Albert Cipriani

Dear Maj.,
That’s like saying I see red as a phenomena generated by our eyes. You mistake the means of generation for the thing generated.

With your logic, a housebound child would believe that wall outlets generate electricity cuz that’s where, in the kid’s limited experience, electricity always comes from. Relative to what there is to know we are all that kid. It’s just that some of us kids avoid the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy more than you.

As with pornography, defining consciousness is not necessary. It’s enough to know it when you see it. And you may even presume that you are the only one who is conscious. Fact is, you know what it’s like to be conscious. Whatever else you think about it is idle speculation.

Every thought and every grain of dust is immortal. Immortality is the norm. Time is what’s freakish. Time is what spreads the illusion that anything can end. If one speck of creation could be uncreated, the Creator would prove to acted in vain. And acting in vain is not in His job description. – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Majestyk

That's partially correct. The eye, the brain, and the light are all part of the pattern generating process.

Possibly but I don't think so. I don't seperate them. In the same sense that I don't seperate the signal generated by a radio broadcast antena from the electronics that generated it.

Again, you are partially correct. The child and myself are limited in our abilty to understand the world by, our understanding of the world. If, it were otherwise, we wouldn't have need to engage in experimentation or predictive analysis to confirm the abstract concepts generated by our brains.

Your analogy here though will show that as soon as the child applies his parent's hammer to the surrounding wall, in order to make the electric source portable, he will discover that the outlet is only part of a larger system of electrical distribution.

I have yet to see the evidence that indicates that consciousness is part of system that extends beyond the natural world. Granted that there may be vast areas of the natural world that I'm not aware of yet, just as the child was not aware of what was behind the wall.

No and Yes.

No it's not enough to know it when I see it. I need to understand it. I don't like unanswered questions. And this question has been unanswered for quite some time. I think I have a better understanding of it now, then when I first came across the question but, that understanding has brought forth new questions. So, I either submit to the concept “Ignorance is bliss” and wallow in my ignorance or I seek to expand my knowledge and accept it as a reward for the effort it requires.

And yes, until we finish putting hammer of neuropsychology to the wall of human physiology, the nature and boundaries of consciousness are just speculation on my part.

This is an interesting proposition. I haven’t really gotten my mind around the concept of time yet. I’m still trying to incorporate our current understanding of the physics of time into my experience of time (I get confused when trying to conceptualize time). Let’s just say that I can agree that if, a thing once existed, it will always exist in the time that it existed. After that my reasoning starts to break down.

Then I would guess that your premise or definition of a creator is incorrect. But then, that’s the basis of our divergent views, is it not?

MrDarwin

And so Albert distills the entire discussion into one stupendous cop-out.

Albert Cipriani

Cool Post Maj.,
Tho we disagree, we at least seem to understand each other.

This is your most pregnant admission: Ergo, every second of your life is still operative. You, being alive in time, just keep getting pushed back from acess to it with every passing second. But someday, those seconds will cease their inexorable pushing of you away from you. Then you will experience every moment of you all at once, eternally. That eternal moment will be your heaven or your hell. So live each moment well, they’re cumulative. Cheers, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Wounded King

That doesn't sound like a traditional interpretation.

Albert Cipriani

Dear Wounded,
You say my description of the eternal component of heaven and hell: I’ve already posted the traditional Catholic dogmas pertaining to hell. All we are obliged to believe is that it is a state of physical as well as spiritual suffering. How that suffering comes about is anyone’s guess, otherwise known as theological speculation.

I believe that John Milton’s speculation 500 years ago is best. All I did was repeat his poetic sentiments in a pedestrian fashion when I said that every moment of your life is the state of your eternal existence. The way Milton put it in “Paradise Lost” was, in the words of Satan: “I myself am hell.”

You atheists are free to speculate how life could have come from non-life. Us traditional Catholics are free to speculate how that life will go on living eternally. – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Majestyk

Thanks.

Hopefully. We're all cut from the same genetic material, after all.

Not so much an admission as it is a concept that isn’t ready for primetime. Taking the concept of time as the 4th dimension and extrapolating the nature of matter/energy relationships along that dimension. Arriving at the conclusion that our sense of reality is based on a given position within a pre-existing 4-dimensional “object”. “We” exist in this time because, now, is the time in which “we” exist. I can barely/briefly/nearly keep the concept in my head, let alone, explain it. Hence I don’t often mention it.

I can't make that leap. At least the “experiencing it all at once” part. It separates "me" from time. Time isn’t something we travel thru. It is something of which we are a part. …Maybe. ...Getting a headache, now.

Always good advice.

Wounded King

I always prefered Marlowe's Mephistopheles, "This is Hell, nor am I out of it."

Although I can sympathise with "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven."

Doubting Didymus

I always liked "Then may his love be cursed, since love or hate, to me alike it deals eternal woe."

Peez

Exactly. Alberts argument runs something like this:

You can explain the evolution of one kind of altruism, but not the other kind, but I don't know what the difference is.


Peez