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The UFO Stimulus

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@Soupie, I didn't read Sasselov to be saying that baryons constitute an ultimate 'objective reality', but rather that baryonic interactions in the quantum substrate gradually enabled the evolution of complex systems...
Really? Although it is an assumption, I think it's a safe one that many physists are physicalists, i.e., they believe that objective reality ontologically consists of point particles.

The big question for Hoffman's interface theory is just how similar or different the interface (perceived physical reality) really is from objective reality.

It's a deep important question. For instance, there are serious questions about whether time is a real dimension of reality or is perhaps a "figment" of the human perceptual system. There are serious questions about whether reality is fundamentally 2 dimensional.

We are natives of our lived reality. We assume that there is a 1:1 correspondence between reality and our perception of reality. But there is good reason to doubt this.

Many people who have used psychedelic drugs are fond of saying that physical reality is not fundamental and that instead consciousness is fundamental. I wonder if experientially they are arriving at the conclusion Hoffman has through logic and theory.

There are many people who have mental illnesses and/or have suffered various brain damages and their accounts of lives reality I think provide some insight into how our (obkective) brains provide an experienced reality for us. (I'll post a very interesting example here in the near future.)

Personally, I suspect that if humans were able to have the lived experience of another creature such as a bat, an insect, a dolphin, or a shark, we would see just how human-specific are experience of reality is. I think there are radically different ways of perceiving objective reality, and our human-specific is just one of many.

The interface is not the reality.
 
I didn't read Sasselov to be saying that baryons constitute an ultimate 'objective reality', but rather that baryonic interactions in the quantum substrate gradually enabled the evolution of complex systems in chemistry leading further to the development of life, potentially through varying paths on different planets. I think the following two paragraphs express this view -- that the real nature of the physical universe has changed and developed over vast periods of time to produce new and increasingly complex phenomena, including species of evolving life and the natural environments that support their development. ...

The second point which I want to convince you of — or use as my background for what I'll tell you here — is that we should agree that what we are looking for, what we call life, is a complex chemical process. Basically, the ability of those atoms to combine in non-trivial ways. This is actually my point of departure, where I would be looking at life more from the purely thermodynamic aspect, that is from the point of view which Robert here described and H. Morowitz has been very eloquent in defining and actually done some research on. That is, what is the parameter space in which you can have chemistry which is complex enough to lead to a qualitatively new phenomenon, a phenomenon which we don't see in the rest of the universe. That's actually an important point here.

This might not be on topic with UFO Stimulus, but I think it fits nicely with what Sasselov said in 2007.

At the end of this last After The Paracast (September 18) Chris mentioned an interesting new idea by physicist Jeremy England regarding the initiation of life. The idea is that life does not just originate from some lucky arbitrary event such as a lightning strike, but that the Second Law of thermodynamics (the increase of entropy) drives the initiation of life, that complex self-replicating molecules and life are a natural efficient result for the dissipation of energy and increase in entropy.

A New Physics Theory of Life

A quick overview:


If you’re up for a long video, here is a full lecture Dr England presented to universities:

 
This might not be on topic with UFO Stimulus, but I think it fits nicely with what Sasselov said in 2007.

A New Physics Theory of Life

It matches very closely what Sasselov said, and it's certainly on topic in this thread. I think such progress in physical and biological theory is relevant wherever hypothetical discussions come up concerning the nature of both life and consciousness. Thanks for posting these links.
 
I like this photograph of a part of Milwaukee (city I love), by a photographer known as Mr. Underhill, because like many of his photographs it anchors us in the visible and confirms the perspectival nature of everything we see in the tangible mileau in which we exist. I don't remember ever standing in the particular place from which Mr. Underhill obtained this image, but I saw this part of the city from innumerable other perspectives during the years I lived there. His photograph, preserving one of his perspectives in that place, on whatever day and time he preserved this particular perspective, confirms my perspectives accumulated over many years in the past in Milwaukee. Our lived experiences in 'the world' always take place in particular places, local places, which, though they are subject to changes and even destruction during their own temporal existences, preserve in us {by virtue of our perceptions and memories} what Merleau-Ponty called "the perceptual faith" in the actuality of the parts of the world within which we temporally dwell. I write this against increasingly influential memes in our time proposing that we do not actually see and otherwise sense the passing reality in which we have our temporal existence and experience, the notion that we exist in a 'virtual reality' formed in our brains from an immense and remote informational/computational 'matrix' of some kind. The only cure for that delusion is to pay attention to our own physical and mental experiences as we walk about in the environments in which we find ourselves living, to see and hear and taste and smell what comes to us from our natural and cultural surroundings, indeed to touch the things we encounter in their phenomenal appearances to us.

https://www.facebook.com/Mr.Underhill44/photos/a.368833789848464.89537.368454499886393/967066706691833/?type=3&theater

967066706691833
 
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I write this against increasingly influential memes in our time proposing that we do not actually see and otherwise sense the passing reality in which we have our temporal existence and experience, the notion that we exist in a 'virtual reality' formed in our brains from an immense and remote informational/computational 'matrix' of some kind.
Just to be clear, I'm not saying that "we do not see and otherwise sense the passing reality in which we have our temporal existence."

Seeing and sensing our reality is known as "perceiving" or "perception."

What I am saying is that reality and our perception of reality are distinct.

I know that there are philosophers who believe that reality and our perception of reality are somehow one and the same. People who take this position face an uphill battle to establish a firm theoretical and empirical basis for this position.

While I will be the first to say my perception of reality certainly seems to have a 1:1 correspondence with reality, simple experiences like viewing the optical illusion above suggest otherwise.

And how do we explain phantom limbs? The case where amputees still experience sensation in limbs and digits that have been amputated.

There are even documented cases of individuals born without arms, legs, hands, feet, etc who still experience having them.

While it may go against our intuition, experience, or even our ideology, there is strong reason to believe that the perceptual, qualitative landscape that we experience as humans is unique to our species and the particular human individual.

I agree with you that cases in which cameras capture images of the world that match our perception of the world seem to indicate that our perception of the world represents the "real" world.

As you know, we do have to be careful comparing a photograph to a conscious perception of a photograph. That is, how we perceive EM waves, whether they are reflecting off a building or reflecting off a photograph of the same building, still does not mean that EM waves and our perception of EM waves are identical.

We can conceive of an organism with a nervous system radically different from terrestrial life that perceives EM waves in a completely different way than we do.
 
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... We can conceive of an organism with a nervous system radically different from terrestrial life that perceives EM waves in a completely different way than we do.
Indeed. Perhaps that's why they're studying us. Maybe we're as weird to them as they are to us. Maybe they don't perceive the glow that their craft make the way we do and therefore never consider that it's as if they are flying around at times with a big light on themselves that seems to be saying to us "look at me - look at me". Maybe they have at some point been completely oblivious of our natural ability to detect them via our senses.
 
Indeed. Perhaps that's why they're studying us. Maybe we're as weird to them as they are to us. Maybe they don't perceive the glow that their craft make the way we do and therefore never consider that it's as if they are flying around at times with a big light on themselves that seems to be saying to us "look at me - look at me". Maybe they have at some point been completely oblivious of our natural ability to detect them via our senses.


