERSON TALK
Bekenstein bound
In our "bubble universe" or "bubble multiverse" there seems to be a limit, you can't put an infinite amount of data in a finite amount of space,
physically realised infinity doesn't even seem coherent. EDIT : Burali-Forti paradox
If the (local?) territory were infinite we could run a perpetual motion machine, I don't see how you could get started on the map, a map of what?

Eternal inflation is interesting and I want to understand some of the problems with it, here's one thing that bugs me and isn't the same as eternalism.

most (but not all) theorists who take eternal chaotic inflation seriously assume that cosmic inflation can be forward- but not backward-eternal.

Eternal inflation
"This allows inflation to continue forever, to produce future-eternal inflation."

I think the map-territory thing is more to do with our model/world-simulation vs reality/truth

/LAYPERSON TALK
I need to get back to you on the desire thing

[Mr. Blonde]

Thanks for humoring me with the language. Much more comprehensible. Although some coherent formatting would be nice :P

Originally Posted by Dent

LAYPERSON TALK
Bekenstein bound

In our "bubble universe" or "bubble multiverse" there seems to be a limit, you can't put an infinite amount of data in a finite amount of space,
physically realised infinity doesn't even seem coherent.

EDIT : Burali-Forti paradox

Layperson understanding: So because of the mathematical laws of entropy, there "appears a limit", aka not infinite? So is the "Bekenstein boundary" only currently a hypothetical boundary, or is it definite?

Also, I don't really understand the Burali-Forti paradox:

...naïvely constructing "the set of all ordinal numbers" leads to a contradiction and therefore shows an antinomy in a system that allows its construction.

Although I guess that's the point of a paradox. Cool that Bertrand Russell kinda put it together but gave credit to his inspiration, though. I really need to spend some time on Khan Academy re-learning a lot of even basic math. I've never really been a physics guy but I even have problems understanding logical equations in philosophy because of my hindrances in math (which i still blame on our horrible math teachers in America)

Originally Posted by Dent

If the (local?) territory were infinite we could run a perpetual motion machine

"Local" in this case as in our particular bubble of a universe? I'm not sure I understand the perpetual motion machine reference. I think I see what you mean, as in it would be a closed system? Correct me if I'm wrong, but the more I learn about systems the more I learn there's really no such thing, is there? Other than artificially created closed systems, can't new elements always be introduced? (e.g. in this case, our "bubbles" interacting and exchanging information?

I don't see how you could get started on the map, a map of what? I think the map-territory thing is more to do with our model/world-simulation vs reality/truth

“Begin at the beginning," the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”

― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Theorizing on how to make a map about a potentially infinite (or not) territory is just an exercise in futility for the human mind right now. Whenever I hit a wall like that I try to move on to something more practically to avoid various existential crises.

Eternal inflation is interesting and I want to understand some of the problems with it, here's one thing that bugs me and isn't the same as eternalism.
Eternal inflation

"This allows inflation to continue forever, to produce future-eternal inflation."

Yeah, I'm bit new to these Eternal Inflation concepts myself. I have been thinking a lot about the conceptual concepts of eternity and the human social construct of time, lately, though, so I did a bit of skimming, but beyond that I'm not nearly educated enough on the topic.

The concept of Eternity and Time, of course, seem to be mutually exclusive themselves, yet another paradox. I know for a personal (albeit anecdotal fact) that human beings can train themselves perceive "time" as an Eternal Present, which is creepy but offset by the fact that everything seems to change constantly, which is actually quite a blessing depending on your perspective.

Speaking of, one thing I found interesting while researching Eternalism was the Buddhist concept of Sassatavada (literally meaning "Eternalism" in Pali), apparently a philosophical concept that arose during Buddha's teaching which he strictly rejected, given his doctrine of eternal change, including, the fact that the Self itself changes.



Comparing and contrasting these ancient philosophical ideas/concepts (which really can be brilliant...they just didn't have the instruments we do...shoulders of giants etc) with modern physical or philosophical positions is so fascinating to me.

[Mr. Blonde]

one of my favorite clips from Futurama.

Futurama - The memorable talking between Bender and God - YouTube

Futurama - The memorable talking between Bender and God - YouTube

[Mr. Blonde]

Ugh. I don't actually want to write all this out but I'm compelled.

