Is consciousness, even the life force itself, not a built-in mechanical feature of the cosmos?

Question

Recently I read an interview with Brian Swimme, a mathematical cosmologist in which he mocked the "mechanistic model of the 19th century". I question such mockery.

To call phenomena so reliably associated in sequential time that there are no known, verifiable exceptions anything but cause and effect is to pervert conventional rules of naming.

An explicit inclusive description of man would include the nerves, their form, chemistry, activity. It would include their exquisite and elegant intricacy, and an organization so marvelous as to appear miraculous.

But it is at this level of understanding that the term “miraculous” is shown to be less accurate than “mechanical”! Given its properties,the neuron must do what it does. Even self awareness is actually the subjective awareness of neuronal activity. Awareness may occur without consciousness of the self/ego/soul/identity, but neither occurs without that "mechanical" neural activity, ergo mechanics, not miracles.

Answer 1

You put to much faith in the idea that you are just a body. Try thinking outside of the box they have placed you in. You can do it.


This is more easily understandable if one considers the actual scale of the components of an atom. If one takes into account the fact that the neutrons, protons and electrons of an atom actually have huge spaces between them it becomes clear that the atoms that make up seemingly solid objects are made up of 99+ percent empty space.

This alone does not seem too important till you add the idea that the atoms that make up seemingly solid objects are more of a loose conglomeration that share a similar attraction but never really touch each other.

At first glance this does not really seem relevant, but closer analysis reveals that this adds a tremendous amount of empty space to solid objects that are already made up of atoms that are 99 percent space. When so-called solid objects are seen in this light it becomes apparent that they can in no way be the seemingly solid objects they appear to be.

We ourselves are not exceptions to this phenomenon.

These seemingly solid objects are more like ghostly images that we interpret as solid objects based on our perceptual conclusions.

From this we must conclude that Perception is some sort of a trick that helps us to take these ghostly images and turn them into a world we can associate and interact with. This clever device seems to be a creation of our intellect that enables us to interact with each other in what appears to be a three dimensional reality.

I hope that helps to answered your question.

Love and blessings Don

Answer 2

first of all, even if there is a relationship between the physical and the material, that does NOT mean that one is reducible to the other. correspondence does not imply causality. just because the body and spirit appear together, that does not mean that they physical caused the spiritual, and is therefore primary. it could just as easily be the other way around.
also, complexity, while wonderful, is not a sufficient explanation for the sudden appearance of consciousness in certain living things.

it may be that human consciousness does not appear without a neuronal substrate. but you must admit that not all of neuronal activity "bubbles up" into consciousness, so i ask you this: what determines which neuronal activity becomes the content of consciousness, and which does not? why are we aware of some of what our brain is doing, but not all of it, and what determines which is which? that cannot be done by the brain itself, it is a meta-activity.
yes the body is miraculous. but that doesn't mean that it's the only miracle associated with human beings.

Answer 3

It is really strange you should ask this question now since my lines of thinking have been on this very topic the past two or three weeks.

What I have reasoned out is that consciousness has existed in the mechanical part of the universe. But consciousness appeared when the mechanical universe was ready for it to appear. In other words it occurred naturally. But the appearance of consciousness could only appear when the intelligence of man was ready for it to appear.

As far fetched as it sounds it is not that implausible, at least to my mind. How? We know that planets, stars, and galaxies themselves appeared over time. Only when the mechanical universe was ready for it. So the same is true for living creatures when it was ready to have intelligence and then consciousness to appear.

I have concluded from this peculiar rationale that the seeds for consciousness could have existed at the start of the universe. And we all know that living creatures are a part of the mechanical process of the universe.

In summary I agree with you that one should not mock the mechanistic model of the universe since both nonliving things and living things are part of it. Without it human consciousness would not exist.

Answer 4

Dude: You have an Objective and a Subjective Mind, both of which are manifestations of Consciousness.

The negative quality of the Subjective mind is the intellectual function
The positive quality of the Subjective mind is Will.

Get Positive. Go will something more than another theory into being.

Answer 5

so you say...but perhaps awareness does occur outside the body

Answer 6

Have you had enough pun'kin pie this weekend, dear?

Stress less.

Peace

Answer 7

possibly