The craft/alien is not studying us, the human Scientist is studying us.

The realization of being studied comes from the feed back of imagery/sound/voice/computer programs/HAARP/Satellites and the occult sciences, and the scientists who believe, are supported and are the most evil minded humans on Planet Earth.

The atmosphere in the condition of photon interaction, records and transmits information to the human mind or psyche condition as feed back, allowing the human perception to understand that they are being studied.

Use correct human reasoning when imposing the unnatural condition of scientific experimentation to our natural living life, and also natural psyche awareness.
After all, the sciences were created and thought of by and because of the human psyche, reasoning, studies and the spiritual insights.

Human beings are not as ignorant as we are taught we are....the concepts of our lesser intelligence and awareness imposed upon us all by the occultist organization.

All of the data reviewed belonging to the modern day occult attack upon our natural life is a realization that our brother believes that he can realize an unnatural and synthetic condition/artificial condition for gaining hydrogen from our atmosphere as a new resourcing.....so he is studying our natural DNA condition and trying to synthesize a model from its natural interactive atmospheric conditions.....the only reason why a huge human population is being attacked in the unnatural research he believes he is allowed to perform and should be allowed to perform to benefit humanity in the future.
 
Just to be clear, I'm not saying that "we do not see and otherwise sense the passing reality in which we have our temporal existence."

It has often seemed that that is what you are saying, or hoping to see proved. And as you have pursued your search in these forums for something that can be called 'objective reality' -- as in your recent claim that 'points' (or 'point particles'?) are taken by many physicists to be the only 'objective reality' -- you have often argued (or cited people you see as authorities who argue} that phenomenal experiences are either not real or do not approach the descriptions of experiential lived reality provided by phenomenological philosophers and scientists educated in phenomenology. Often, too, you want to divide what is learned by animals and humans through their phenomenological experiences in the world [the local world, the worlds of environmental niches and the cultural worlds produced historically by humans] from what is articulated in categorical thinking and higher-order thought (concepts), concluding that phenomenal experience at the prereflective and reflective levels appearing in the evolution of our species make no contribution to 'higher-order' thought. Even here you restrict 'perception' to what we can 'see' and 'sense' [qualia], rather than recognizing that what we see and sense enables developing awareness and the reflection and thought that follow from it. Your next statement remains ambiguous on this primary issue in modern philosophy and consciousness studies:

Seeing and sensing our reality is known as "perceiving" or "perception."

I've been saying for more than two years now in the P&C thread that human perception as well as the perception of animals preceding us over eons of biological evolution cannot be understood simply from mechanistic hypotheses regarding how images of our actual environing worlds are taken in by the eyes and become interpreted in terms of organisms's lived experience and lived meaning. I've also repeatedly called attention to the foundational importance of Merleau-Ponty's first two books -- The Structure of Behavior and the Phenomenology of Perception -- for a comprehensive understanding of what perception is.

What I am saying is that reality and our perception of reality are distinct.

So you're saying that 'reality' consists in 'things' or 'objects' as they are 'in-themselves' -- a level of knowledge we can never achieve (see Kant and also the phenomenologists who followed him in European and now also American philosophy) -- rather than in experience of and with things and objects as we see them, approach and attempt to understand them, through their phenomenal appearances to us. We don't know what it's like to be a bat; we don't see plants, flowers, berries, and seed pods, etc., in the same way they appear phenomenally to bees, other insects, birds, etc. Of course our perceptions of our environments and the things encountered in them are distinct from the perceptions {and other natural affordances} available to other living species fitted by nature in various ways distinct from the ways in which our perceptual organs have evolved. Would you argue with the honey bee that the flower he perceives and engages with is less real or more real than the same flower you and the bee are both observing? The wonder of the natural world is that it is 'worlded' -- brought to awareness and various kinds of activities, various ways of life, all lived experientially and, in varying ways, intelligently within it -- and that it is nevertheless the same world we all exist in on this planet and in the cosmos, as other species of life no doubt evolve in their specific ways in other ecosystems on other planets. For MP, all life forms "sing the world" in different ways, all sharing the same impulse to explore the world, to find pleasure and comfort in it, and survive as long as they can within it. Our species goes farther than most we know of here -- we want to understand the natural world we live in and culturally shape to our needs.

I know that there are philosophers who believe that reality and our perception of reality are somehow one and the same. People who take this position face an uphill battle to establish a firm theoretical and empirical basis for this position.

I doubt there are many left that engage such naieve ideas. It's clear in your last sentence that you, however, do believe that 'reality' must be something entirely objective [despite the evolution of subjectivity, open-ended consciousness, and mind in living beings who bring the question of the nature of being to light], and I think you hope to find out what 'objective reality' could be once its hiding place is discovered by reductive, objectivist methods of our species' current science.

While I will be the first to say my perception of reality certainly seems to have a 1:1 correspondence with reality, simple experiences like viewing the optical illusion above suggest otherwise.

Do you conclude from the existence of optical illusions that all visual perception is illusory?

And how do we explain phantom limbs? The case where amputees still experience sensation in limbs and digits that have been amputated.

Do you think that phantom limb sensations signify that in 'reality' those amputated limbs are still attached to the bodies of those who experience those sensations? Why not understand this affliction in terms of the intimate connections of the body with consciousness and selfhood, with the individual's previously experienced self-efficacy and agency in the world on the basis of having had the now-missing limb, a state of being and activity no longer possible in the way that person's life was previously lived and livable? Consciousness, as phenomenology argues, is embodied consciousness. The body itself is conscious as the instrument through which we first move about in the actual world we live in and master the skills we need to function in it.

There are even documented cases of individuals born without arms, legs, hands, feet, etc who still experience having them.

That is revelatory if true. Please cite a source or two where this phenomenon is reported and discussed. What would it mean regarding the nature of life if the fetus in the womb senses the presence of limbs that in fact do not develop during gestation? I'm completely fascinated by this subject and hope you will bring more information about it to this thread.

While it may go against our intuition, experience, or even our ideology, there is strong reason to believe that the perceptual, qualitative landscape that we experience as humans is unique to our species and the particular human individual.

If so, why do we share so many perceptions in common concerning the structure and nature of our natural and cultural environments? So many -- but of course not all, since every
individual human (and every individual animal at later stages of evolution) has and remembers a unique series of experiences in its lifetime, learns about different things and situations, understands more or less about the encountered world than a fellow member of that species. We all bring our history along with us in life, for good or for ill depending on individual circumstances. At our species' own level of mental and intellectual development, we either approve of or resist, or rebel against, the circumstances in which we and our immediate community of fellows actually live, so obviously in any society the 'haves' will look upon their own culture and economic system more favorably than the 'have-nots'. There are always exceptions too -- many progressive and revolutionary thinkers that have first articulated the need for socioeconomic and political change in their societies on earth have come from well-off and well-educated classes. I would say that in most such cases the inspirational leaders of rebellions and revolutions have developed their intellectual insights out of expanded consciousnesses enabling them to see the outrages committed against deprived and oppressed portions of the population.

