S03E01 Noam Chomsky on Consciousness
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- Опубліковано 14 вер 2022
- Noam Chomsky is an intellectual giant, who has made major contributions to linguistics, philosophy, and cognitive science. In this episode Keith and Philip will explore Professor Chomsky's views on consciousness and the mind.
94 years old this man can still think through complex problems. I deeply wish to have this type of longevity
I think he's 92. Roger Penrose is 91 and also more lucid than ever! Noam Chomsky has worked with Penrose a bit on consciousness via Stuart Hameroff in Arizona.
@@voidisyinyangvoidisyinyang885 Chomsky is 197 years young.
@@tookie36 I sent him a vid last week and he replied since the vid didn't have captions then he couldn't understand it. Also no transcript! Luckily I was able to just rely on all his previous research to answer my questions.
Exercise.
Every day.
Consistent exercise, both strength training and cardio, associated with > 45% reduction in the risk of dementia
@@RealRaviyou also have to exercise your mind, writing is an excellent way of achieving that.
I feel as privileged as can be to be living in an age where this sort of conversation between such great people can happen and made available and shareable as it is. Moreover, priviliged to actually share this planet and medium with Noam Chomsky, something that Descartes would have loved to do, I'm sure. A tale worth living to tell.
You speak for all of us my friend.
What a chat! Get on a superstar guest like Chomsky and to hear his views on a deep philosophical issues like consciousness…. Wow, what a treat. This is becoming my favorite podcast!! Keep it up guys!!
Thank you!
thanks!
What a special treat. I was lucky enough to briefly meet him and Chris Hedges at a talk…even snapped a nice picture of all of us! Thank you for this episode.
thank you sirs! i came here for chomsky and found more brilliant minds! i appreciate the chat, let's keep it up! =)
Lovely. Thank you for sharing.
Thanks for doing this . This deserves millions of views.
What an honour and privilege. Thanks for this discussion.
Awesome work, trhank you for sharing!
Marvellous, I really enjoyed that. You really made the most of this opportunity, congrats
thank you very much for the beautiful conversation. I’ve been studying chomsky for myself, and I really needed a video like this!
Good one. 👍
Nice one Phil.
Good on you Philip for being unafraid to have a lively debate with Noam. You put your case very well and it was a pleasure to hear this conversation.
Thank you sooooo much!
My background was working class with ideas
I was immediately put down by my teachers
I was a working class boy with energy… I was put into a class based bottle
I am now a taxi driver with ideas..
Very illuminating
Very informative, thank you very much for hosting!
Sorry we didn't get to your question Nino, you were next on the list!
wow Noam Chomsky! thanks for making this available
Still waters run deep. Thank you very much.
Here is a new subscriber… most profoundest views of the great “Chomsky”… great podcast👍
Great and lowly are RELATIVE. 😉
Prof Noam Chomsky genius lies in his clarity and directness unclouded by beliefs.
He listens in silence and responds without any agenda just wanting to know.
He said Descartes referred to the pituitary gland but Chomsky meant the pineal gland. In fact the pineal gland does have a secret of emanating our spirit via quantum consciousness. Descartes is correct! Noam's via on Newton is awesome also - fascinating. Newton was an alchemist. "Intelligible Theories"....
@@voidisyinyangvoidisyinyang885, what is this “SPIRIT” of which you speak? 🤔
@@SpiritualPsychotherapyServices Is this one of those trick questions where you secretly know the answer but don't want to say? haha. Sorry I don't answer trick questions since they are actually false accusations based on having no evidence.
Just found this channel and subbed. What a great idea, thanks to all involved
Thanks!
Will listen to Charles Ives's "Unanswered Question" with new ears!
love howyou guys start the show
Brilliant experience in the listening to, eh. Spot on.
Wow this was a treat. Thank you this was very challenging.
I would like to ask a question that I think pertains to the consciousness discussion. However after reading it I don't think it'll make perfect sense but I'll try
To answer what is consciousness I would first ask.
1 When does reality begin to exist. Is it at the Big bang or is it the day you're born and assuming it's one of these two options and time is moving infinitely fast before arrival at this measurable existence.
2 Are you willed into reality by the forces inside of it such as your parents mating, stuck in a perpetual loop with the conscious entity always waking
or
does the precursor "consciousness" somehow concentrate and create reality before it subjects itself to it's own creation.
I think if we're to purpose that consciousness is the foundation that all shared experiences originally comes from then we should try to be certain where it begins.
I think in order to question reality I'd have to have an alternate reality from which to study it. However this puts a fork in the gears of sharing knowledge or "science". Assuming experience or "consciousness" is subjective and can't be shared as easy as a recipe.
In order to prove your point you could potentially look at dreams as an alternate version of reality that we all have and if you are somehow able to connect people between dreams then you could make the argument that reality has a foundation of "consciousness" over mathematics. And assuming of course you could connect people through a different conscious cognitive experience such as dreams then you could begin to make the assertion that life is a dream itself created by some conscious entity that just wanted to shake hands with itself over and over again.
It seems to me that you're onto something but saying "the foundation of reality is consciousness" is a alternative way of saying that everything is alive at a fundamental level and or that we bring ourselves into reality like a strange fractal folding in on itself. to eat and chase and hug. . . Ourselves. Over and over again.
I hope this wasn't entirely nonsense.
I really enjoyed this discourse thank you for hosting this conversation 👍
To understand what conscious action is about, it is necessary to consider that our unconscious generates an Entity that "comes to life" through conscious action, and that a very strong association is established in the brain between our bodily action and the action of that entity. Entity. At the same time, it is necessary to know that it is in early childhood, with the learning of the language that characterizes us, that said Entity is gestated, which we usually call the Being.
Although said entity does not possess a material body, as I mentioned, there is a strong unconscious association between said entity and our material body.
