Consciousness Flashcards
What is David Chalmers’ “hard problem of consciousness”?
Even while neural correlates of consciousness suggest that the parts and functions of a brain produce the informational contents of mind, they in no way explain our subjective experiences of perception.
What is the materialist philosophical position?
Brain-makes-mind - as the universe is made of substance, of material, of matter and energy, we can assume everything, including consciousness, is derived from that material.
What is panpsychism?
Consciousness is an a priori feature of the universe, before even brains came into existence. An intrinsic feature of all life and, therefore, of the smallest identifiable units of life (cells from the perspective of Western biology). Does the consciousness of a human body derive from the aggregated consciousnesses of all its individual component cells? Could this apply to ecosystems that arise from all manner of interacting living things? Are forests and coral reefs self-aware and conscious? Is Gaia? Do our human minds participate in such aggregations and would we, or could we, know if they do?
What is the problem with materialism and panpsychism?
Both incomplete. The panpsychist views just shift the hard problem from the brain to somewhere else (to cells or quantum particles or to still undiscovered entities). And for panpsychism, there is also “the combination problem” of how aggregates assemble into more complex forms of consciousness
What did Plato believe regarding consciousness?
He described our day-to-day realm of material reality as nothing more than a shadow of a more perfect, real realm - the Platonic Ideal. The former is one of only indirect and illusory impressions that arise from our sense organs. Big-C Consciousness is a common shorthand for this.
What is the Platonic Idealist view of consciousness?
The universe as a whole, including our bodies, brains and minds, is nothing but a manifestation arising from the depths of an underlying Consciousness. The brain is not a producer of mind but a transducer of mind, turning big Consciousness into the consciousness of our separate selves. Different types of brain traduce different forms of consciousness - a bee moves in an ultraviolet world, an octopus can taste with its arms or dogs live in a world of scents.
What is metaphysics?
A field of philosophical inquiry concerned with questions that cannot be answered through an examination of material existence eg the nature of life after death, the existence of a soul or efforts to comprehend gods, goddesses or a singular God.
Kurt Godel - his theories and their significance?
Two “incompleteness theorems”, statements about formal systems of arithmetic that were true but could not be proven.
Destroyed the Vienna Circle’s efforts to make everything provable, scientifically and mathematically. Platonic maths. Showed metaphysics and intuition were a third viable path to knowing the truth.
Fled fascist Austria for Washington; seen as a peer and friend by Einstein in his latter years.
Godel believed maths was there to be discovered and showed there are clearly gaps in understanding that will never be solved by scientists and logicians. The argument is that we should also accept contemplative insights, albeit with caution.
Where do the processes and structures of a complexity theory of the universe match instructions from mystical traditions (four examples)?
Among others:
Buddhism: interdependence, impermanence, emptiness of all things
Lurianic Kabbalah: an infinite luminous consciousness - Eyn Sof.
Advaita Vedanta: Brahman, divine source of reality, and Ishwara, the appearance of our material world. Derived from the Upanishads.
Kashmiri Saivism: nondual Consciousness produces dualities of the manifest universe.