I agree with you that cases in which cameras capture images of the world that match our perception of the world seem to indicate that our perception of the world represents the "real" world.

You continue to think that 'reality' exists somewhere beyond, and is unconnected to, that which can be seen and otherwise sensed and understood about it by conscious beings living within it. There must be a trapdoor that leads out of that particular "mind-forged manacle." Try reading phenomenological philosophy.

As you know, we do have to be careful comparing a photograph to a conscious perception of a photograph. That is, how we perceive EM waves, whether they are reflecting off a building or reflecting off a photograph of the same building, still does not mean that EM waves and our perception of EM waves are identical.

I don't think we perceive EM waves themselves, but only measurements of them recorded and graphed by mechanical devices. We see and hear only within a certain portion of what is carried in the EM spectrum. My cat sees and hears things {perhaps a light phenomenon and some kind of sound phenomenon} that I cannot see and hear. Her reactions and behavioral responses are unmistakable and they persist for extended periods of time during which she first becomes hyperalert and hypervigilant and from that moment continuously follows something visible to her moving about in the air, and sometimes simultanously moves her ears in different directions from whatever she is watching, as if attempting to better hear a moving sound. On a number of occasions I have observed her following the visible manifestation down to her front paws, apparently touching them playfully, and watched her try to catch or capture with her paws whatever she sees and feels in contact with her. Often just after these episodes she licks her paws vigorously and repeatedly as if something or someone has touched them. I think it's someone she and I both knew well and loved deeply, now surviving as consciousness and self in a form of existence on the 'other side' of this embodied 'reality'. I have had some even more vivid physical experiences of contact than Sassy evidently has had over these last nine years.

We can conceive of an organism with a nervous system radically different from terrestrial life that perceives EM waves in a completely different way than we do.

Yes we can.
 
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1.) Indeed. Perhaps that's why they're studying us. Maybe we're as weird to them as they are to us.

2.) Maybe they don't perceive the glow that their craft make the way we do and therefore never consider that it's as if they are flying around at times with a big light on themselves that seems to be saying to us "look at me - look at me". Maybe they have at some point been completely oblivious of our natural ability to detect them via our senses.

1.) Absolutely, and I have long contended and supported this view point here in this forum. I simply could not agree more. It makes "sense" that it is us that experiences temporally relevant self contained physicaldom. Very much making our native experiential condition the isolated exception to the rule.

2.) Not in my humble speculative opinion. This would absolutely make no sense. They (multiple) or it (singular) exemplify a complete working mastery of what it is we term native experiential reality. They access and modify the very working parameters of this native experience minus any formal externalized attribute or exclusion whatsoever. Such relative and specific interactions are given to a level of thorough working comprehension. This is not to state however that they are given to caring about how they appear to us. Sentience may in fact be integral to independent volition. Indeed, even unto what we know as rationale.

IMSO, what we see when we visually observe UFOs is either a.) The product of our own native interfacial awareness, or b.) A technologically relevant interfacial means to a natively targeted transient ends. A technological means to achieve native reality adaptation equating to a self contained technological representation of artificial consciousness as host to the transient directive of artificial cognition. (intelligence)

If everything that is given to experiential reality is a native reflection of the relationship that our cognition determines as hosted by consciousness, all matters UFO may be much likened to mission relevant nanotechnologies within the body of consciousness.
 
Indeed. Perhaps that's why they're studying us. Maybe we're as weird to them as they are to us. Maybe they don't perceive the glow that their craft make the way we do and therefore never consider that it's as if they are flying around at times with a big light on themselves that seems to be saying to us "look at me - look at me". Maybe they have at some point been completely oblivious of our natural ability to detect them via our senses.
Isn't this entire line of reasoning kinda dramatically undercut by virtue of the fact that it's quite often reported that they interact -- or at least respond -- to our behaviour.

Vis-a-vis, we shine flashlights at them and they come closer is a commonly reported event. Or fly fighter jets at them, lock on, and things go pear shaped. Etc.

They seem to do just fine responding to events within our visual spectrum, therefore it's reasonable to assume they're at least capable of percieving it.
 
I want to post here a strikingly clear lecture concerning Sartre's core ideas as a clarification of the grounding premises of phenomenological inquiry into the nature of 'reality' and the nature of consciousness as we experience it ourselves and reflect on it. The critical questions that McClamrock poses in his concluding paragraphs relate back to the presentation of D. Sasselov's hypothesis concerning the origin of life in the universe, raising questions we could discuss here, provided that there is sufficient interest.

Final Lecture on Sartre
Ron McClamrock

Spring 1988
Today I'm going to finish talking about Sartre. We'll be touching on everything in Sartre other than what we've done so far, which means I'm just going to wave my hands in the direction of some topics to give you a sense of what's out there, rather than giving any real arguments. First, I'll say a little about some of the main themes we've seen in Sartre's Transcendence of the Ego so far. I'll then say a little about the two key concepts in Being and Nothingness: being-in-itself (the being had by things in the world) and being-for-itself (the being had by consciousness). The whole book is more or less about the relationship between those two things. After that, I'll touch on a few of the other central themes in Sartre's philosophy. And at the end, I'll say a little about where I think Sartre's moves leave you if you start from Husserl, take seriously Sartre's criticisms of him, and then try to re-apply a few of those points to Sartre's own positions.

Transcendence and Realism
The ego and its states as transcendent
In the last couple of sessions we looked at the idea that the ego and its (psychological) states --- its experiences, if you like --- are essentially transcendent. There is no immanence, in Husserl's sense; Husserl is, as Sartre sees it, guilty of falling under the "illusion of immanence". The essence of everything --- including my self and its states of consciousness --- is transcendent: it essentially goes beyond what is given in my consciousness, and depends for its essence on the real aspects of the world on which it is directed.

What consequences does this have? One which Sartre points out is that it "plunges man back into the world" and refutes solipsism. We have now placed ourselves essentially in the world, with no special status, nothing which makes the status of my mind and self essentially different for me than that of others, or of the world in general; "the dualism of being and appearance is no longer entitled to any legal status within philosophy." (B&N, p.4) This is of course to reject solipsism: my thoughts have no special metaphysical status; and they are essentially no different than the thoughts of the others.

