Dualism (Identity)

by David Turell , Thursday, March 12, 2015, 23:47 (3326 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: This is the usual muddling use of “information”. I presume what you mean here is that God doesn't give bacteria the information necessary for them to be conscious. You have made your opinion about bacteria clear....-Not muddling. Life runs on information. You cannot escape that.-> 
> And instead of a “blank blob of God's consciousness for you to shape as you will”, you have much more grandly called it “a pattern of quantum energy in the brain to produce consciousness”. Your last sentence tells us that receiving consciousness gives us the ability to develop our own individual consciousness.-I arrive at this quantum thought about the brain/consciousness, because of the evidence that the scientist's actions in 'second choice' experiments show that his/her consciousness can go back in time or forward in time to affect quantum particle properties. Secondly, cell functions are being shown more and more to have quantum level activity and certainly neurons can work that way.-> dhw: I agree that something gives us consciousness, but how do you know it's NOT the sum of neurons firing? You even suggested it was, when you wrote that “the extreme complexity of our brain [...] results in a much more complex form of consciousness.” Or has someone actually discovered a complex pattern of quantum energy in the human brain (and a less complex one in a chimp's brain)?-I presume that difference (human/chimp) will be shown in the future. I start with the belief that the inorganic universe cannot invent consciousness. It had to exist from the beginning as the universe was created.-> dhw: As for your belief that the receiver idea may have validity, that merely tells us you think dualism may be true. Sorry, I can't find an explanation here. But as always I am struggling as much as you. I can't make sense of consciousness. Hence this discussion.-Agreed. Of course it is a struggle. We have no idea how it exists but we know it does.
 
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> dhw: What does “join the UI” mean? NDE patients retain their identity, and often join people they know, who are also recognizable as individuals. They don't all report union with any sort of God.-They do met God in some NDE's and feel at one with Him and with the whole universe. The at-one-with-it/Him is very prominent in the descriptions.