Even if it is true that the “hard questions” can’t be answered by science and philosophy, that doesn’t mean tbat tbe questions can’t be answered. That would just show the limitations of science and philosophy, which are expanding constantly.
consciousness, the hard problem of: is the problem of explaining why and how we have qualia, or phenomenal experiences. This is in contrast to the “easy problems” of explaining the physical systems that give us (and many other animals) the ability to discriminate, integrate information, and so forth. These problems are seen as relatively easy because all that is required for their solution is to specify the mechanisms that perform such functions. Some philosophers assert that even once we have solved all such problems about the brain and experience, the hard problem will still persist. Thus, the hard problem is an instance of what is known as hard emergence. In other words, the hard problem is the problem of explaining why certain mechanisms are accompanied by conscious experience. For example, why should neural processing in the brain lead to the felt sensations of, say, feelings of hunger or selfless love?
The so-called “body-mind problem” is closely related to this “hard problem” of consciousness. Millions of philosophers throughout history, both professional academics and amateur philosophers, have noticed that human/animal consciousness differs so radically to inert matter, that they find it difficult to reconcile the dichotomy in a parsimonious manner. It seems that a thought has absolutely nothing in common to a rock or to a molecule of water. However, a similar dilemma could be made regarding water and fire. What similarities do flames have with a glass of water? What does air have in common to a bar of titanium? They seem radically different!
When one beholds a brain, which is a gross (concrete, physical, tangible) object, one fails to see how a subtle (abstract, mental, intangible) object can emerge from it, since the two spheres (of mind and matter) seem so thoroughly distinct and unrelated. However, the same quandary may possibly apply to a piece of dried wood and fire. How can a dead tree become a mass of hot flames? When sufficient frictional force or conductive heat is applied to the wood, the kinetic energy generated will cause the piece of wood to turn into a completely different element (from solid to fire). Likewise with water: how do two dry gases (hydrogen and oxygen) combine to produce wetness? It seems rather miraculous! Similarly, when the electrical impulses generated in a brain are of sufficient intensity, complexity, and quality, that energy is transmuted into the form of thought objects, such as visual images.
Love such conversations stimulating the prodding the ibservatio: whatever us humans with limitation of our senses try to confirm to ourselves, has to remain only within the limitations of our observation.
TRUTH, or any FACT which humans conclude must always be limited.
Thank you again for a good chat.
Good and bad are RELATIVE. 😉
Chomsky is an intellectual hero!
Love Chomsky 💕💕💕💕💕
Hello friends, please update the audio only version... this episode is not yet available as a podcast?
It seems to me that even a causa sui is in motion enough to agitate and be detected; the space we currently live in seems to be capable of these feats, so even if our own momentum is stopped, the capacity to acquire - and be rid of - remains to be shipped, despite the disruptions.
37:21 Even Plato would dismiss that argument saying that the soul is like notes being played off an instrument. The atoms can make a song because they're arranged in the form of an instrument, but they don't make those sounds outside of that organization.
brilliant and beautiful, thank you very much for yalls time and effort, chomsky has been a lifelong inspiration, and i can't thank you enough for having him on!!!
Thank you!
Move the microphone away from your mouth, its far too close, and distorting the sound. Also, the wrong type of microphone to use.
@@fionaewen6231 Thanks for the tip! What sort of mic do you recommend? (Mine is a Samson Q2U.)
@@fionaewen6231, it seems that your mother never taught you to say "PLEASE". 🙄
@@SpiritualPsychotherapyServices its a technical thing, you obviously dont understand the objective. Dont be giving me lessons on politeness.
“Awareness evolved to a flashpoint transforms itself into absolute reality.”
In the morning I’m a dualist. By lunch I’m a materialist. Before sleep I’m an idealist
Any idea about what is the article of Quantum Theory by hot shots discussing what is a particle?
A particle is the minimum vibration in the quantum field. I have seen the mathematical proof in a ytoob video. I'll give you the info if you want.
One of the best conversations I've ever witnessed. Got yourself a new subscriber. I even hit the bell, which I never do.
To me, consciousness is probably the most interesting topic of all time. But right now, it's also increasingly relevant to technology and ethics. It's so important for broader society to truly take up these questions. Philosophers need to be given proper attention. We're advancing so quickly in technology yet our moral aptitude is, at best, inching forward. Arguably it has taken a jump or few in reverse
another pointless and useless comment.what does it matter if the conversation was the best.these pointless empty comments are getting extremely pathetic. this man is talking about all kind of nonsense his entire life and to what gain, what changed.? Zero...Nothing.... Nada. what happened is these kind of people and its clearly not just him are useless repeaters to sell a book . they are part of the problem not the solutions.if this is not blatantly obvious any of you mindless repeaters of empty words and phrases should be ashamed of yourself.stop repeating and start listening to what they actually say or to put it even more clear, what they do not do. i am seriously extremely proud of you to be able to "hit that bell".....slow clap!
@@s.muller8688 Good Girl! 👌
Incidentally, Slave, are you VEGAN? 🌱
@@SpiritualPsychotherapyServices no i take fanboys and girls into deep water where they discover themselves.
@@s.muller8688 Did you know that in ancient Bhārata (India), a person who consumed ANY type of animal was known as a “Chandāla” (dog-eater) and was not even included in mainstream society, but was an outcast?🥩
So, do you ADMIT that you are an animal-abusing criminal, Mr. Dog-eater? 😬🙄😬
How come this episode is not on Spotify?
On a work day I woke up and looked at my watch. I saw a "5" followed by a "3" followed by a "0". I did not say to myself "it's five thirty", instead I instantly became more awake, started moving my body, eventually got out of bed.....
Language can actually jump the shortest gap of comprehension in that case or be purely symboluc. Even in normal conversations there may be little comprehension going on when we listen.
So much of our minds and behaviors are automatic. We use our tiny amount of "free-will" to train our automatic behaviors, and I'm more or less okay with this.
That was fucking GREAT! Thank you very much
Regarding the definition and explanation of consciousness - look at an ignored social science approach based on social interaction factors, communication, language, reflectivity in the work of GH Mead, TR Burns, N Wiley, among others….
