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Meditate and you won't find it preposterous. Absolutely everything you experience is consciousness. You have never experienced concrete objective reality, you

by orasis 12y ago

Meditate and you won't find it preposterous. Absolutely everything you experience is consciousness. You have never experienced concrete objective reality, you have only ever experienced experiences, which is consciousness. Every idea you have about concrete objective reality is an idea. Ideas are experiences, which are consciousness. As much as you think you know what is "real", when does "real" exist? Thoughts of the past only ever arise in the present. Thoughts of the future only ever arise in the present. Within this present experience, which is when everything has ever occurred, can you find anything that is not an experience?

olalonde 12y ago
By that logic, you can't even assume that other humans experience consciousness. You are effectively defining consciousness as your own consciousness alone. By that definition, it follows that consciousness cannot be computed because you wouldn't experience it. I don't think this is the definition most people have in mind though.
- orasis 12y ago
  "You are effectively defining consciousness as your own consciousness alone." That is a good point, and it bothered me for some period of time, but there is a way to resolve it. First, we have to recognize that "your own consciousness" is a dualistic framework that assumes that there is a subject (observer) and object (observed). If you do not assume experience to be "my experience", but rather experience that simply knows itself, then we can see that all experiences are simply known of themselves. When hearing a sound, there is just the sound. No hearer. When seeing the sight, there is just the sight. No seer. When feeling the sensation, there is just the sensation. No feeler. Why is it then that the feeling and the seeing seem to be occurring to "me" when they are in actuality simply occurring to themselves? It is because this self-known experiences are highly integrated with each other within this body. I assume that you too are having experiences that are not "happening to you", but are rather self known. So your hearing is just the heard. Your seeing is just the seen. Since "your" seen and "my" seen are not integrated, they appear to be happening "over there" and "over here". But, due to this lack of integration, I ultimately can not be sure that there are other experiences out there, but it seems like a good pragmatic assumption :-)
deleted 12y ago
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by orasis 12y ago

olalonde 12y ago

By that logic, you can't even assume that other humans experience consciousness. You are effectively defining consciousness as your own consciousness alone. By that definition, it follows that consciousness cannot be computed because you wouldn't experience it. I don't think this is the definition most people have in mind though.

orasis 12y ago
"You are effectively defining consciousness as your own consciousness alone." That is a good point, and it bothered me for some period of time, but there is a way to resolve it. First, we have to recognize that "your own consciousness" is a dualistic framework that assumes that there is a subject (observer) and object (observed). If you do not assume experience to be "my experience", but rather experience that simply knows itself, then we can see that all experiences are simply known of themselves. When hearing a sound, there is just the sound. No hearer. When seeing the sight, there is just the sight. No seer. When feeling the sensation, there is just the sensation. No feeler. Why is it then that the feeling and the seeing seem to be occurring to "me" when they are in actuality simply occurring to themselves? It is because this self-known experiences are highly integrated with each other within this body. I assume that you too are having experiences that are not "happening to you", but are rather self known. So your hearing is just the heard. Your seeing is just the seen. Since "your" seen and "my" seen are not integrated, they appear to be happening "over there" and "over here". But, due to this lack of integration, I ultimately can not be sure that there are other experiences out there, but it seems like a good pragmatic assumption :-)

deleted 12y ago

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