Existence and essence
A second consequence of the transcendence of the ego and its states brings out the central catch-phrase of existentialism: "Existence precedes essence". The existence in the real world of my thoughts (and everything else) precedes their definition; this is an explicit rejection both of the Cartesian view of mind (where its essence is known before its real existence in the world) and of the positivist and Husserlian account of the meanings of words and thoughts (where what they mean and refer to is something in the essence of the symbol rather than in the world and in the real existent which is the intentional object of the thought). The reference of thoughts is not secondary to their descriptive essence, but is primary, and in turn determines their intentional essence. As Sartre puts it at one point: The "first procedure of a philosophy ought to be to expel things from consciousness and to reestablish its true connection with the world; to know that consciousness is a positional consciousness of the world." (B&N, p.11)

This clearly gives us what is sometimes called a kind of direct realism about the world. The appearances which reveal the world are "no longer interior nor exterior"; he rejects the idea of the "being behind the appearance". Appearances are not internal pictures, but (intentional) relations to the world; projections of the world, defined by their relationship to it --- by what they are projections of. This is then what it is for the appearance to become "full positivity... as an appearing which is no longeropposed to being, but is the measure of it." (B&N, p.4)

We see here Sartre's rejection of reality as hidden and unreachable, as seen through the "veil of perception" --- the opaque field of representations which shield us from the real things in the world. Appearances here are reality being given; they are projections of things in the world into consciousness, defined by the things themselves; not internally defined ideas from which objects in the world are constructions. We get away from, as he says, "what Nietzsche called `the illusion of worlds-behind-the-scene"', and "no longer believe in the being-behind-the-appearance". (B&N, p. 4)

Appearance and objectivity
What makes something transcendent for Sartre is of course that it's not totally given to me in any particular mental act. Any perception of a transcendent object doesn't give it in its totality. He sometimes says in fact that we might think of a object as an infinite series of possible appearances. "Appearance", once again, in the realist sense: appearings of the world to me, rather than appearances as some kind of internal representation. The idea of the infinite series here is just his way of differentiating between the objective and the subjective --- or rather, between transcendence and immanence. Objects as infinite rather than finite sequences of appearances is the central aspect of his notion of the objective.

Sartre's "ontological proof" in the introduction to Being and Nothingness is hardly what anyone else would want to call a proof. But it does bring out something of interest about Sartre's conception of objectivity. He begins with the assertion that he takes as the heart of phenomenology, and which comes of course from Husserl: that all consciousness is consciousness ofsomething. He then suggests that there are just two ways to take this: one is as claiming that consciousness always constitutesan object for itself; that any thought is of an object in that thought of a certain kind is constitutive of being an object of a certain sort. But this isn't a relation to an object --- this has missed the sense of being an object, as an essentially transcendent or objective rather than subjective thing. The only other option is that consciousness is essentially a relation to a transcendent being --- a relation to something which is not itself contained in consciousness. This is, of course, Sartre's view. Hardly an overwhelming argument; but it does shed light on an important aspect of Sartre's view: the being of an object, and of objectivity, essentially requires and presupposes transcendence.

Being and Nothingness
Being-in-itself
The central cleavage in Sartre, on which most other distinctions depend, is that between being-in-itself and being-for-itself. As for being-in-itself, Sartre gives us three characterizations --- all in his own exceedingly cryptic style. As he puts it: being is; being is what it is; and being is in-itself.

But there is a point to each of these assertions. Being "is" in that being-in-itself is actual (rather than just possible) and contingent (rather than necessary). It is "not derived from possibility or reduced to necessity". Being "is what is is" in that it doesn't refer to something else in any way; everything about it is intrinsic to it rather than obtaining by virtue of some intentional relation to something else. What it refers to or what refers to it is no part of its being-in-itself. And being "is in-itself" in that it is not dependent on anything (e.g. us) for its being; it is not a construction of our minds, and it doesn't have to be thought of to exist. Its existence is in itself, rather than in relation to or essentially dependent on something else.

Being-for-itself and nothingness
In contrast to being-in-itself, we have being-for-itself, which is the being of consciousness. Being-in-itself is what it is; but being-for-itself "is not what it is, and is what it is not". Contrary to appearances, this is not just Sartre being contradictory. The point of this claim is that the being and essence of consciousness are not to be found in something "in" consciousness, but in the relationship of consciousness to its object. It "is not what it is" in that its essence is not internal to it, contained in it, or in that sense intrinsic to it; it "is what it is not" in that its existence and essence are to found in its objects, in what it is directed on --- in the world in which it is embedded. Consciousness is then, for Sartre, pure directedness, pure intentionality; other than its relationship to objects appearing, it is nothing at all --- nothingness, in one sense of the word.

Since the essence of consciousness is intentionality or directedness, and since, for Sartre, this presupposes a relation to a transcendent being, the in-itself clearly has a kind of priority over the for-itself. And thus, once again, existence (of the in-itself) precedes essence (the categorizing of the world which consciousness does). It is consciousness that is the source of carving up the world; the for-itself is "the source of all possibility, negation, and finitude". Categorization requires saying where the class ends --- where the lack of that class lies. And this is a part of the job of the for-itself, as the "source of all negation".

This is the second sense in which consciousness is "nothingness" for Sartre. Above, we saw that it is pure directedness, pure intentionality; other than its relationship to objects appearing, it is nothing at all. But it is also nothingness in the sense that it is the source of all nothingness or negation. The lack of something is always produced by the for-itself for Sartre. This is not as cosmic as it sounds; it's just pointing out that the presence of an object is a matter of the object, of the in-itself; but the lack of an object requires something seeing that as being the object which is lacking --- a for-itself must see the lack or negation of the object. So, the existence of the coke can here is a matter of the coke can --- of what it is in itself; but the lack of the coke can over there is not a matter of what is there, but what isn't. The lack or absence is essentially a matter of what it is not, and not what it is --- which is, of course, the mark of the for-itself.

Consciousness as nothingness
One consequence of Sartre's view of consciousness as nothingness and pure intentionality is that he rejects anything that consciousness might be taken to contain. Of course, the most obvious example of this is the transcendental ego, which he took great pains to banish from the interior of consciousness. And the emotions also become properties of objects, as characterized in The Emotions: Outline of a Theory. But perhaps most interestingly, this view moves Sartre to the rejection of anything like Husserl's notion of hyle, and perhaps the similar notion of "qualia" or "raw feels". Everything about consciousness is essentially intentional; thus Husserl's "non-intentional materials" must go. And to the extent that we see qualia as individuated not by their semantic (or informational) roles, but by their "intrinsic character", his view would reject these as well.

The idea that consciousness "comes from itself" arises from these notions of consciousness as nothingness as well. Consciousness is defined in terms of its objects, or what it is directed on --- in terms of what it is not. It is itself nothing. Since negation comes only from the for-itself, and the for-itself is the lack of the in-itself (it is what it is not, and is not what it is), the for-itself (as nothingness or negation) comes from itself (as the source of all nothingness or negation).

Bad Faith
The unconscious
One of the central notions connected with that of the for-itself is the idea of bad faith, or self-deception. Bad faith is Sartre's replacement for the Freudian notion of the unconscious. Bad faith for Sartre is false reflection on my own mental states; a systematic self-deception about the nature of the pre-reflective basis for reflection (which is, of course, for Sartre, appearances or projections of the real world). So, if for example I hate my father but do not admit it to myself, Freud would say that my hatred of my father is an unconscious mental state, which systematically effects my behavior, but which cannot be made conscious without deep analysis and the uncovering of the psychogenesis of that hatred.

Sartre, on the other hand, rejects the notion of the unconscious entirely. For Sartre, this situation would be described as one in which I (consciously) hate my father, and am conscious --- non-thetically --- of that hatred and its object. But in reflecting, I lie to myself, and tell myself that I don't really hate my father. My non-thetic consciousness is of hating my father; but my reflective, thetic consciousness of self --- my consciousness of my self as an (empirical) object --- is that of me as not hating my father. This distortion is imposed because of a desire to not hate my father, and reflection then is twisted by that desire. But I am fully (if non-thetically) conscious of hating my father --- that is, my consciousness sometimes has the form of a hatred of Dad.