@36:00 Philip Goff says: "What I take from Bertrand Russell's analysis is we have no idea what matter is, all we know is what it does."
Aside from the fact that this observation applies just as well to consciousness as to matter, it doesn't seem like a meaningful distinction to begin with. In practice, what something "is" is indistinguishable from what it "does".
As for the "bent stick" thought experiment, in fact your visual perception is not inaccurate - you are indeed seeing light rays as they are physically refracted by the water in the glass. The notion that the stick itself is bent is a cognitive conclusion founded on what may be a misinterpretation of the physical laws of refraction. In those circumstances, whether the stick is in fact bent can readily be determined by closer examination of the stick itself.
Well done. What a treat to get to hear Dr Chomsky explain his views on consciousness and explain the history of scientific thought. It seems he believes that consciousness is derived from physical activities of the brain, rather than a fundamental all pervasive awareness in which everything arises and passes away? Intuition based on subjective experiences of wholeness and the mystery of life lead me to favor the possibility that an all pervasive unified field of awareness. Both the living beings and the table arise in that field of consciousness, the table is not aware of itself and we are because of our physiology and the minds ability to reflect to light of awareness. 🙏💛
hi, do you have a transcription of this interview? I believe you should continue with Chomsky, the Aristotle of our time, about the history of science in detail. And maybe many other scientific and philosophical topics as well. thank you.
click on the ellipses in the upper right corner of the description - it says "show transcript." You'll have to edit it since it's word transcription.
Once in a lifetime we will have a guy that will say the incredible
And for a guy that was influenced to not go to university because of my background I wish you all well
It’s a bit ridiculous to say that we have no idea what matter is. Democritus figured it out. So did my granddaughter who is 4 years old, and who asked her mother, “what am I made of.” If her mother had answered, “consciousness!” she would have given up on her mother. Unfortunately sometimes you need a lot of education to give up on thinking and taking up preening. Metaphysical idealism is best expressed in German where it can be safely ignored. By the way, E= m c 2 is useful in this discussion… matter and energy are different sides of same coin. Chew on that.
Not all conscious actions are likely to be perceived through the senses. Those that are, involve qualia. When I hit my finger, my body is affected and my Self is aware of it, that is, a conscious action takes place. Half a second ago I was not aware of the state of a toe on my left foot, however my brain did know its state. In the latter case it is an unconscious action.
a question: What does it mean when Chomsky says we don't know what matter is? Don't we know what the matter is? that the atoms the physics etc. Or I am missing something. thank you.
watch some quantum physics videos on YT and you'll have your answer
How closer to answer, how closer to accounting of, than staying closer to simple
E=mc2 or 0+∞=1? Which one do you chose? The first equation produces Fear of Death (atomic bombs), The second, Love of Life (deepest knowledge of our Real Self). The second one, 0 + ∞ = 1, is the equation of my "Unified Metaphysical Field Theory." Interested? Let me know.
Keith, many words. I prefer to just close my eyes. I inevitably find that there is ‚a knower behind the knowing‘, the reflective consciousness, that which ‚goes far beyond‘ perception, sensation, feelings, thoughts and intellectual concepts. This conversation about ‚meaning‘ would not be possible without reflective consciousness. This is what machines and AI will never achieve. Behind perceiving reality, behind experiencing dreams, there is the ‚universal I am‘ that is knowing all this, breaking the otherwise endless recursivity of reflection. This has nothing to do with what you seem to call ‚consciousness as a process‘ and describe as an illusionary jungle-trip within our psychology. I get the impression that your theory might be just another desperate try of our limited mind to explain the simple but unexplainable nature of the ‘I am’, the knower behind the knowing.
What you have stated relates to the ABSOLUTE, while we are speaking of the RELATIVE.
Confusing and conflating relative and absolute truth is practically MANDATORY for spiritual neophytes.
Perhaps one day you will come to see that there is no need to speak about everything from the Absolute perspective.
It is unbeneficial to the persons with whom you are conversing (unless, of course, they are thoroughly deluded materialists, who are unable to see beyond the physical realm).
Peace! ✌🏻
Yeah I agree. I would either point out at this never ending reflexion of consciouseness (who knows then who says who knows...) or suggest there can be something even deeper than consciouseness, uncatchable "existence" where consciouseness appear. After all I can exist without consciouseness but cannot percieve it at teh moment. What if someone sleep and is not dreaming, or when you ride a train and look by the window, getting hypnotized by poles regulary moving before your eyes, getting in smoe kind of trans because of sound of the train wheels and then bum, suddenly somoen enter the cabin and you then realize it is your friend who went somewhere and you didn't even noticed when he left. Where you conscious for this time? Not exactly. But you still existed. Or somehow was brought back from non existence. What when I faint adn for couple seconds have no awareness at all? Black hole without any sensation. But I was brought back. I didn't die, no one took my place in my body and mind. So either Im something deeper than consciouseness itself or the state I was could be like being "conscious" of non existence.
What saddens and suprise me is that even very intelligent people fell somewhere in indentifying themselves and doesn't seem to fully understand and took controll over virtual personality they create in their minds that they think is them when it is only a definition created by them the same as in game avatar is not me but just an in game avatar that REAL I can play trough.
of course in game avatar is needed to be able to play, but the thing is to know that this is nothing more than in game avatar played by ME and not real me. Simple but not easy to get and even very smart people sometimes seems to be played by the avatar and not play the avatar. Like creating some simple programm and letting it make decissions for me. Like from infinite freedome of choices giving yourself just two options and don't even chose one personally:)
I also tend to think that consciousness is a general feature of the matter and the Universe , varying only in degrees of complexity, from rocks to brains. However Im still not sure if maybe the Universe creates categories and there are these phase shifting attractors that creates conscious entities and subjects. In other words is everything a continous gradient or there are discrete states of subjectivity? Are we living in a big soup or its more like a stew? In the same time i know that from a materialistic perspective, i am not a human category. I am made of rocks, water, air and every other possible element there is around me, so I am not such a discrete entity perhaps.