BEYOND GOOD and EVIL

In an ironic twist of fate, my years of studying philosophy (A Westerner cannot fully understand the West without studying the East), cosmology, world-religion, comparative mythology, human sociology and psychology, metaphysics, and general science had led me with what appears to be a very general but specific-enough knowledge of these subjects to draw a great deal of correlation between them, in order to draw what appears to be a fairly entertaining view of human beings in Nature.

Right, so, the problem in America as far as I can see it is that the predominantly Christian religion, and not even religion, but religious background of the majority of our history, (including the systems, symbols, unspoken behavior, laws, etc.) are all based on, or at least minutely influenced by very Christian ideals of morals and ethics.

This is not up for debate. Obviously, except to the extremely Christian-biased viewer or an otherwise vested interest, this does not grant any real validity to any ultimate Truth that Christianity purports, fundamentally it is just the language and symbolism, that happened to gain popularity based on certain key sociopolitical and historical events, if one follows the academic thread back long enough.


If one happens to possess or develop an interest in World Mythology, one is in luck. It will give you a broader understanding of the minds and cultures of humanity, essentially helping you to comes with your inevitable death. You probably don't want to think about that now, but eventually, you will be forced to. Anyways, the Bible is a large deal of allegory and moral messages, just like any other mythology. The common problem of understanding of mythologies seems to come down to two main parties:

People who read things literally, often these people do not have a broad enough expanse of knowledge or intellectual capability to see things as being LIKE something else. If you can't explain something directly, and you're trying to get your point across, you say what it is LIKE. Much of the Bible, is mythological metaphor dressed in a different disguise, something it has taken me years of intense study to the point of actually learning some fucking Sanskrit to get the bottom of.

Point is, the literal kind of person thinks that, say, Jesus actually returned from the dead, in the view of ACTUAL, mortal death. Sprouting atheists testing the waters of their apostasy in a society that won't burn them at the stake for it often focus on this point as a point of humor, calling Jesus a zombie, which is a pretty dumb joke, philosophically speaking.

People who understand what metaphors, symbolism and allegory are, and treat these ancient texts and mythological concepts and ideas as a mystery to be unfolded, rather than a shallow and subconscious assessment of "silly stories those dumb humans used to believe in."



"But but Mr. Blonde, HOW are we to KNOW the difference between what is metaphor or not? Isn't that one of the key points that atheists always point out to everyone who defends certain parts of the Bible to be metaphoric?

Well, I would recommend that you ask yourself first if you have a deep and fundamental understanding of what both Metaphor and Allegory are...

Metaphor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Allegory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


And then after you get those messages, you study Buddhism (I recommend the Upanishads).

Then Taoism (I recommend the Tao te Ching -- Stephen Mitchell translation).

Then Hinduism (The Bhagavad Gita is where I would start).

Then meditate every day for several years, throughout the majority of your day.

While you are doing this, study every other piece of mythology of tribal and other ethnic groups throughout the world. You live in the information age, act like it.

Don't even worry about the Bible, because if you actually do these things it means that you are very interested in truth. If you don't do your research, sorry, but your opinion means less. That's just how it is. The less you know, the less your opinion matters, because information forms opinion, and you just can't HONESTLY say you know the full story until you've researched as many of the other stories as possible and compare them all.



And even then, you won't know the whole story.


I've been reading a lot of Joseph Campbell lately. He was a comparative mythologist and was, in my opinion, a genius of the generalist variety. He knew so much about so many different subjects, Mythology being his key one, that he drew connections in the English language that I have never seen anybody write so eloquently before. He's quickly becoming my favorite intellectual.

...The second is a cosmological dimension, the dimension which science is concerned---showing you what the shape of the universe is, but showing it in such a way that the mystery again comes through. Today we tend to think that scientists have all the answers. But the great ones tell us, "no, we haven't got all the answers. We're telling you how it works---but what is it?"

You strike a match, what's fire? You can tell me about oxidation, but that doesn't tell me a thing.

The idea is that everything that "makes sense" to us as human beings, in the face of the gigantic (and ultimate) mystery of conscious entities pondering a system that they only "understand" (given the rather sub-modest limited spectrum of sensory data that we use to examine the GIGANTIC Cosmos) is "trapped" within a purely-human held structure and framework of existence. Anything outside of anything that we don't know, we don't know about ---- and there is a lot we don't know.


