RE: Asgard and Archaea
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I am interested in consciousness, generally, and am aware that there are collective aspects of consciousness, and that it does not originate from the brain, because single celled creatures have some form of consciousness.
"...we propose that consciousness is an intrinsic property of magnetic fields."
This is not a scientific claim because it is easily falsified. Various creatures that demonstrably have consciousness do not have magnetic properties, magnetic fields, at all.
Scientism is not science.
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Since when is a proposal or thesis unscientific? Or what do you mean by Scientism?
Science is initially based on assumptions, on the basis of which it is formulated into theses and hypotheses.
I would understand if you said that this paper in particular does not interest you further and that you therefore do not want to read it.
I don't know if there are living beings that have been "proven" to have consciousness but "no magnetic field." You would have to, in order to point out a false statement to the author, confront him if you are serious and hear what he has to say about it. My interpretation is that it can't even be about saying he's making a false claim yet, it seems more like a lead-in waiting for further experimentation.
I have considered this text from the outset as a suggestion that first allows for a scenario. On the basis of which experiments have been made.
That is what I meant above. If there is no open-mindedness or further interest in such research and the experiments that are possible with it are financed, no scientific community that can be taken seriously can be formed in this area and it is kept small.
No, not at all. It's based on observations. Hypotheses attempt to explain what is observed, and if they are not soon falsified, they rise to the level of theory. Recently I proposed that dark matter was simply the gravitational effect from matter at other times. It took me a couple weeks to consider my hypothesis in conversation with a particle physicist before I realized I could falsify my hypothesis, because dark matter is not concentrated where visible matter is, which would be the case were my hypothesis correct.
It is no slight to have a theory falsified. I did it to myself. It is simply how false hypotheses are winnowed down leaving only those that have not yet been proven false, which enables the window of possibility to be continually narrowed, availing us the ability to close in on what is actual. We never actually arrive, but we keep getting closer.
Organisms with magnetite in their neurons, like us and certain bacteria, do generate magnetic fields. Not all bacteria do. Therefore consciousness, not being limited to living things that generate magnetic fields, cannot be the product of magnetic fields. The hypothesis is falsified by creatures exhibiting consciousness that do not also exhibit magnetic fields. It's not a slight on the hypothesizor that the hypothesis is falsified. It is good science, and has enabled the things that could possibly be the source of consciousness to be narrowed down.
That is how science works. Nothing can be proved. Things can only be disproved, which leaves an ever smaller potential list of things that have not been disproved. That's literally all the scientific method is.
I largely agree with your view that a hypothesis is a working basis until it has been falsified. Today's scientific community seems to be more concerned with verification and getting as many so-called "peer reviews" as possible that confirm but do not disprove. From my point of view, it's about marketable results. And I second your criticism elsewhere.
I am not conclusive myself whether there is a correct thesis underlying what is in the text I linked, however I would say that observation is something that precedes an assumption about what is observed, hence I said it is the initial element of science. Where nothing is observed, nothing can be assumed that forms the basis of a thesis. Since one can basically falsify any observation that does not concern something as unambiguous as gravity, for example, research based on observations that can be ambiguous or that apply to some/many and not all observed subjects would already be considered unscientific.
But what about the human mind, who wills to establish repeatability? With regard to genetic engineering, I had pointed out in another commentary that humans are quite tricky and that something that cannot be reproduced on the real visible subject can be repeated without problems on the abstraction of the subject. The abstraction of a subject ist not the subject, it's something different.
Since you agree on the one hand that objectivity in the sense von Förster questions it cannot be absolute, you say on the other hand that there is a "good enough". I would not disagree with this, but then I would add that this good enough takes place on the basis of human convention within linguistic communication because one WILL agree at some point. Until disagreement (falsification) sets in.
I would not claim to know what exactly passes as a scientifically clean method of individual works. Since I have too little expertise regarding the individual disciplines.
However, I would add that everything earthly is subject to the earth's electromagnetic field and that those creatures in which such a field can be measured interact with each other and with the earth's field and influence those creatures that do not have their own measurable field for that reason alone (without my being able to prove this assumption). I imagine a room full of people in balloons who are moving, bumping into each other, bouncing back, etc., i.e. who are constantly in motion, influence creatures and objects in the room that do not have a balloon shell.
Apart from that, I would say that false theses are well worth reading and can lead to the establishment of new theses, I think I understood you to mean something like that.
Yes, that is what I mean. Only the ability to falsify a hypothesis can enable it's potential veracity to be ascertained. Nothing can ever be proved right, but being able to be proved false through specific predictive power can show it could be right (if it isn't proved wrong and successfully predicts something), which is the best science can do.
This hypothesis is that there is one consciousness. Since consciousness appears to be separate individual experiences, it would be necessary for some kind of internal organization within that uni-consciousness to enable that apparent division. If consciousness is strictly such a collective, however, what does that mean for species like us that generate magnetic fields?
Without some specific prediction that can be falsified, it is impossible to verify whether or not there is merit to this idea. Because it is impossible to falsify, it cannot be considered a scientific hypothesis. That doesn't mean it's wrong. It just cannot be falsified and can only be a matter of faith, believed or not.
I make a distinction between consciousness and self-consciousness (being aware of oneself). I would state that at least in living beings you can find forms of consciousness. And I find it safe to say that humans definitely do show self-consciousness, again in different states. Having said this, I think that I am alive and am conscious about this. This in itself need neither be falsified nor verified. If I cannot be certain that I am a living being, all other things would be irrelevant, I guess. I might as well think that I dream my life.
It would sound exceedingly ridiculous if someone said that I only believed I was alive, wouldn't it? I would not put such a thing under a question of faith.