The critique of the unconscious
The most central difference between Sartre and Freud which underlies this apparent disagreement is that Sartre thinks that all dealing with the intentional is conscious, more or less by definition. The intentional properties of something are ones it has not in itself, but ones which are to be found in what it is not (what it's directed on) rather than what it is. But being what it is not rather than what it is is the essential mark of consciousness, the for-itself, and nothingness for Sartre. So the only thing which is sensitive to the intentional is consciousness itself.

Pretend that this is so for a moment to understand the disagreement with Freud. If this were so, then consider the process of repression for Freud. Repression is certainly sensitive to the content of mental states --- things get repressed because of what they mean. But since only the for-itself can be sensitive to meaning, repression must be done by a consciousness. In fact, this requires a second consciousness: If it were my consciousness, then as soon as the process of repression considered that meaning to see if it should be repressed, that meaning would be conscious --- and hence, not repressed. So if only consciousness can deal with the intentional, repression would require a second, independent consciousness, which is not mine --- which Sartre takes to be absurd.

The alternative for Sartre is that it's my consciousness which does the repressing --- which means, of course, that even "repressed" thoughts are conscious. This is, of course, just bad faith. I am conscious of all my thoughts; none are unconscious. And it is my consciousness which grasps even the intuitively repressed thoughts. I thus have conscious access even to the things which I do not admit to myself --- I instead lie to myself in reflection about something I perfectly well know; and this is the essence of bad faith.

Furthermore, given Sartre's views about freedom and responsibility, this leaves me not in the moral position which comes from psychoanalysis, in which I am not responsible for my unconscious, as it is not me, not my choices, not something I control. Rather, I am left with total responsibility for my bad faith; I am as responsible for the lies I tell myself as for the lies I tell another. I freely choose to lie to myself, and am responsible for doing so.

The idea that all mental phenomena are conscious (at least when they are potent in producing behavior) is of course one which has been taken over by the cognitive therapy school, although not with the moral overtones which Sartre gives it. Aaron Beck, a founder of cognitive therapy, certainly makes this central position of consciousness critical. However, the emphasis on the free choice of bad faith is entirely dropped; instead, the emphasis is placed on disfunctional generalizations which we use but don't reconsider adequately.

Comments on the critique
Of course, a central problem for Sartre's general position in this area is his claim that only the for-itself (consciousness) can deal with the intentional properties of things. At the end today, I'll consider the possibility of the in-itself providing preconditions on the for-itself. But for now, let me just point out this: If thought comes to be seen as any properties other than intentional ones, then processes of the in-itself can respond to those properties. And if those properties are at least correlated with intentional properties (as the morpho-syntactic properties of our language are correlated with its semantic properties, for example), there could be a non-conscious repression mechanism which effectively screens certain kind of thoughts from consciousness. And if thoughts have no properties of the in-itself, it's very difficult to see how they could possibly enter into causal processes and thus lead to actions.

Before leaving this dispute between Sartre and Freud, it's worth noting an interesting difference in the role that different conceptions of meaning are playing here. For Sartre, we're conscious of all our mental states. But we're not conscious of them in the sense that we clearly describe or adequately conceptualize them to ourselves; we don't, say, conceptualize the mental state discussed in the earlier example as "my mental state which is a hatred of Dad." But we are conscious "of" it in the sense of reference; that is, in the sense that the mental state which is a hatred of Dad, that very (mental) object, it is something of which I am conscious, although not explicitly under that very description. My hatred for Dad is not judged by me to be a hatred of Dad; but it is a state or event of which I (1) am conscious of (under different descriptions) in reflection, and (2) is the form of my consciousness pre-reflectively.

For Freud, of course, there are lots of mental states and processes of which we're not conscious, and my hatred of Dad would certainly fall in here. Of course, the sense in which I'm not conscious of it is that I do not (and perhaps can not) correctly conceptualize it; but I am conscious of it in the sense that information from it is carried into my consciousness. It might thus be considered the real object of my thought, although not specifying the form in which the object appears. The unconscious is then represented --- in the sense of reference --- in consciousness; it's just that it is typically mis-represented because of the distorting influence of the "censor" of repression.

When looked at in this way, the disagreement between Sartre and Freud about the unconscious may seem to be a little less about the way the mind works and more about our moral and personal relationship to the states of our own psyches. Both think that reflection systematically distorts, and that this is to account for the disunity of our minds. Both think that this distortion makes for misrepresentation of the underlying states, but that information about those states still ends up in reflection. The difference is now centrally whether the pre-reflective mental state is one which I can access and control, but choose not to, (Sartre), or cannot access and control regardless of my choices (Freud). In short, the disagreement is much more one overresponsibility than over the mechanics of the disunity of mind. And if we are unconvinced by Sartre's the view that intentional processes must be conscious, then this is exactly where the disagreement would seem to stand.

A last aside on this: If Grunbaum (in The Foundations of Psychoanalysis) is right about Freud, and the acid test for psychoanalysis is in clinical success or failure, we have an interesting question still to ask: Does taking responsibility for your psychic life (as in "Existential Psychoanalysis") work better clinically than coming to see it as something independent of you and your choices? The relative success of consciousness-based cognitive therapy as compared to more traditional psychoanalysis might be one reason to think so. Perhaps another is the success had in dealing with rape victims by getting them to see the traumatic event as one for which they had some responsibility, and thus some control over. And the view of depression as linked to a sense of a total lack of control over the surrounding world might be a third. In short: If success is the marker of truth here (as at least Grunbaum's Freud thought), the markers may be lining up on Sartre's side of the board on this one.

Contingency and existentialism
Let me turn now to just briefly touch on a few of the big points of Sartre's more general and, I suppose, more well-known "existentialist" views. In order to place them into the framework of Sartre's views as we've seen them so far, let me remind you of two absolutely central ideas for Sartre: (1) Existence precedes essence. This means for Sartre that all essences are transcendent (rather than immanent), and that the real existing object of thought is prior to and in some sense determines the content of the thought. (2) Being-for-itself (consciousness) is the source of all negation/ nothingness. All lack of something, negation of something, emptiness, absence, etc. --- all these things are essentially defined in term of what they are not rather than what they are, and thus are a matter of the for-itself rather than the in-itself.

Nausea
One major theme of Sartre's existentialism is the nausea of confronting being. Nausea, for Sartre, is a kind of philosophical vertigo which comes from grasping the utter contingency of all existence. To grasp this, one can begin by reflecting on the utter contingency of your being where you are now. Consider all the details which had to be just so simply in order for human beings to exist on this planet --- the expansion rate of the universe, the balance of chemicals on the Earth, the cosmic rays penetrating the atmosphere to cause exactly the right mutations in earlier organisms, and so on. Consider in addition all those precise coincidences needed for your parents to be born, to meet, to have children. Add to this all those improbable circumstances necessary for your being born --- for say, exactly that sperm cell to fertilize exactly that egg, so that you and not one of your possible siblings were born. And, of course, pile on all the circumstances necessary for you to have come to where you are today, reading this --- the influences of parents, friends, and teachers; the circumstances of education, employment, and affection. How likely is that all of those factors came together in exactly the way they did? It is so absolutely, utterly unlikely that we find ourselves perched on a pinnacle of utter improbability, of total contingency, and the height of improbability is dizzying. There is absolutely no reason that there should have been such a ridiculous coincidence of events; but such a ridiculous coincidence is exactly what the existence of each of us rests upon. My own non-existence is so immensely much more likely than my existence that the foundation of my existence is left as a needle-thin tower of improbability. It is from this that the existential vertigo of nausea comes.