Sure, we know a lot about Earth, and Material Sciences, and Molecular research and so on and so forth. But even a truly scientific man tends to look at his fellow human beings as PERSONS, as SEPARATE (and complete) individuals, rather than Be-ings. IS-ings. Happenings. Processes. Not static, as in:

1. An identity built from and bound within a collection of molecules --- you don't see the individual molecules, but you know they are there.

2. A nuclear-bound energy-being that is held together by mysterious objects that are 99% empty of "space" that we call "atoms".

3. A conscious entity inexplicably inside a quantum field of indeterminacy.

Originally Posted by Robert Pirsig

The truth knocks on the door and you say, Go away, I'm looking for the truth, and so it goes away. Puzzling.

Joseph Campbell is one of the latter parties of above, a man who deeply understands symbolism, allegory, and metaphorical speech. Let's take a moment to allow him to challenge any potential Christian readers to broaden their scope beyond their rather limited and negative worldview, and instead adopt concepts of other mythologies in their own to facilitate a clearer understanding of reality, shall we?

----------------------------------------------

Originally Posted by Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers

MOYERS: When I read these myths, I am simply in awe of the mystery of it all. We can presume, but we cannot penetrate.

CAMPBELL: That is the point. The person who thinks he has found the ultimate truth is wrong. There is an often-quoted verse in Sanskrit, which appears in the Chinese Tao-Te Ching as well: "He who thinks he knows, doesn't know. He who knows that he doesn't know, knows. For in this context, to know is not to know. And not to know is to know."

MOYERS: Far from undermining my faith, your work in mythology has liberated my faith from the cultural prisons to which it had been sentenced.

CAMPBELL: It liberated my own, and I know it is going to do that with anyone who gets the message.

MOYERS: Are some myths more or less true than others?

CAMPBELL: They are true in different senses. Every mythology has to do with the wisdom of life as related to a specific culture at a specific time. It integrates the individual into his society and the society into the field of nature. It unites the field of nature with my nature. It's a harmonizing force. Our own mythology, for example, is based on the idea of duality: good and evil, heaven and hell. And so our religions tend to be ethical in their accent. Sin and atonement. Right and wrong.

MOYERS: The tension of opposites: love-hate, death-life.

CAMPBELL: Ramakrishna once said that if all you think of are your sins, then you are a sinner. And when I read that, I thought of my boyhood, going to confession on Saturdays, meditating on all the little sins that I had committed during the week. Now I think one should go and say, "Bless me, Father, for I have been great, these are the good things I have done this week." Identify your notion of yourself with the positive, rather than with the negative.

You see, religion is really a kind of second womb. It's designed to bring this extremely complicated thing, which is a human being, to maturity, which means to be self-motivating, self-acting. But the idea of sin puts you in a servile condition throughout your life.

MOYERS: But that's not the Christian idea of creation and the Fall.

CAMPBELL: I once heard a lecture by a wonderful old Zen philosopher, Dr. D. T. Suzuki. He stood up with his hands slowly rubbing his sides and said, "God against man. Man against God. Man against nature. Nature against man. Nature against God. God against nature -- very funny religion!"

MOYERS: Well, I have often wondered, what would a member of a hunting tribe on the North American plains think, gazing up on Michelangelo's creation?

CAMPBELL: That is certainly not the god of other traditions. In the other mythologies, one puts oneself in accord with the world, with the mixture of good and evil. But in the religious system of the Near East, you identify with the good and fight against the evil. The biblical traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all speak with derogation of the so-called nature religions.

The shift from a nature religion to a sociological religion makes it difficult for us to link back to nature. But actually all of those cultural symbols are perfectly susceptible to interpretation in terms of the psychological and cosmological systems, if you choose to look at them that way.

Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck to its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.

MOYERS: What is the metaphor?

CAMPBELL: A metaphor is an image that suggests something else. For instance, if I say to a person, "You are a nut," I'm not suggesting that I think the person is literally a nut. "Nut" is a metaphor. The reference of the metaphor in religious traditions is to something transcendent that is not literally anything. If you think that the metaphor is itself the reference, it would be like going to a restaurant, asking for the menu, seeing beefsteak written there, and starting to eat the menu.