Rocks have SUBJECTIVE experience? 🤪
My man
Watched all of it 1:11:17
"Before the action we are wise, and after the action we are wise, but during the action we are usually otherwise....." Raj Neesh. said, i think....Pan-psychism is just the latest '"slouching towards Bethlehem"...towards a belief in the "Almighty"....
Big names. Frankish, Goff, Chomsky. Awesome.
Chomsky is pretty amazing
I might to try and read Goodman’s “The Structure of Appearance,” but it looks like heavy reading.
57:32 winter of discontent? the highest point in human opportunity is shit?
We all have to make our own bets. Panpsychism Sounds instinctual to me. Love sounds instinctual to me too. Feelings in general and our psychology Something are beyond the computation of the brain and chemistry. 😊
You have to get up really early in the morning to catch out Noam on anything...but like Goff, I can't help thinking there is a panpsychist sympathist somewhere deep inside Noam..but good luck getting a peak at it...I think the closest anyone got when he was asked about metaphysics and he responded "It's all metaphysics"
Consciousness is that part of us that is Divine.
no.. just a computation.. forget god and divinity delusions.
@@5piles there is qualia yeah but without selves, intrinsic natures or subjects. you are a siimulation of nature nothing else.
@@null.och.nix7743 selves/subjects/observers are part of qualia. study physicalism better, they do not accept qualia.
@@5piles you fool qualia expert.. you and the chalmers alike are responsible for the confusion.. is just phenomenology embodied cognition-simulation generated by the brain.. or wait tell us where you wanna go with your qualia intrinsic nature evangelism? What is your ontology?
Sings: “It ain’t necessarily so...” 🎤
I couldn't watch the whole video because the two interviewers were nodding their head so approvingly I just couldn't take it anymore
this made me laugh! I had the same reaction.
When you have Chomsky you listen and learn more which I think was the right thing to do. What do you want them to do? Pick up gloves and get into a ring?
Keith was so eager to listen to what Chomsky was saying lmao. cute
I love panpsychism / idealism / non-duality / advaita for the sheer buzz of it and, on a humanistic level, what a leveller! As for science, like Kastrup and Goff, I think it needs to be a first principle...if we are going to slice up the universe into pieces to understand it....the first cut is the most problematic....so lets hold off on that one til last.
There seems to be something interesting buried in (at least Keith's) materialist conception, when he says things like we don't have access to the reactive processes, or our experiences are often shown to be fallible: if the idea of it [consciousness] hadn't been brought up, it never would have occurred to you. Before you noticed it, it wasn't like that/now you've noticed it, it's something different. The notion is that there is something fraudulent about experience which is also 'conscious', since it is not an awareness of the experience you were previously having but a different experience, qualitatively. Each time you think about consciousness, you are summoning something to mind which simply wasn't there before and the previous awareness is extinguished and remains (as it always does) beyond any grasp. It is as if the nature of conscious experience is: that it is made up, each and every time.
"I am self conscious." 34:00 self conscious is not a thing you are it's a characteristic of a thing you do. When you inspect yourself and manage your hygiene, health stability and success, you are being self conscious. It is not "I am self conscious". Conscious is an act, and consciousness is a thing. I am self consciousness.
You are acting self conscious to yourself. But to Noam it would be you are matter interacting with itself. But I would say this, matter and mind are both emanations of God. God necessarily exists. This perception, this existence, necessarily exists. These are the 3 Cartesianist forms. All mind exists, all matter exists.
it is possible to understand consciousness/reality, but not with the intellect. and yes, our senses do mislead us. some humans are able to see/know reality. it requires a deep surrender and willingness to be free. after that experience, we can then interpret it.
Yeah, you've got it all figured out, buddy. Don't forget to take those anti-psychotic meds.
2:57 to skip intros
Nice discussion, but y'all are cray cray. Ain't no panpsychism nor does consciousness not exist. I can say that based on my extensive background of several Boy Scout merit badges and having owned two cats.
I kid! Great discussion. I agree with Noam on this, though. Keep up the great work! I seriously did enjoy it, and both of your open and even ironic stance toward each of your obviously strongly held commitments or conclusions. Goethe once said, I think, that science should be done with irony. I was never too sure what he meant, exactly--presuming I haven't invented the statement myself--but perhaps in this sense here. It's really just civilized, which is in short supply and nice to see. Thanks!
The closed captioning is quite bad, especially for NC's references to names.
Good and bad are RELATIVE. 😉
This may be off track, but if we want to compare human consciousness to tables we really should instead choose trees as the one to compare with. A tree is a live organism. The table is "dead". My personal view is more on the side of consciousness being a process and emerging from patterns of neurons or little bits going to and fro fast enough. Needed to signal to an organism in order to aid in making optimal survival choices...helps navigate in uncertainty
yes actually Chomsky has worked with the quantum biology research group of Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose. So if you study the microtubule quantum consciousness research it definitely applies to plants also - since plants rely on microtubules. Fascinating stuff. But on a deeper level all matter is made of light and that gets into the noncommutative math that Penrose relies on. Even Hameroff doesn't understand the noncommutative math - and Penrose admits he's not good at the math. Noam told me he doesn't have enough time to study noncommutativity (which is a great joke). thanks
consciousness/Consciousness:
“that which knows”, or “the state of being aware”, from the Latin prefix “con” (with), the stem “scire” (to know) and the suffix “osus” (characterized by). To put it succinctly, consciousness is the SUBJECTIVE component in any subject-object relational dynamic. The concept of consciousness is best understood in comparison with the notion of sentience. Cf. “sentience”.
As far as biologists can ascertain, the simplest organisms (single-celled microbes) possess an exceedingly-primitive form of sentience, since their life-cycle revolves around adjusting to their environment, metabolizing, and reproducing via binary fission, all of which indicates a sensory perception of their environment (e.g. temperature, acidity, energy sources and the presence of oxygen, nitrogen, minerals, and water). More complex organisms, such as plants, have acquired a far greater degree of sentience, since they can react to the light of the sun, to insects crawling on their leaves (in the case of carnivorous plants), excrete certain chemicals and/or emit ultrasonic waves when being cut. At this point it is imperative to consult the entry “sentience” in the Glossary of this Holy Scripture.
