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Given that I am conscious, and I am part of the universe, I conclude that the universe is conscious. Or, at the very least, the universe cannot be entirely unc

• danielam 9y ago
  In the same way a room becomes conscious the moment a person walks into it.
  • runeks 9y ago
    A room and a person in it can be considered separate. But nothing in existence can be considered separate from the universe, since the universe is everything in existence. So, to use your example, a room with a conscious person in it, considered as one whole, is at the very least partially conscious, since the person in it is conscious. Whether the room itself is conscious we don't quite know. But this leads to the question: does the notion of "partially conscious" make sense?
    • danielam 9y ago
      So, 1. a room and a person in it are separate 2. nothing is separate from the universe Therefore, there are two things that are not separate from the universe but separate from each other.
      • deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      • runeks 9y ago
        Separation is a matter of perspective. A room with a person in it can be viewed as one whole, and saying that this room-person is only partially conscious is equivalent to saying that, because my teeth are not conscious and my teeth are part of me, I’m only partially conscious.
        • JackFr 9y ago
          > Separation is a matter of perspective. Indeed separation is matter of consciousness. If we believe that the universe is more or less a frothing foam of energetic particles, the only thing that differentiates my teeth from my gums and me from the room is my recognition and identification of them. There is matter with or with out me, but there is no room, no tooth, no me without my consciousness.
          • danielam 9y ago
            "[...] the universe is more or less a frothing foam of energetic particles [...]" "Particles" is plural, implying separation. It that, too, a "matter of consciousness"? Sounds a lot like "consciousness" is being used to do a lot of passing of the proverbial buck.
  • andrewla 9y ago
    And how a body becomes non-conscious the moment the brain is removed.
  • mr_overalls 9y ago
    I would argue that the room (or the space enclosed by it) _does_ become capable of satisfying certain definitions of consciousness.
  • johndoe489 9y ago
    Here is a similar argument from Alan Watts illustrated by Matt Stone and Trey Parker https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA3NLyQNDBQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA3NLyQNDBQ Another way to look at it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEunth9YCgo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEunth9YCgo (You are the Big Bang)
  • mannykannot 9y ago
    This appears to be extreme anti-reductionism: the determined refusal to acknowledge that a property of a compound entity could be wholly explained by part of it. Why does the presence of a person in a room make a difference, as opposed to any other relationship between the two things?
• mabub24 9y ago
  But that doesn't align with how we use the concept of consciousness. A bug is conscious - we put a bug in a bottle - we say the bug is in a bottle. We don't say the bottle is conscious like the bug, we say the bug is conscious in a bottle. A human engulfed in fire is not a conscious fire beyond a poetic turn of phrase. We don't say houses are conscious in the same way human's are. We might say a house is "aware of something" in the same way we say a house is "conscious of something", not to mean exhibiting the mark of the mental but to mean every person contained is aware of a certain thing; but if we're using the concept of consciousness in the way this article is using the concept, not as being aware, but as a mark of the mental, we don't ever apply that to a house because that is nonsensical. We would say "you don't mean the house, you mean the people inside." The entire starting question seems nonsensical. If we conclude the universe, or a star, is conscious like us we've stretched the concept of consciousness to absurdity or metaphysical wankery.
  • uoaei 9y ago
    Being inside of something is different from being a part of something.
• Arun2009 9y ago
  That may be a fallacy of composition - what's true of a part or a component needn't be true of the whole. For example, your cells divide, they are part of you, but you do not divide.
  • unabst 9y ago
    To borrow the logical construct from the OP: > Or, at the very least, I cannot be entirely indivisible, since cells are part of me and they are dividing. The point is more that the universe must have the capacity for consciousness within it's inner-workings, much like divisibility must be inherent in any biological system -- more so than "cells" being divisibile -- we're after the notion of divisibility itself.