For example, Jesus ascended to heaven. The denotation would seem to be that somebody ascended to the sky. That's literally what is being said. But if that were really the meaning of the message, then we have to throw it away, because there would have been no such place for Jesus literally to go. We know that Jesus could not have ascended to heaven because there is no physical heaven anywhere in the universe. Even ascending at the speed of light, Jesus would still be in the galaxy. Astronomy and physics have simply eliminated that as a literal, physical possibility. But if you read "Jesus ascended to heaven" in terms of its metaphoric connotation, you see that he has gone inward -- not into outer space but into inward space, to the place from which all being comes, into the consciousness that is the source of all things, the kingdom of heaven within. The images are outward, but their reflection is inward. The point is that we should ascend with him by going inward. It is a metaphor of returning to the source, alpha and omega, of leaving the fixation on the body behind and going to the body's dynamic source.

Consciousness is the mystery. The fact we have serious scientists and intellectuals meeting on common ground (both Physics and Psychology are leaning more and more towards the East as more new experiments come through) is really quite exciting.

The book is highly recommended. It's called The Power of Myth and it's the most extensively satisfying collection of world mythology I have seen.
----------------------------------------------


THE POINT of all this racket is that, in order to come to any sort of real discussion about religion on Planet Earth, one must meet at least these prerequisites:


1. Has a clear (for purposes of accurate discussion) idea in their mind about what they think the word God means to them, in particular. Is it a personified god? Is it mother Earth? Is it the Universe? Is it the Ground of All Being? Is it a mysterious, ineffable nothingness?

If you don't have a clear idea of what you're discussing, you can't even begin to have an opinion.

2. Knows how to and is willing to research. Again, if one doesn't meet this prerequisite the Ultimate Mystery that is existence likely won't interest them much in the first place, so they are less likely to hold strong opinions on the subject.

3. Willing to be open to the possible validity (and co-validity) of other cultures belief system, realizing that you are only in your particular culture and religious background (or lack thereof) by pure, blind chance.


I think that's it, actually. That was my point.

Alan Watts- OM: Reading from Hindu Scriptures Part1 - YouTube

Alan Watts- OM: Reading from Hindu Scriptures Part1 - YouTube

Stephen Mitchell's Tao Te Ching - Audiobook - YouTube

Stephen Mitchell's Tao Te Ching - Audiobook - YouTube

Alan Watts ~ What Is The Meaning Of God - YouTube

Alan Watts ~ What Is The Meaning Of God - YouTube

The Upanishads ~ pure vedic Spirituality ~(translation as it is/audiobook) - YouTube

The Upanishads ~ pure vedic Spirituality ~(translation as it is/audiobook) - YouTube

Bhagavad Gita (Full Version Beautifully Recited in English) - YouTube

Bhagavad Gita (Full Version Beautifully Recited in English) - YouTube

Have a good day gentlemen, I look forward to any responses.

[f3lix]

lol

[Orgazmo]

Dave, what of 1/2/3 of Blonde's prerequisites describe you?

[f3lix]

I don't agree with blind chance, since I was raised one and chose another.

[Mr. Blonde]

It's not a matter of predestination of one's beliefs, it is a matter of one's current intellectual ability to understand certain socio-philosophical frameworks, concepts, and ideas, which can only be unveiled by honest self-doubt (such as the fact that what F3lix believes to be his own free will of choice may actually be an illusion), or by open and honest conversation about how one thinks and behaves, where one's faulty ideas and ways of thinking can be corrected (or validated) by others who have had their own corrected or validated, either by themselves, other people, or some other stimulus.

Nobody is going to sincerely believe that their own free will (particularly if they presently identify as being a Libertarian or Conservative) unless they are more interested in truth (outside of themselves) rather than their own, obviously self-biased opinion. This is called the Great Doubt.

You don't know what you're going to be thinking 10 seconds from now. How much of your mind do "you" control?

[f3lix]

What I believe and how I feel are not the same thing. I choose my friends, but cannot control who I love. I choose my beliefs, but not if it is accurate. The longer I live, the less control I think I have over anything and just focus on improving what is in my grasp at the current time.

[Mr. Blonde]

Originally Posted by f3lix

The longer I live, the less control I think I have over anything and just focus on improving what is in my grasp at the current time.