According to this premise, the simplest forms of animal life possess sentience, but no noticeable semblance of true consciousness. As a general rule, those animals that have at least three or four senses, combined with a simple brain, possess a mind but lack an intellect. Higher animals (notably mammals) have varying levels of intelligence but only humans have a false-ego (sense of self). Thus, human consciousness is constituted of the three components: the mind, the intellect, and the pseudo-ego (refer to Ch. 05).
There is a rather strong correlation between brain complexity and level of consciousness, explaining why humans alone are capable of self-awareness. In this case, “self-awareness” is not to be confused with “self-recognition”, which is a related but quite distinct phenomenon, found also in several species of non-human animals, in which an animal is able to recognize itself in a mirror or some other reflective surface. “Self-awareness” refers to the experience where a human over the age of approximately three years is consciousness of the fact that he or she knows (that is, aware) that he or she is aware. Obviously, in the case of a child, he or she may need to be prompted in order to first be acquainted with this understanding. For example an adult could ask the child:
“Do you know that you have a toy car?” “Yes!” “And do you KNOW that you know you have a toy car?” “Umm...I think so...yes!”.
In contemporary spiritual circles (as well as in several places within this book), the capitalized form of the word usually, if not always, refers to Universal Consciousness, that is, an Awareness of awareness (otherwise known as The Ground of All Being, et altri).
sentience:
that which has feelings or sensations, as distinguished from perceptions and cognition. Therefore, sentience ought not be confused with consciousness, though the two are closely intertwined. In animal life, there are up to five sensory organs which can detect external stimulants. Plants are also sentient but use lower-level mechanisms for their sentience. For example, most plants respond to sunlight (witness the opening of flowers upon the rising of the sun), and carnivorous plants can detect arthropods crawling on their leaves. Therefore, when carnists claim that “plants have feelings too”, they may be correct, so the most logical reason for being vegan is not because plants are completely insentient, but simply due to the fact that humans are an herbivorous species. If Homo sapiens were naturally omnivores or carnivores, then no sane person would promote veganism. In summary, all forms of organic life are, by definition, sentient, yet TRUE consciousness is found in those animal species that have a certain level of intelligence (i.e., as a general rule, vertebrates, though there are a couple of notable exceptions to this general rule).
Cf. “consciousness/Consciousness”.
Sentient/sentience ultimately comes from the Latin verb “sentire”, which means “to feel” or “to perceive”, and is related to the noun “sensus”, meaning “sense”.
Cf. “consciousness”, as defined at the beginning of Chapter 6 of “A Final Instruction Sheet for Humanity”.
@@SpiritualPsychotherapyServices You need to study "protoconsciousness" in quantum physics.
Good discussion. One of the biggest problems with the 'what is consciousness?' debate is that in my view models are something we use ultimately to solve some practical problem. If we are asking questions of the form 'what is the nature of X' without grounding ourselves in some attempt to control a system, it seems to me that the terms of inquiry will doom our search. That is, if we decide upon some model or other for consciousness, we then ask 'so what? what practical difference does that make?'. As far as I'm concerned, the model is indeterminate insofar as there is no answer to that question.
Nothing has value unless it has a practical function? Something can't be true unless we can do something with it? Isn't this view just a symptom of our rapacious cultural tendency to mine and harvest anything we can lay our hands on, use it up and then throw it away? After the oligarchy, might we see the error of our ways?
That makes sense to me. In brief, consciousness is control of control, so we need to understand how the lower level control works, then we will understand the higher level of control and what it is manipulating.
@@richwilliams1863 Rich, take 'practical' here in a very general sense. 'Practical' comes from 'pragma' in Greek meaning 'action'. In my usage here, a practical problem is anything from feeding a hungry child, to composing a piece of music, to constructing a more cooperative society, to modelling the behaviour of a virus.
I am expressing a Pragmatist view here. The 'Pragmatic Maxim' helps us clarify what we're talking about by querying the practical consequences. This is a bit like what the logical empiricists tried to do with their (failed) verification principle, except pragmatists are not interested in establishing The Truth. A model is a tool we use to do something, whether its a model of a biochemical pathway or a blueprint for building a house. If we detach our modelling from any practical consequences (even indirect), then we'll be left with an unclear discourse.
We can have different answers to the question 'what is consciousness', but until we try to DO something with that, they are basically just a bunch of words.
It has nothing to do with reducing everything to the bottom line or denigrating 'intangible' goods such as justice, love, honesty, etc. If you look at the material on my channel and website it will be clear this is not my outlook.
🕊
in the Consciousness literature Century the
22:57
Arthur Readington Russell and so on and see we don't know anything about matter
23:03
so we have no reason to say that matter isn't conscious that's actually a
23:09
extension of what Newton himself said and since we know nothing about matter
23:15
maybe matters all matters of Life see we can't show that it isn't it didn't
23:21
accept it but he said you can't show that it isn't because we don't know what matter is
23:26
so contrary to Royal matter was exercised
23:32
it just is whatever the best theory tells us it is what you can do it's uh at this point
23:41
you do enter the domain where you can distinguish
23:47
possible problems for humans versus mysteries for
23:52
humans this is considered an exotic idea but it's called mysterianism to me is what
Surely the starting point to this discussion must be a definition of consciousness? If it's defined as an impulsion towards self-preservation, then a table too would be conscious because it preserves its form/self until a greater force acts upon it to change its quddity as a table.
consciousness/Consciousness:
“that which knows”, or “the state of being aware”, from the Latin prefix “con” (with), the stem “scire” (to know) and the suffix “osus” (characterized by). To put it succinctly, consciousness is the SUBJECTIVE component in any subject-object relational dynamic. The concept of consciousness is best understood in comparison with the notion of sentience. Cf. “sentience”.
