Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia; Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.
Self/Soul Icon on reality Interface
16. Conscious Realism : “Conscious realism is a proposed answer to the question of what the universe is made of. Conscious realism asserts that the objective world, i.e., the world whose existence does not depend on the perceptions of a particular observer, consists entirely of conscious agents. Conscious realism is a non-physicalist monism.” http://www.cogsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/ConsciousRealism2.pdf
17. Primary Reality : In the Enformationism thesis, I avoid using the term “Consciousness” to mean the essential building blocks of reality. That’s because it is all too often interpreted in the sense of Panpsychism to mean that material objects, such as atoms and crystals, are self-conscious and can interact meaningfully with humans. Instead, I use the less personal and more technical term “Information”. It simply means the power to cause change, to inform.
Post 105.December 15, 2019 continued . . .
Interface : Window to Reality
Conscious Reality
Physical evolution is well understood, up to a point. But the emergence of Life & Mind from accidental collisions of matter does not follow from a purely mechanical extrapolation of the Big Bang. So Hoffman looked for a better explanation for the rise of Causal Agents than the physicalist theories of a billiard-ball world. As he tersely noted, “you simply cannot cook-up consciousness from unconscious ingredients.” Therefore, he proposes a theory of Conscious Realism16, which holds that consciousness is the primary reality17, and that the physical world is a product of metaphysical Mind. Of course, the notion that we create our own reality has long been a staple of Eastern religions and New Age philosophies. Now, Hoffman proposes to turn the theory into a rigorous science without resorting to magical thinking. So, he quickly dispenses with Panpsychism,18 which supposes that all objects are conscious. He even gives a mathematical definition of a conscious agent in an appendix.
Hoffman invites scientific colleagues to critique the Conscious Realism theory, and to find holes in his logic & math. The theory is not amenable to materialistic science though, because “it takes consciousness as fundamental and then has the task of showing how spacetime, matter, and neurobiology can emerge as components of the perceptual interface of certain conscious agents.” He even suggests that conscious agents are modular, that they “can combine to form new conscious agents.” However, like Arthur Koestler’s notion of nested Holons19, there is a hierarchy of knowingness. The lower level (one bit) agents are not conscious to the same degree as humans, who are self-aware. They merely “experience” incoming energy (information), then process it, and pass it on to the next agent. “To be aware of itself, an agent must devote some of its experiences, some of its perceptual interface, to represent some of its own decisions and actions. Its interface must have an icon, or icons, that represent the decisions and actions of the agent itself.” That definition is equivalent to my own concept of the Self- image as an imaginary avatar, representing the agent in the context of the outside world.
Some scientists and philosophers have wondered what is the evolutionary function of self-consciousness. So Hoffman offers, “there is a good reason to fabricate a self. If you experience your acts and their consequences, then you can learn.” But, if Evolution is a learning process, that seems to imply some teleological purpose to the whole program. Hence, world religions have sought to divine the reason for a designer or programmer or G*D to create such an otherwise absurd waste of eons of time. Some early civilizations concluded that the project is designed to teach humanity by harsh discipline to submit to the will of the gods, as slaves were blessed and beaten by their masters. Others, see no ultimate reason to erratic reality, so they advise that people simply opt-out of the game. But Hoffman doesn’t offer his own solution to the perennial problem of Evil in an otherwise meaningful world. Nor, do I; except to postulate, as others have, that perhaps the purpose of this exercise in egoism and humility is to train little godlings to tend the Garden in a harmonious manner — as Adam & Eve did, before their eyes were opened to see the fruits of Freewill and Reason. If so, we’re obviously not yet ready to graduate. End of Post 105
18. Panpsychism : In popular usage, this term is taken to mean that even stones and atoms are self- conscious in the same sense that humans are. But that’s literally non-sense. In my theory it only means that the potential for emergent consciousness is included in the energy/ information that constitutes those elementary Objects. The elementary mind-stuff eventually adds-up to self-consciousness in holistic Selves.
19. Holon : Something that is simultaneously a whole and a part. Each thing is part of a larger thing; all the way up to the Whole-of-all-wholes; the Set-of-all-sets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holon_(philosophy)
The Case Against Reality
Why Evolution Hid the Truth From Our Eyes Donald Hoffman
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