Amen.

[Dent]

Originally Posted by Repugnant Abomination

The position as it stands right now: God created the universe. God had to exist outside of the universe to create it. The existence of God cannot be confirmed by science and the empirical method if he exists outside of his creation (i.e. space and time).

This is the (a?) ontological argument right? a priori attempt at proving God's existence?

---


Empirical evidence for the distinction of desire and pleasure

Much more recent research (Berridge & Kringelbach, 2010) suggests that earlier scientists had leaped too far in their conclusions. These scientists have discovered that wanting and liking are neurologically distinct. At first blush, this sounds rather obvious and simplistic. At the second blush, it sounds a bit off kilter. Why would someone want something they do not like?

Originally Posted by Berridge

if one creates a lesion in the wanting system of a rat, the rat will not eat. It will starve to death. But if you force the same rat to eat agreeable food (e.g., something sweet) it will display behavior that suggests it enjoys the experience. It likes food, but it doesn’t want food. Conversely, one can stimulate the wanting system to achieve wanting without liking. A rat in this condition will eat everything you give it, including food that it dislikes. It will gorge itself on foods that cause it to display aversive reactions at every bite. Berridge compares this to addiction. Addicts often pursue their drug of choice even after that drug no longer induces pleasure.

following research by Kent C. Berridge —“liking and wanting are actually dissociable and… reside in different neural systems.”

Dissociation (neuropsychology) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Originally Posted by David Pearce

mesolimbic dopamine mediates "wanting", activation of the mu opioid receptors in our twin hedonic hotspots mediates "liking". Experimentally, happiness and motivation are doubly dissociable. Yet if we want to be superhappy and hypermotivated, there's no technical reason why we can't combine the blessings of both.

Originally Posted by Mr. Blonde

It's impossible to "want" (aka plan something in the future) and NOT experience stress

Originally Posted by Mr. Blonde

people who desire do not desire still DO THINGS

I don’t think these are true, meditative and motivated bliss are equally enjoyable as far as I know but meditative bliss which I see (AND COULD STILL BE GETTING THE WRONG END OF THE STICK) as all pleasure ‘liking’ without desire ‘wanting’ isn’t going to work in the world of fitness and selection pressure. Without thought for the future what would be the motivation to prevent future suffering?

Originally Posted by David Pearce

Mainlining heroin and Buddhist nirvana have a lot in common, namely bliss and the cessation of all desire. But we need to explore sustainable solutions instead.

Originally Posted by hand selected not with context

If ANYTHING, buddhism is about action
It's not that buddhists don't desire --- in fact they accept that they will be desiring for the rest of their lives. It is the human condition to. It is more the acceptance that you will always desire, as a human being, because that's just part of you are.

aka Buddhists don't get "blissed out" and become desireless zombies. They just stop desiring for personal gain and desire to help others instead.

I still don’t understand how Buddhists wouldn’t want to be a desireless wireheader if desire is suffering (it’s not)

“May all that hath life be delivered from suffering"

[Dent]

please ignore this post I only came here to say that buddha got the desire thing wrong, ramblings of a cheeky kunt.

Originally Posted by Dent

Eternal inflation is interesting and I want to understand some of the problems with it, here's one thing that bugs me and isn't the same as eternalism.

#yolo fuck it infinite past and future, space and time it is.

Here's a thread I found interesting
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!ms...o/bDARcaWvz9AJ

"To say inflation is future but not past eternal requires a fundamental arrow of time found nowhere in any of the equations used in talking about this stuff. So it must be imposed somewhere."

[hep-th/0702178] Eternal inflation and its implications
Although inflation is generically eternal into the future, it is not eternal into the past: it can be proven under reasonable assumptions that the inflating region must be incomplete in past directions, so some physics other than inflation is needed to describe the past boundary of the inflating region.

[1204.4658] Did the universe have a beginning?

We discuss three candidate scenarios which seem to allow the possibility that the universe could have existed forever with no initial singularity: eternal infation, cyclic evolution, and the emergent universe. The first two of these scenarios are geodesically incomplete to the past, and thus cannot describe a universe without a beginning. The third, although it is stable with respect to classical perturbations, can collapse quantum mechanically, and therefore cannot have an eternal past.