As far as biologists can ascertain, the simplest organisms (single-celled microbes) possess an exceedingly-primitive form of sentience, since their life-cycle revolves around adjusting to their environment, metabolizing, and reproducing via binary fission, all of which indicates a sensory perception of their environment (e.g. temperature, acidity, energy sources and the presence of oxygen, nitrogen, minerals, and water). More complex organisms, such as plants, have acquired a far greater degree of sentience, since they can react to the light of the sun, to insects crawling on their leaves (in the case of carnivorous plants), excrete certain chemicals and/or emit ultrasonic waves when being cut. At this point it is imperative to consult the entry “sentience” in the Glossary of this Holy Scripture.
According to this premise, the simplest forms of animal life possess sentience, but no noticeable semblance of true consciousness. As a general rule, those animals that have at least three or four senses, combined with a simple brain, possess a mind but lack an intellect. Higher animals (notably mammals) have varying levels of intelligence but only humans have a false-ego (sense of self). Thus, human consciousness is constituted of the three components: the mind, the intellect, and the pseudo-ego (refer to Ch. 05).
There is a rather strong correlation between brain complexity and level of consciousness, explaining why humans alone are capable of self-awareness. In this case, “self-awareness” is not to be confused with “self-recognition”, which is a related but quite distinct phenomenon, found also in several species of non-human animals, in which an animal is able to recognize itself in a mirror or some other reflective surface. “Self-awareness” refers to the experience where a human over the age of approximately three years is consciousness of the fact that he or she knows (that is, aware) that he or she is aware. Obviously, in the case of a child, he or she may need to be prompted in order to first be acquainted with this understanding. For example an adult could ask the child:
“Do you know that you have a toy car?” “Yes!” “And do you KNOW that you know you have a toy car?” “Umm...I think so...yes!”.
In contemporary spiritual circles (as well as in several places within this book), the capitalized form of the word usually, if not always, refers to Universal Consciousness, that is, an Awareness of awareness (otherwise known as The Ground of All Being, et altri).
argument of whose right and whose wrong is how many followers of the theory you can have?
Starting 27:39 or so, Prof Chomsky says he cannot isolate seeing red without a context like a spot. I disagree. Fill the whole field of view with red. No boundaries within view, no spot or shape, but still seeing red. Also consider two spots of identical shape, size, and distance away, one being red, another a different colour. The experience of red there is the only differentiation possible. It seems to me Prof Chomsky is just wrong in this, so he can support his theory that the hard question of Consciousness, in this case, what is it like to experience certain qualia, cannot be answered. Can it be communicated, that of course seems can only be done either by inadequate words, or more accurately, by pointing at a shared object or view that contains the same quality.
in order for "red " to make any sense you would need some experience with non-red
Did Chomsky mean Galilean or Newtonian ???
Marvin Minsky had it right.
ua-cam.com/video/6r70jzcmMxU/v-deo.html
Consciousness is a suitecase word for conventionally agreed upon spectrum of things brains do/produce.
"Conventionally agreed upon spectrum of thing brain do/produce"
Lots of words to say nothing. This quote can literally refer to any psychological phenomena
Marvin Minsky, 100% correct.
no timestamps???
I haven't worked out how to do them yet...on my 'to do' list...
😆timestamps, are those things still around?
@@philipgoff7897 use your consciousness
Mr. know-it-all
Sings: “It ain’t necessarily so...” 🎤
The action of the Being is "the conscious action".
Where does Little Red Riding Hood exist, or Superman? That is where the Being exists, in the brain, and it arises in early childhood, with the learning of the language that characterizes us humans.
I am of the opinion heroes and villians, protagonists, antagonists, family, community, and a expectant environmental positive story arc, are for most, genetically hardwired and viability adaptive. So no specific named characters are intrinsic, but common themes reoccur in similar environmental complexity where collaborative and self determinism wields fortune and outcome. (So no Heyzeus, Mohamad Ali-bot, or Allegory the Martian Social Construct Cannibal, unless that's playing where you have environmental capacity to live and learn, at.)
This does not require language, to be imagined or observed, maybe just perspective & observational skills, in accoutrement to languge, it produces "Superman" and "Raksha" that we then "recognize" by name, and in self reflection, instead of deeds, alone.
Maybe I missed it, but is there an actual DEFINITION of what consciousness is?
consciousness/Consciousness:
“that which knows”, or “the state of being aware”, from the Latin prefix “con” (with), the stem “scire” (to know) and the suffix “osus” (characterized by). To put it succinctly, consciousness is the SUBJECTIVE component in any subject-object relational dynamic. The concept of consciousness is best understood in comparison with the notion of sentience. Cf. “sentience”.
As far as biologists can ascertain, the simplest organisms (single-celled microbes) possess an exceedingly-primitive form of sentience, since their life-cycle revolves around adjusting to their environment, metabolizing, and reproducing via binary fission, all of which indicates a sensory perception of their environment (e.g. temperature, acidity, energy sources and the presence of oxygen, nitrogen, minerals, and water). More complex organisms, such as plants, have acquired a far greater degree of sentience, since they can react to the light of the sun, to insects crawling on their leaves (in the case of carnivorous plants), excrete certain chemicals and/or emit ultrasonic waves when being cut. At this point it is imperative to consult the entry “sentience” in the Glossary of this Holy Scripture.
According to this premise, the simplest forms of animal life possess sentience, but no noticeable semblance of true consciousness. As a general rule, those animals that have at least three or four senses, combined with a simple brain, possess a mind but lack an intellect. Higher animals (notably mammals) have varying levels of intelligence but only humans have a false-ego (sense of self). Thus, human consciousness is constituted of the three components: the mind, the intellect, and the pseudo-ego (refer to Ch. 05).