In the same way, I remain open to the possibility that the earth and the sun and the cosmic bodies may very well be conscious, just beyond what I, as a human being, can comprehend. :)
We know so little about consciousness we cannot falsify the hypothesis that inanimate things are conscious. This is exemplified by the term consciousness itself, which separates unconsciousness, such as sleep, because of unresponsiveness, which isn't at all lack of consciousness. We just don't have any other way to test for consciousness than responses, and there's an almost unlimited list of very good reasons to not respond. We sure can't test for self-consciousness without first testing for consciousness.
please, explain.
Well, if you ask a microbe a question, it won't answer you, because it doesn't have ears, doesn't speak any human language, nor has any mouth, larynx, or lungs capable of speech. Some primates and dogs have been shown to have vocabularies of thousands of words, but dogs have never been trained to use sign language like have apes, AFAIK. Despite their vocularity, cetaceans remain indecipherable, although some may have been trained to understand signs or speech. I really don't know about cetaceans. Some birds can mimic human speech, and certainly have been claimed to understand or be trained.
I think my cat knows more than he lets on.
That's, all considered, a pretty short list of non-human beings we have some kind of ability to communicate with. None of them seems able to discuss consciousness in a way we can quantify, although Koko the Gorilla once blamed her pet kitten for ripping a stainless steel sink off the wall, and I think lying is a pretty sure sign of consciousness, even of self-consciousness.
Bugs, plants, fungi, and all other living and non-living creatures just can't tell us anything (although we can tell they make decisions by indirect means), but rocks and planets and stuff, well, it doesn't seem reasonable to inquire.
That doesn't mean it's not conscious, in some way, and doesn't make decisions. It just means we have no way to test it.
The desire for quantification and testing is, in my opinion, due to the fact that people are reluctant to accept something like uncertainty.
Instead, they want to gain certainty. There is no certainty about this, about consciousness, only something else. But if people do not want to let go of gaining certainty, they will take all possible steps to turn something uncertain into something certain. It may seem that I am in favour of such scientific experiments to prove that "paranormal abilities" exist, for example. I wouldn't put it that way at all, rather I would say that humans can train abilities that are already inherent in them, therefore not para- but "normal". One just doesn't have a particular focus on them.
Whoever gets the impression from the so-called materialists that everything in the universe merely moves by means of blunt physical laws, that there is nothing of consciousness or intelligence to be found in it, probably experiences a narcissistic affront to his world view and wants to stand up against it.
He feels deprived of wonder, the effect of "deep awe!".
Now he wants to counter it by means of the scientific methods that the materialists leave open to him as the only path of discovery they accept. One could call it a clever move that the scientific method exerts a certain compulsion on all those who resist the destruction of their world view to use it (the scientific method) as a counter-evidence. Probably in the knowledge that such a rebuttal can never be achieved.
I wouldn't call it that and I don't see myself as being on one side or the other. Rather, I have this ambiguity in mind, the realisation that this strongly opposing world view reflects a current that appears in many places. A kind of perpetual ping-pong between the forces that fight each other but are mutually dependent. I see the dilemma, I am caught up in it myself in parts, but I can also take a position outside of it or find other interpretations interesting and accept them to some extent.
In the end, I'm not really dogged by seeing scientific experiments popping up all over the place that target abilities related to consciousness, they might as well be ghosts I called and had to regret afterwards.
I talk to "my microbes" occasionally as well as to my plants and I am sure, the cat knows more. I trust, I will be understood. HaHa! ;-)
Nescience gets people killed. Science produces significant benefits demonstrably preferred by people. However, it is also demonstrable that no matter how reasonable and knowledgeable people are, they all die. Since learning takes time, we are constrained in our quest for knowledge by our need to live, regardless of what we know or don't know. This produces a range of strategies culturally and individually selected that cause a range of rationality and understanding to be affected individually.
Insofar as I can ascertain, these things will not change in the foreseeable future, and I am left with the distinct acknowledgement that one man's poison is another's treasure. While I feel obligated to respect other's choices, it is obvious that I consider my own optimal, and it is this conceit I seek to blunt increasingly as I approach death, as I am ever more confident I should be more humble. It is obviously paradoxical to be confident in one's humility, and Ben Franklin, who strove to exemplify what he considered to be the seven signal virtues, once wrote to his son that he had quite given up on humility, as he was certain he would be proud of achieving it if he ever did.
HaHa! That gave me a good chuckle, thanx!
Indeed, a similar insight is also spread amongst the buddhist philosophers, where it is said that if you want to get rid of desire, this in itself is a desire and so one wants to get rid of the desire of not desiring.
But as being humbled is nothing one would be proud of, just humble, I bet, Franklin wrote it with a twinkling eye.
To the rest of your response, I answer you with a quote from the book I gave you the link for:
I am convinced that whole we perceive is false. Such meaning as it has to us is what we seek to justify in our self-deception.
We are demonstrably incapable of total understanding. Any presumption we make to it is false. Plato ascribed to Aristotle the statement that he knew he knew nothing, and since existence is an emergent event, partial understanding is indeed no understanding, because only complete understanding enables comprehension of emergence.
Because of this I doubt I can ever be humble enough. I hope it is enough that I try, because that is all I can do.
You take it way too literally. If you read a poem, you understand it, yet if you would want to write down your understanding of it, you'll fail greatly. Because the understanding does find itself between the lines, between what is expressed at its best but still cannot be expressed any further.
What you feel deep down in your guts, when you step out into the night sky and look up, that is where you have this feeling of understanding, of something true. But when you go back inside and you would want to share your experience with your neighbor or wife, you couldn't. It would sound weak, compared to the moment of looking into the stars.
Yeah, I agree, I cannot see you humble in this regard.
Oh, here is another source, I think you may like it:
http://www.grazian-archive.com/quantavolution/QuantaHTML/_start_here.htm
I'll have a look.
Thanks!