It's important to see that the point here really has very little to do with issues about determinism at, say, the physical level. Regardless of whether some kind of physical determinism is true about the world (or even about our actions), the sort of utter contingency which is important for Sartre still remains. The critical point for the purposes of nausea or existential vertigo is that there is no reason why the real world is the real one rather than some other possible world being real. There may be causes(say, stated in some micro-physics) such that the state of the universe at the big bang determines my existence and position now. But that does not give a reason why I am here rather than not --- that is still, if you like, a kind of cosmic accident.

So it's not determinism that's at issue here, but a kind of fatalism. There is no reason that I should have been born, even if it turn out that there is a physical causal story to tell about how the physical events which were my birth came to happen. There is no explanation for it as my birth. My birth was not destined, in that nothing was working to insure that I was born, even if the physical event of my birth was causally necessitated by the initial conditions of the universe and the blind laws of nature. To twist around Leibniz, we might call this the "principle of insufficient reason": there is no reason for anything being the way it is (even if there are causes of it); this is not only not the best of all possible worlds, it is as unlikely as any, and thus utterly contingent.

A world without reason
Sartre in fact goes on to expand on this sense of total contingency. Remember that for Sartre, being-for-itself is the source of all negation and nothingness. This means that a conceptualization of the world --- dividing it into A's and non-A's --- depends essentially on the for-itself for the negation. We might then, for example, reconceptualize tree roots as a grotesque hand, clutching the earth. What emerges from the "blooming, buzzing confusion" of being and is carved off by the for-itself by negating is thus also utterly contingent. We have, even given the utterly contingent state of being-in-itself, on top of this the extreme contingency of experiencing the world under this conceptualization rather than some other equally possible one. There is no reason to find the world this way rather than another; hence the amplification of contingency and the resultant sense of existential vertigo.

This is probably the most central theme of existentialism in the popular sense: The world and our existence in it is totally without reason; there is no reason or meaning for anything. Human existence then seems to be an entirely unlikely absurdity, like the random coalescing of particles in deep space into a 1968 VW Beetle --- totally without purpose and reason; a cosmic accident. The grasping of this absurdity, our own absurdity, produces the nausea of confronting existence.

Freedom
If all negation comes from the for-itself, and the for-itself is the realm of consciousness which is what we control, then we come to Sartre's conception of total freedom. We choose everything about our world, in that even the way in which we conceptualize the world --- as a matter of the for-itself --- is something that we choose rather than something that is forced on us by the in-itself. Thus in some extremely pervasive sense, we choose the way the world looks to us. We make our own conceptualization of the world, in something like the Kantian sense. But in contrast with a Kantian view, that way in which we make our carving of the world is a matter of choice --- since, as in intentional activity, it can only come from the for-itself.

This total freedom of course extends to the freedom to create our own values in the world. Value is placing what is not in an object in it, or removing what is in it from it --- creating a lack. In either case, values depend essentially on negation and nothingness. Hence, just as before, these things depend on the for-itself, and thus fall under our pure freedom. The in-itself provides no values, so ethical truths are in no sense written into the cosmos for Sartre. This way of putting the point leads one to the most nihilistic characterization of Sartre's view of ethics: that there are only the ethical values that each individual creates for him or her self. In fact, Sartre was far less nihilistic than this; sometimes advocating a kind of Kantian universalizability in ethics, and often supporting some kind of Marxist view with what hardly looks like nihilistic argument. But the topic of the ethical implications of Sartre's existentialism is a huge one, and not one we'll have time to take up here.

Literature
A final aspect of Sartre's approach worth touching upon is his position as an author of fiction --- an unusual role for an academic philosopher. Of course, many themes in Sartre's philosophy also receive some substantial treatment in his works of fiction. Perhaps the most notable example is his 1938 novel Nausea, which focuses centrally on the existential vertigo of confronting existence and its utter contingency. His short story "The Wall" is also a particularly good example of a work of fiction where the theme of the absurdity which comes from the utter contingency and accidental nature of our lives and deaths.

For someone with Sartre's philosophical views, it should not seem so unusual to work out some of his views in a literary form. There are a few natural reasons for this. One is that because existence precedes essence and all essences are thus transcendent, philosophical questions require their "dasein" or real embedding in the world to have their real meaning. Literature and biography allow for the consideration of these questions by characters in a real context, embedded in the world. Another reason is that the interplay between the for-itself and the in-itself is central to Sartre's thought, and literature allows for the examination from the perspective of a character, and the shifting of perspective from his to one outside him. Yet another reason is the actual utter contingency of the world in fiction. There is no reason that the world in a work of fiction is one way rather than another other than the whim of the author; in fiction not even apparent consistency in the world or our perception of it is required. This allows for the emphasizing of the parallel contingency and resultant absurdity which Sartre finds in the real world.

Transcendence Reiterated
I'd like to wrap up now with a couple of suggestions about how we might carry out further the consequences of a couple of Sartre's themes. It's at least interesting to think about whether he might have mis-applied some of his central ideas, or perhaps failed to carry them far enough. There are three topics I'd like to comment on here: the transcendent essence of the for-itself, the possible tempering of utter contingency, and the restricting of the idea of freedom and responsibility.

The transcendence of essence and the for-itself
First, then: If all essence is transcendent, then why not that of intentionality and the for-itself? The one domain in which Sartre seems to hold on to some kind of a priori conception is in the definition of consciousness --- that it can contain nothing, and that it must always be characterized in terms of what it is not (its pure intentionality) rather than anything intrinsic to it.

But why couldn't it turn out that the for-itself and intentionality be naturalistically characterizable? Once consciousness is "plunged back into the world" (as Sartre seems to require in The Transcendence of the Ego), why shouldn't there be what Husserl would have called a "science of the world" to deal with it and give us theories which denied the pure nothingness of consciousness? Perhaps a naturalistic psychology of the contents of consciousness could determine the transcendent essence of mind and consciousness. Sartre was himself extremely suspicious of scientific theorizing in general; but if we are somewhat hesitant to share that idiosyncrasy of his, we might look for the structure of the for-itself in a scientific psychology.

The restriction of contingency
This may in turn bear on the other two themes mentioned above. The point about the factual utter contingency of the way the world is, our own existence, and even how we see the world in some way are ones with which I have substantial empathy. But Sartre's further amplification might be one which we could reject. If the for-itself is conditioned by structures of the in itself --- so, for example, the structure of the visual system in the brain places preconditions on how I perceive the world --- then there may be a fairly strong sense in which we do not choose the way the world looks to us. There may, in addition, even be some reasons why the world looks to us the way it does, having to do with what organisms like us were selected for. As soon as the for-itself is placed back into the arena of the transcendent, questions of choice and reason may at least be ones which can be addressed in this framework.