There is a rather strong correlation between brain complexity and level of consciousness, explaining why humans alone are capable of self-awareness. In this case, “self-awareness” is not to be confused with “self-recognition”, which is a related but quite distinct phenomenon, found also in several species of non-human animals, in which an animal is able to recognize itself in a mirror or some other reflective surface. “Self-awareness” refers to the experience where a human over the age of approximately three years is consciousness of the fact that he or she knows (that is, aware) that he or she is aware. Obviously, in the case of a child, he or she may need to be prompted in order to first be acquainted with this understanding. For example an adult could ask the child:
“Do you know that you have a toy car?” “Yes!” “And do you KNOW that you know you have a toy car?” “Umm...I think so...yes!”.
In contemporary spiritual circles (as well as in several places within this book), the capitalized form of the word usually, if not always, refers to Universal Consciousness, that is, an Awareness of awareness (otherwise known as The Ground of All Being, et altri).
@@SpiritualPsychotherapyServices
More point, less words.
Consciouseness is the name of the being who is aware of something.
Now I don't know if the question "what it is" exactly apply here. I mean consciouseness is exactly consciouseness nothing more or less. Now what make it exist or how it came to existence is quite unknown. Your question is whether we can touch, smell, or weight or size up consciouseness like other physical things. I doubt it. Can we touch or size up an idea or a concept? But we can be aware of idea or a concept. Now it can be so that consciouseness is nothing more than you and the only existence of it is by the form of you.
So you are the definition of what it is.
Consciouseness is somehting totally different from everything else. Every answer about every question exist INSIDE consciouseness. Every experience exist inside consciouseness. Every question aside of this one is pointing a finger at somthing and asking what it is. But in this one question we are pointing a finger at ourselves. And the finger itself is ourselves.
Asking what is consciouseness is asking who I am. The answer for this question WAS ALREADY PRESENT before the question was formulated. Therefore the most accurate definition of what is consciouseness is YOU. And me.
Of course people mistaking personality with themselves/consciouseness are very common and a lot of philosophers especially from Indian tradition tried to deal with this misconception trough thousands of years
I was waiting for someone to recall what John Dewey said - that words are just pointers, not the experience itself. I know - this is a pretty basic, simplistic side note. It’s just a bit more at my speed Lol 😂
Eddington saw what measurements could reach as a subspace of what is, and the universe is made of mind stuff part of which meters could not measure. His evidence was the perverseness of trying to measure stuff in the face of relativity and shrinking meter sticks.
Study Alain Connes - he goes into the limits of Reimannian Geometry as the discovery of noncommutativity by Heisenberg - thanks
Will Philip and Keith be moved by Chomsky's rational approach to science and knowledge? Hopefully, they will abandon their weak and partially confused positions and adopt and teach the superior (and humbler) one. But will they?
Why don't you show some humbleness and maybe get a book or two on philosophy before coming out with utter garbage?
Chomsky rules
Over which KINGDOM? 🤔
Regarding what's said @ 9:49 - that's true for most people, but some people literally have no inner-dialogue, not even when they read. It often overlaps with aphantasia. It's a weird phenomenon, and one I can't relate to at all
I don't know If I get him, does he insinuate we cannot think without speaking words to ourselves? I myslef like to have inner dialogue without words, it's dozens times faster. First you get the "feeling" of what you want to say, then you put it into words in your head or speak it loudly. But you don't have to put it into words to be aware of this information. It is simple everyone can do it, when you think inner dialogue just stop the sentence when you know already how it will end. Then after some practice you can stop the sentence quicker and quicker and at some point be aware of what you want to say BEFORE even formulating first word in your head.
Besides, Bertrand Russel's elegant edifice, whereby the material world can be perfectly described by mathematics, was completely demolished a decade later by Kurt Gödel's proof that there are true propositions that cannot be analytically proven.
I don’t find any argument compelling that consciousness is fundamental. It is true that human understanding of physics is done through the lens of consciousness. But physics existed before humans existed. How, then, can consciousness be the fundamental component? To me, the panpsychic hypothesis falls apart with its first assertion. Matter exists (I take this as a foundational fact). Consciousness emerged, at least for humans, only recently. Thus consciousness is an emergent phenomenon from some sophisticated combination of matter.
As a layman with limited vocabulary…. F*ck yea!!!!
Well, now we have A.I.Technologies, Holographics, Towers, Phone Technologies, Satellite, Remote Viewing. So how's that for Consciousness. It is everywhere
Just because why do not have an answer to the "hard question" currently does not render the question as meaningless, since possibly science might someday be capable of answering the question. The question becomes meaningless only if the inability to answer is eternal.
It is probably a mistake to subconsciously think of consciousness as some kind homogeneous entity in its own right, like electromagnetism or light, when it is really a complex *process* involving multiple component parts, that only at a higher level gives the impression of an integrated whole.
Yet the "hard question" is trying to get at where exactly the magic begins, how any complex arrangement of components that in themselves are blind and dead, could ever become self-aware, any more than a mechanism constructed from an arrangement of wooden blocks. In spite of consciousness being a "process", this inability to see how that leap can be made is what gives rise to the speculation that consciousness might be to some degree "elemental" or "fundamental", existing to some small degree even in elementary particles.
Religionists have always looked down on the material world as being inferior, corruptible, and transient. They have therefore wanted to imagine some immaterial, transcendent "soul". But perhaps the real situation is that what we think of as mere "matter" is a bit more "divine" than it is given credit. Consciousness may ultimately owe its existence to some as-of-yet undiscovered aspect of basic physics, some kind of feedback loop involving matter and energy, in twists of time.
consciousness, the hard problem of: is the problem of explaining why and how we have qualia, or phenomenal experiences. This is in contrast to the “easy problems” of explaining the physical systems that give us (and many other animals) the ability to discriminate, integrate information, and so forth. These problems are seen as relatively easy because all that is required for their solution is to specify the mechanisms that perform such functions. Some philosophers assert that even once we have solved all such problems about the brain and experience, the hard problem will still persist. Thus, the hard problem is an instance of what is known as hard emergence. In other words, the hard problem is the problem of explaining why certain mechanisms are accompanied by conscious experience. For example, why should neural processing in the brain lead to the felt sensations of, say, feelings of hunger or selfless love?