Edit: I got to see lots of old buddhist stuff this past weekend, I think Blondie would have appreciated it more than I did.
Buddha’s Word: The Life of Books in Tibet and Beyond | MAA Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

Edit : still haven't slept, God looks a bit like this hyperboloid some of the time, going from the old steady state universe ---> singularity (big bang) universe ----> steady state multiverse with infinities all over the shop really is something.
I am going to find out some more about this "geodesically incomplete to the past" thing and whether it is a singularity (consensus is that it is, BGV) also what this singularity has to do with 'beginning' or whether next level physics can explain it all better.
Cosmic Questions - Turok: Eternal Inflation

Infinite space, infinite time (Anthony Aguirre) - YouTube

Infinite space, infinite time (Anthony Aguirre) - YouTube

[Dent]

[Dent]

Allow me a bit of time to edit and respond as best as I can pls

Originally Posted by Mr. Blonde

Have a good day gentlemen, I look forward to any responses.

Originally Posted by Mr. Blonde

But even a truly scientific man tends to look at his fellow human beings as PERSONS, as SEPARATE (and complete) individuals, rather than Be-ings. IS-ings. Happenings. Processes. Not static, as in:

1. An identity built from and bound within a collection of molecules --- you don't see the individual molecules, but you know they are there.

2. A nuclear-bound energy-being that is held together by mysterious objects that are 99% empty of "space" that we call "atoms".

3. A conscious entity inexplicably inside a quantum field of indeterminacy.

How'd you know what truly scientific people tend to see? maybe philosophically naive scientists, but they're not scientific.
number 3 is dualist?

I thought mereology had been mentioned here, but I guess not.

Originally Posted by Definition

mereology
ˌmɛrɪˈɒlədʒi/
noun PHILOSOPHY
the abstract study of the relations between parts and wholes.

Are we something more than our parts? or are the only things that exist the fundamental building blocks? with the rest being some fitness relevant 'unreal' pattern.

Mereology - YouTube

Mereology - YouTube

Mereological nihilism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia <- i'm going with this one

[Mr. Blonde]

Originally Posted by Dent

How'd you know what truly scientific people tend to see? maybe philosophically naive scientists, but they're not scientific.

number 3 is dualist?

Please clarify the first part/question? I am proposing three different but apparently "true" models of how the human being can regard itself based on actual science since the Newtonian era. Feel free to add to this or dispute.

I'm interested what you mean by "dualist" in terms of this discussion. The definition (and concept) can mean very different things depending on the context. We still don't know what mind is. Is "dualist" from your end meant to be intellectually derogatory? This is a sincere question, I feel like I have seen you used it that way a few times.

In any case I am partial to nondualism.

Number 3, labels aside, appears to be one way one can look at the human position, philosophically, in regard to quantum physics and quantum field theory. Perhaps consciousness arose "naturally", but...why? It still means that the Universe is conscious of itself, at last at a sub level (ourselves being part of the Universe).

[Dent]

Classicality – All in the mind?

David Pearce : The usual story runs something like this. The world and our minds are essentially classical. We don't see superpositions of alive-and-dead cats. Newton's laws of motion and inverse square law approximately hold for medium-sized objects. Macroscopic objects 1) occupy definite positions (the "preferred basis" problem) 2) don't readily display quantum interference effects; and 3) yield well-defined outcomes when experimentally probed. The classical macroworld seems to obey different rules from the quantum microworld.

However, perceptual direct realism is false. We need to distinguish the properties of the vehicle of our world-simulation from its content. Without phenomenal feature binding, there are no bound classical objects internal to our world-simulations that can be described by classical laws in the first instance. Compare how someone with simultanagnosia (cf.Simultanagnosia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) can see only one object at once. Or how someone with cerebral akinetopsia is "motion-blind". And these neurological syndromes involve only partial failures of phenomenal binding. In the case of total failure, we'd be akin to the skull-bound American minds in the experiment I discussed above. Whatever serial or (classically) parallel computations that skull-bound Americans collectively execute for the purposes of the experiment, all that exists phenomenally are 320 million discrete skull-bound "pixels" of experience, not a pan-continental subject of experience. By contrast - and over-simplifying - imagine a movie running at, say, 10 to the power 15 quantum coherent superpositions a second, i.e. not the synchronous firing of classical, macroscopically distinguishable neurons, but neuronal superpositions. What does it feel like to be such a "movie"?