The tempering of pure freedom
This brings us to the third question here, that of freedom. If what I said a minute ago is right, then there are restrictions on our freedom to see the world (and in that sense, make the world) any way we choose. But another consequence of the transcendent nature of the for-itself might be that freedom to act is also conditioned by the world. If the for-itself is itself "plunged back into the world", all the traditional problems about human freedom (e.g. free will and determinism, etc.) may come back to haunt us.

To avoid this, Sartre must reject the idea that the for-itself could possibly be examined from the standpoint of seeing it as conditioned by or a part of the in-itself. But seeing the for-itself from that perspective is exactly what his arguments for the transcendence of all essence seem to suggest we must do.

Bibliography:
  • [Freud 1963] Sigmund Freud, "The Unconscious." In S. Freud, General Psychological Theory. New York: Macmillan, pp. 116-150.
  • [Husserl 1962] Edmund Husserl, Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology. Translated by W. R. Boyce Gibson. New York, New York: Collier Books.
  • [Husserl 1964] Edmund Husserl, The Idea of Phenomenology. The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff.
  • [Husserl 1977] Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations. The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff.
  • [Sartre 1948] Jean-Paul Sartre, The Emotions: Outline of a Theory. New York: Citadel Press.
  • [Sartre 1956] Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness. New York: Washington Square Press.
  • [Sartre 1957] Jean-Paul Sartre, The Transcendence of the Ego: An Existentialist Theory of Consciousness. Translated by Forrest Williams and Robert Kirkpatrick. New York, New York: Noonday Press.
Lecture on Sartre
 
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Isn't this entire line of reasoning kinda dramatically undercut by virtue of the fact that it's quite often reported that they interact -- or at least respond -- to our behaviour.

Vis-a-vis, we shine flashlights at them and they come closer is a commonly reported event. Or fly fighter jets at them, lock on, and things go pear shaped. Etc.

They seem to do just fine responding to events within our visual spectrum, therefore it's reasonable to assume they're at least capable of percieving it.
Yes. I was basically just supporting the idea in principle, and that's why I suggested that maybe at "some point" as in perhaps when they first encountered us, they didn't know our capabilities for detection and that perhaps like we don't see the infra-red coming off our jet engines, they don't see the glow from their craft "the way we do". Maybe their vision ( if they have vision ) is different and they have had to learn from experience how to interpret the stimuli that we take entirely for granted. Maybe when they see a flashlight they don't see white light, but they see the infra red. I don't know. It was just musings for the purpose of contemplation.
 
@Soupie, I just realized that I should add a footnote to this part of our interchange above:

As you know, we do have to be careful comparing a photograph to a conscious perception of a photograph. That is, how we perceive EM waves, whether they are reflecting off a building or reflecting off a photograph of the same building, still does not mean that EM waves and our perception of EM waves are identical.

I don't think we perceive EM waves themselves, but only measurements of them recorded and graphed by mechanical devices. We see and hear only within a certain portion of what is carried in the EM spectrum.

It is the case, however, that at many locations on earth where strong EM fields emerge from deep faults or crevices in the ground (such as at or near ancient megalithic structures and smaller stone structures long built to increase the viability and potency of crop seeds) humans have frequently reported and described altered states of consciousness and emotion, likely stimulated by these stronger EM fields. John Burke, an associate of W.C. Levengood during his extended research into anomalies in vigor, fertility, and size of plants grown from seeds originating in some crop circles, went on with Levengood to develop modern means of duplicating the types and levels of EM and microwave effects on seeds based on the discovery that residues of seeds had been recognized in or on these ancient structures. Burke went on to write a fascinating book based on his and his coauthor's research at many sites around the world, entitled Seed of Knowledge, Stone of Plenty: Understanding the Lost Technology of the Ancient Megalith-Builders. Amazon description:

"Burke and Halbert present the scientific evidence behind their startling, original theory: ancient peoples constructed temples, mounds, and megaliths to increase the fertility of crops. These peoples used an ancient technology, only now rediscovered."

It seems that this is an example of how humans [and plant seeds as well] respond to phenomena that are beyond visibility or audibility for us.

 
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It has often seemed that that is what you are saying, or hoping to see proved. And as you have pursued your search in these forums for something that can be called 'objective reality' -- as in your recent claim that 'points' (or 'point particles'?) are taken by many physicists to be the only 'objective reality' -- you have often argued (or cited people you see as authorities who argue} that phenomenal experiences are either not real or do not approach the descriptions of experiential lived reality provided by phenomenological philosophers and scientists educated in phenomenology.
Constance we've had the same conversation at least half a dozen times. I've clarified my position the same way each time. Even still, you seem to have it wrong.

I've never argued that "phenomenal experiences are either not real or do not approach the descriptions of experiential lived reality..."

My position, once more: Reality and our experience of reality are distinct.

To clarify, they are not ontologically distinct. That is, our experience of reality is a subset of reality. However, being only a subset of reality, our experience of reality does not fully capture reality.

If I may, I'll borrow this position from Sarte which I believe is essentially the same as my position. (Before you ask, the following was taken from your post above.)

"The only other option is that consciousness is essentially a relation to a transcendent being --- a relation to something which is not itself contained in consciousness. This is, of course, Sartre's view. Hardly an overwhelming argument; but it does shed light on an important aspect of Sartre's view: the being of an object, and of objectivity, essentially requires and presupposes transcendence."

It's clear in your last sentence that you, however, do believe that 'reality' must be something entirely objective [despite the evolution of subjectivity, open-ended consciousness, and mind in living beings who bring the question of the nature of being to light], and I think you hope to find out what 'objective reality' could be once its hiding place is discovered by reductive, objectivist methods of our species' current science.
No, reality isn't entirely objective. Individual instances of consciousness (subjectivity) may be subsets of reality, but they are still aspects of reality. Therefore reality is not entirely objective.

I would like to know more about the nature of objective reality, true. But no, the scientific method is not necessarily the best way to reveal the nature of objective reality.

Do you conclude from the existence of optical illusions that all visual perception is illusory?

Do you think that phantom limb sensations signify that in 'reality' those amputated limbs are still attached to the bodies of those who experience those sensations?
No in both cases.

My reason for bringing forth both those examples is to support my position that reality and our perception of reality are distinct.

That is revelatory if true. Please cite a source or two where this phenomenon is reported and discussed. What would it mean regarding the nature of life if the fetus in the womb senses the presence of limbs that in fact do not develop during gestation? I'm completely fascinated by this subject and hope you will bring more information about it to this thread.
Yes, I will post documentation of individuals born without limbs who report experiencing the senstion of having limbs. Ive already it posted some time ago in the CAP thread.

[W]hy do we share so many perceptions in common concerning the structure and nature of our natural and cultural environments?
Because we are all humans and thus share a common form. Now, our physical appearance as it manifests in our conscious, human perception—as we have been discussing—only corresponds to our true objective form. However, as we are all humans, we therefore share a common objective form. And since we share a common objective form, we subjectively experience the world in common (but still not identical) ways.