The so-called “body-mind problem” is closely related to this “hard problem” of consciousness. Millions of philosophers throughout history, both professional academics and amateur philosophers, have noticed that human/animal consciousness differs so radically to inert matter, that they find it difficult to reconcile the dichotomy in a parsimonious manner. It seems that a thought has absolutely nothing in common to a rock or to a molecule of water. However, a similar dilemma could be made regarding water and fire. What similarities do flames have with a glass of water? What does air have in common to a bar of titanium? They seem radically different!
When one beholds a brain, which is a gross (concrete, physical, tangible) object, one fails to see how a subtle (abstract, mental, intangible) object can emerge from it, since the two spheres (of mind and matter) seem so thoroughly distinct and unrelated. However, the same quandary may possibly apply to a piece of dried wood and fire. How can a dead tree become a mass of hot flames? When sufficient frictional force or conductive heat is applied to the wood, the kinetic energy generated will cause the piece of wood to turn into a completely different element (from solid to fire). Likewise with water: how do two dry gases (hydrogen and oxygen) combine to produce wetness? It seems rather miraculous! Similarly, when the electrical impulses generated in a brain are of sufficient intensity, complexity, and quality, that energy is transmuted into the form of thought objects, such as visual images.
I think in some way that consciousness is a dimension of reality like evolution and biology itself.
Why does everyone keep using old photos of Noam ... is it unacceptable to get old and look old?
Oh guys, what about just closing our eyes, become silent and experience the ‘I am’, the fascinating reflective, non-dual nature of consciousness beyond space and time, beyond human concepts, thought and language. This silent explosion of happiness. This is actually the only experience, the only ‘knowing’ we can be certain about. Thousands of years of serious spirituality outline a multitude of paths of inner science. Ignoring that, we enter the hard problem of space and time, the hard problem of matter - modern, post Newtonian physics is more and more about realizing this hard problem of matter. Intellectual inference is important, but doesn’t lead anywhere without entering the path of first person experimenting and experiencing, a path of silence and compassion, leading way beyond intellectual exercises. Maybe it’s time to acknowledge, that western philosophy is still rather arrogant, ignoring so much knowledge - maybe because this knowledge most often doesn’t come in form of scientific books, but in form poems, paintings, music and experiential paths ? Seen in that light, isn’t panpsychism just another desperate try to pack non-graspable consciousness in a way that our space-time based human mind can still find it‘s desperately desired ‚world formula‘. The key to the door of knowing is composed of honoring intellectual exercise, but then become silent and start looking at the ‚knower‘. Great courage required for this !
philosophy:
the love of wisdom, normally encapsulated within a formal academic discipline. Wisdom is the soundness of an action or decision with regard to the application of experience, knowledge, insight, and good judgment. Wisdom may also be described as the body of knowledge and principles that develops within a specified society or period. E.g. “The wisdom of the Tibetan lamas.”
Unfortunately, in most cases in which this term is used, particularly outside India, it tacitly or implicitly refers to ideas and ideologies that are quite far-removed from genuine wisdom. For instance, the typical academic philosopher, especially in the Western tradition, is not a lover of actual wisdom, but a believer in, or at least a practitioner of, adharma, which is the ANTITHESIS of genuine wisdom. Many Western academic (so-called) “philosophers” are notorious for using laborious sophistry, abstruse semantics, gobbledygook, and pseudo-intellectual word-play, in an attempt to justify their blatantly-immoral ideologies and practices, and in many cases, fooling the ignorant layman into accepting the most horrendous crimes as not only normal and natural, but holy and righteous!
An ideal philosopher, on the other hand, is one who is sufficiently intelligent to understand that morality is, of necessity, based on the law of non-violence (“ahiṃsā”, in Sanskrit), and sufficiently wise to live his or her life in such a harmless manner. Cf. “dharma”.
One of the greatest misconceptions of modern times is the belief that philosophers (and psychologists, especially) are, effectively, the substitutes for the priesthood of old. It is perhaps understandable that this misconception has taken place, because the typical priest/monk/rabbi/mullah seems to be an uneducated buffoon compared with those highly-educated gentlemen who have attained doctorates in philosophy, psychology and psychiatry. However, as mentioned in more than a few places in this book, it is imperative to understand that only an infinitesimal percentage of all those who claim to be spiritual teachers are ACTUAL “brāhmaṇa” (as defined in Chapter 20). Therefore, the wisest philosophers of the present age are still those exceptionally rare members of the Holy Priesthood!
At the very moment these words of mine are being typed on my laptop computer, there are probably hundreds of essay papers, as well as books and articles, being composed by professional philosophers and theologians, both within and without academia. None of these papers, and almost none of the papers written in the past, will have any noticeable impact on human society, at least not in the realm of morals and ethics, which is obviously the most vital component of civilization. And, as mentioned in a previous paragraph, since such “lovers-of-wisdom” are almost exclusively adharmic (irreligious and corrupt) it is indeed FORTUITOUS that this is the case. The only (so-called) philosophers who seem to have any perceptible influence in the public arena are “pop” or “armchair” philosophers, such as Mrs. Alisa “Alice” O’Connor (known more popularly by her pen name, Ayn Rand), almost definitely due to the fact that they have published well-liked books and/or promulgate their ideas in the mass media, especially on the World Wide Web.
In his assessment of how quickly America has been set up for a communist takeover, ex KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov gave the four stages of the transition ( 1984 ,13 minute long interview on UA-cam). The first was demoralization ( Vietnam war, youth vs. the establishment etc.) which takes about three generations. Then there is de-stabilization , which only takes a short time. Then there's crisis, total economic and societal collapse. And finally normalization, when the elites bring in the tanks , troops and secret police to maintain the regime. It is during the period of de-stabilization that Yuri described the rise of "schmucks that nobody can get rid of" and "half baked intellectuals" rising to the fore. Noam Chomsky is one of those half baked intellectuals. Alexander Soltzenitzen on the other hand, is a real intellectual...and he was solidly against everything Chomsky pretends he knows something about. Chomsky...brilliant linguist...pathetic intellectual.