An obvious response is that it doesn't feel like anything at all to instantiate a succession of quantum coherent neuronal superpositions that last femtoseconds or less. Consciousness, we tend to assume, arises only on a scale of milliseconds via (somehow) patterns of neuronal firings. But this response is _not_ a feasible answer if we assume (with Galen Strawson and others) that consciousness discloses the intrinsic nature of the physical. Indeed, the evidence that our minds are "what a quantum computer feels like from the inside" lies right under our virtual noses in the guise of the bound macroscopic classical objects of everyday experience.

I'd like to say that this is a prediction of the theory; but of course it's only a retrodiction. We'll know whether our minds are really quantum computers only when tomorrow's interferometry can probe the mind-brain at timeframes at which quantum coherent neuronal superpositions must occur. I say "must"; but such claim assumes that the unitary dynamics of quantum mechanics holds good in the mind-brain. Believers in "hidden variables" and dynamical collapse theories disagree.

[Dent]

David Pearce : Stefan, thanks. Yes, David Chalmers is admirably open-minded. But at the end of the day, he's a dualist. Chalmers sympathetically explores the monistic conjecture that consciousness discloses the mysterious "fire" in the equations of physics that exhaustively describe our world. However, he rejects the conjecture that consciousness discloses the intrinsic nature of the physical for two reasons. Above, I touched on the second reason. On the face of it, neither classical nor quantum physics can account for phenomenal binding. Even if the basic stuff of the world is fields of experience, then insofar as our neurons are discrete classical objects, then a "pack of neurons" could no more be a unitary subject of experience than skull-bound Americans could be a pan-continental subject of experience.

[By contrast, I argue that our bound phenomenal minds - and the classical world-simulations they run - are an entirely quantum phenomenon. Of course, there are powerful counterarguments against this conjecture. These objections rely on the intuitively ludicrously short time-frames at which quantum coherent neuronal superpositions (cf, Schrödinger's cat) are effectively destroyed in the brain, i.e. lost to the environment via thermally-induced decoherence in ways that are for all practical purposes irreversible.

Fortunately, the conjunction of these two implausible-sounding claims [1: experience discloses the intrinsic nature of the physical; and 2: phenomenal binding is a manifestation of macroscopic quantum coherence] yields novel and testable scientific predictions - albeit predictions that most neuroscientists would confidently predict will turn out to be false.

For some idea of the technical challenges involved in this kind of experiment, perhaps see:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1404.2635v1.pdf]

Does any of this really matter ethically?
If you believe classical digital computers can become sentient, support "mind uploading" and are poised to become posthuman superintelligence(s), then yes.
In other words, I could be completely mistaken.

[Saint DH]

I want to study the Bible and go to seminary school to become a pastor. Then I will move to one of those states with legal weed. I will start a church where I can lead a congregation. In that church we will worship God through weed, haha. Hopefully I can just live in the church. Love that pimped out stained glass. Haha chilling drunk in the pews with some hydro next to the crucifix. Baptized in bong water. Praise God.

[Orgazmo]

Just get ordained online and move out there tomorrow. No need to study anything.

[Mr. Blonde]

you could join an extant church that already does that

Spiritual Use of Cannabis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

History of Cannabis in India

Entheogenic use of cannabis

[Saint DH]

Right but obviously the point is that I exploit religion for my own financial, political, and social gain.

[Mr. Blonde]

That sounds like a lot of work, man.

[Mr. Blonde]

Originally Posted by Mr. Blonde

Please clarify the first part/question? I am proposing three different but apparently "true" models of how the human being can regard itself based on actual science since the Newtonian era. Feel free to add to this or dispute.

I'm interested what you mean by "dualist" in terms of this discussion. The definition (and concept) can mean very different things depending on the context. We still don't know what mind is. Is "dualist" from your end meant to be intellectually derogatory? This is a sincere question, I feel like I have seen you used it that way a few times.

In any case I am partial to nondualism.

Number 3, labels aside, appears to be one way one can look at the human position, philosophically, in regard to quantum physics and quantum field theory. Perhaps consciousness arose "naturally", but...why? It still means that the Universe is conscious of itself, at last at a sub level (ourselves being part of the Universe).

bump, Dent.