You continue to think that 'reality' exists somewhere beyond, and is unconnected to, that which can be seen and otherwise sensed and understood about it by conscious beings living within it.
No, that's not at all what I think, nor what I've been saying in this thread and the CAP thread.

We are made of and exist within objective reality. However, we perceive objective reality subjectively. While our perception of reality doesnt fully capture realty, it is still perception of reality.
 
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... the scientific method is not necessarily the best way to reveal the nature of objective reality ...
You've come a long ways since you first came into these discussions, and although I'm a nobody without any particular notoriety, I'd like to say that I'm impressed, and I hope that you continue your search for understanding and truth. I also have a question for you if you don't mind. If as you say, the scientific method isn't the best way to reveal the nature of objective reality, what in your opinion is?
 
You've come a long ways since you first came into these discussions, and although I'm a nobody without any particular notoriety, I'd like to say that I'm impressed, and I hope that you continue your search for understanding and truth. I also have a question for you if you don't mind. If as you say, the scientific method isn't the best way to reveal the nature of objective reality, what in your opinion is?
If the problem presented by Hoffman's "interface theory" is a legitimate problem, which I think it is, then we need ways to transcend the interface.

An analogy to illustrate the problem:

If we want to know the causal chain leading up to the deletion of information from a computer hard drive, focusing on a pixelated folder being dragged into a pixelated garbage can would be a red herring. Sure. When the "file" is dragged into the "can" the info gets deleted. But it's really not a causal relationship, even though it strongly appears to be. It's really just a correlational relationship.

But if we can't transcend the operating system, how can we know this?

I think we face the same problem with human perception of reality. Just how representative of actual reality are the physical processes we perceive via our terrestrial, primate nervous systems?

One of the ideas I've shared a few times is that perhaps we won't be able to conceptually transcend our human "interface" until/unless we interact with a non-terrestrial intelligence.

I conceive of it being similar to when an individual travels to a new country for the first time. Ways of going about life that one takes for granted are instantly challenged. We are suddenly confronted with different ways of being.

Humans are (currently) alone. We have no one to challenge our human-way of perceiving reality. (Would we/could we survive the culture shock?)

It's not that I think the scientific method is broken. But how do we make sure we're investigating the hard drive and not the graphical user interface? I cautiously suggest that math, philosophy, and something akin to neurophenomenology are important ways forward.

Something that @smcder pointed out a long time ago which I've been increasingly thinking about is the fact that we talk about the mind using mostly physical analogies.

For example, if someone asks us to describe what anger feels like, we might use physical terms like hot, red, burning, "pumped up," etc.

It's an interesting phenomenon. We use physical metaphors to describe cognitive and affective states and events. We assume that cognitive states and events correspond to physical states and events, but the interface theory tells us that the "physical" is merely an interface with reality, it is not reality itself. Thus, the relationship between mental states and physical states is correlationsal, not causal.

The true causal reality—if indeed the idea of causation isn't simply a product of our terrestrial, primate interface—lies deeper then we can currently penetrate.

This is akin to using metaphors based on Windows 10 to describe processes taking place in diodes and circuit boards.

But even that isn't an appropriate comparison.

I think the endeavor of understanding just how the mind relates to the body is still in its infancy. It's truly a mystery and I think Hoffman's interface theory helps us understand why it's such a mystery.
 
The values given as awareness are false values, along with natural existence.

The photon interacts with all bodies, yet all bodies do not own the photon....all bodies receive the photon.

The photon condition of the atmosphere records the natural image/voice/sound presence of all bodies that it interacts with, and then feeds back the information.

The reason that the origin spiritual human presence knew about Nature was due to a natural photon interaction that allowed feed back advice to be given to the human mind by the presence of the Nature. This was a smaller body of photon interaction.

If you review Nature and state that the presence is supportive as a totally owned status, and then infer a Creator. The only Creator that could create is the realized condition of the human mind awareness, as its ownership of reviewing information, giving information a status, applying the status, providing itself the evidence that the status that it gave as values produced a result. This result is not just science, the ancient result was to know what food to eat, to drink, to be able to use Nature to heal its own person.

The human presence therefore owned a natural status and then introduced an unnatural status...the realization of feed back due to the amount of human life present on Earth. The amount of human life living, with photon recording enabled a larger body of human aware feed back to be known to the male mind/self.

Sexual procreation to amass population, the condition that allowed feed back advice to apply sciences previously known to the human male, used by him and the effects that attacked natural life gained, was the reason why sexual procreation was considered by the human male to be an evil act of his own choice.

So he blamed the female, for since when does a male admit that his own person is wrong.

The photon and feed back therefore advises the scientists that he gained information by feed back relating to the conditions of photon interaction with all creative powers, the images as details, the interactions as details to then enable him to design models to artificially cause the effects of what he witnessed.

Changing his natural spiritual ownership of balance with Nature was when he realized he made a mistake to consider science and to apply science, for his own self realization stated that he was previously unaware of what unnatural and evil forces actually existed within the status of conversion and fusion.

This is why he learnt about the evil of spirit due to atmospheric fall out when he decided to alter the natural evolution of converted matter.

If you ask a spiritual human who has fed back atmospheric advice about where they came from...they do not state that they came from the sexual act of a monkey. They state by atmospheric records of photon recordings that the origin human parents were higher androgynous beings, who manifested out of origin light.

Origin light always existed with the androgynous presence of the higher spiritual being. This being changed its own sound light body and caused creation. Due to the loss, it caused its own presence to become smaller and the preceding organic life forms, all came from the androgynous presence.

Placing the total of the Nature back into a body would cause the awareness of what the higher androgynous self once was, as the Creator self who caused by self ownership status...a similar looking presence to the human lived life, just as it was advised.

The story of awareness is known, just as the experience of re-manifesting deceased animal spirits and also friends/family in physical interactive experiences.

Therefore human life has always been aware where it came from.....spirit.

Human males have always been aware that their own spirit was once owned by them, but it became an animal, due to changing the nature of origin Earth.

Therefore the human male was also aware that their own presence became a smaller body, and it once owned a larger body. This is why the human spiritual male taught that he should respect all spirit presence on Earth as an equal to his own presence, and to change no Nature or do harm to Nature.

Yet the occult condition demonstrates by its own choice that it did change the Nature on Earth by introduction of an artificial state.....science.

Every day humanity argues over a condition that is already self advised. Nature is natural, as is the presence of all bodies, evolution supports the condition of those bodies surviving.

The occultist, the applier of a human mind who considered an unnatural and artificial act, changed life on Earth and has since been lying to us all about the conditions that he introduced into natural life.

His applications of dictatorship and his life recordings of his voice/thoughts/images has held us all in an unnatural and artificial reasoning condition, where his false living conditions enabled him to continue his occult dictatorship due to unnatural fed back advice.

This is why humanity is suddenly coming to realize as he has destroyed the fed back recordings of his previous occult practice that his teachings are fake, just as his choice is fake.
 
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