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Wikipedia is fine so long as you check the references and sources. Some articles are certainly suspect, but most are well documented.
Last time I had somebody mock me for using a Wikipedia reference, the article had 68 references.
They have to disparage any evidence and so if you use Wikipedia, they can dismiss it because it's possible for it to be wrong. Also they assume that people aren't grown-ups so they can't be trusted to evaluate the references, which must be wrong if they disagree with the holy book of choice.
1. The beloved Irkle is clearly living rent-free inside your head. I've asked the moderators to either admonish you or ban my account if there is genuine concern. Unlike you, apparently, this forum is of very little significance to my life.
Joshua Rasmussen is not a "philosopher of religion." He is an Associate Professor of Philosophy with a Ph.D. from Notre Dame "whose area of expertise is analytic metaphysics with a focus on basic categories of reality
I would hope that the forum has enough significance in your life to give us a cliff notes version on Dr. Josh relative to metaphysics and reality. Moreover, if we assume that consciousness allows us to have a soul or to live forever in some measure... then when is consciousness actually obtained. At birth, somewhere during development, at the moment of fertilization? Is your individual soul floating around somewhere in eternity and gets injected into you somewhere along the line?
Is it god more "poof theory" and we just need to accept it? Inquiring "materialists" would like to know.
What's wrong with Wikipedia. They provide more footnotes and references than say...you.
Nothing wrong with Wikipedia. I use it extensively and have been a financial contributor for years. If I want the scoop on Elizabeth Taylor's marriages, Wikipedia is my go-to source. Neuroscience, not so much.
Insofar as religion, politics and anomalous phenomena are concerned, Wikipedia (more accurately, the contributors to W) is well-known to have and has been demonstrated to have a definite bias or slant. Even with these subjects, some of the articles are excellent - but discretion is advised.
I merely find it comical that someone would purport to be educated about the current state of consciousness studies, would dismiss a cutting-edge scholar like Rasmussen while mischaracterizing him as a philosopher of religion, would chide me for my own supposed lack of expertise, and then reference, in support of his own position ... Wikipedia. Ho-kay, whatever.
I have both been attacked and expelled spirit entities and witnessed and discussed with others their experiences with spirits, that had interacted and even put their own lives at risk.
I have known the power of God and His intervention through out my whole life 73 years..
There are many Satan worshippers as well that can attest to events of spiritual activity beyond human abilities.
Through out all time there are records of those involved with spiritual entities and even ghosts and angels too. The evidence is over whelming, the unseen world exists.
Many have left their bodies during an operation and gone into other rooms and witnessed goings on that one in a bed could not otherwise witness.
Just because science cannot put a ghost under glass doesn't mean they don't exist.
I would hope that the forum has enough significance in your life to give us a cliff notes version on Dr. Josh relative to metaphysics and reality. Moreover, if we assume that consciousness allows us to have a soul or to live forever in some measure... then when is consciousness actually obtained. At birth, somewhere during development, at the moment of fertilization? Is your individual soul floating around somewhere in eternity and gets injected into you somewhere along the line?
Is it god more "poof theory" and we just need to accept it? Inquiring "materialists" would like to know.
This is a readable but dense and scholarly work of analytic philosophy. A Cliff's Notes version would be difficult to attempt. You really have to follow along from start to finish to understand the conclusion.
Here is the O'Darby Notes version, which is surely not completely accurate since I struggled with the book myself:
1. The first half of the book is an analysis of what it means to be a person. He discusses each of the elements of our first-person experience of consciousness - meaning our introspective experience of being a self. The elements include thoughts, feelings, values, etc.
2. For each of these elements, he then analyzes whether any "third-person" source could account for it. By third-person source, he means basically any material source - including your own brain.
3. In the second half of the book he analyzes what he calls the construction problem - how are the various elements of consciousness combined into a single sense of conscious personhood? He parses this into what he calls the construction problem, the binding problem and the identity problem. He questions whether any third-person source could accomplish the construction and unification.
4. His bottom-line theory is that no third-person (material) source can account for consciousness as we experience it. He posits "substance consciousness," meaning our individual consciousness is generated by a greater individual consciousness. He acknowledges other possibilities, such as panpsychism (which he does not regard as adequate) and idealism (which goes beyond substance consciousness).
Although he is a Christian, religion and God are nowhere in the book. This is strictly a work of analytical philosophy by someone who is clearly well-informed about the latest science. He is quite modest and non-dogmatic throughout.
I'm not even endorsing the book, although I do believe the origin of consciousness is probably along these lines. I simply mentioned it as an example of someone who is "just a little" better-informed and more scholarly in his approach than Sean Carroll and who holds diametrically opposite views.
Here is a short and fair review that I discovered after I had read the book:
[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0YRvrO_kNk[/url]
The Articles portion of Rasmussen's website, [url]https://joshualrasmussen.com/[/url], links to numerous articles, mostly published in peer-reviewed, non-religious journals.
His bottom-line theory is that no third-person (material) source can account for consciousness as we experience it.
Really? Then why did my consciousness completely disappear due to a simple drop in blood pressure?
If one single physical variable (like blood pressure) can completely wipe out consciousness, then it's hard to explain how consciousness is non-physical.
Really? Then why did my consciousness completely disappear due to a simple drop in blood pressure?
If one single physical variable (like blood pressure) can completely wipe out consciousness, then it's hard to explain how consciousness is non-physical.
You are confusing bodily awareness and objective measurability of consciousness with the ontological reality of consciouness. No one disputes that if I whack you over the head with a hammer, you will be unconscious by any objective standard and most likely as you subjectively experience this state. This does not necessarily mean that your consciounsess has "completely disappeared." In the Pam Reynolds NDE case and others like it, she was clinically dead - and yet her consciousness was intensely active.
Does TV programming "completely disappear" when the set is turned off? Does the TV generate the programming? Does the programming exist regardless of whether the TV is on or off or smashed to smithereens? An imperfect analogy, but that's basically the question. Does the brain generate consciousness or is the brain more of a transmitter and filter of consciousness?
This scholarly article at least touches on the flaw in your thinking. You are basically confusing "measurability" with "existence."
[INDENT]Empirical research is based on the ideal of objective (observer-invariant) measurements and observations of phenomena. Studying consciousness, i.e., subjective experience, or “what it is like to be…” (Nagel, 1974), is a special case, since the phenomena of conscious experience are essentially subjective (observer-variant), i.e., only directly observable from “within” by the individual having the experience. As directly investigating the internal perspective of a system from the outside is believed to be epistemologically impossible—an issue often referred to as the “Leibniz’s gap”—empirical consciousness research depends on inference from objectively observable properties and events, including behavior. From such research, the common-sense view that our brain is essential for our conscious experience, is supported by a range of empirical studies (Koch et al., 2016; Northoff and Lamme, 2020; Sarasso et al., 2021). Essentially, conventional empirical consciousness science is based on the physicalist presupposition that “there can be no change in the mental states of a person without a change in brain states” (Pinker, 2003).[/INDENT]
[url]https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2022.987051/full[/url]
The reference to "“what it is like to be…” (Nagel, 1974)" in the above quotation is to the seminal article by atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel, "What is it like to be a bat?" See [url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_It_Like_to_Be_a_Bat%3F[/url] (I cited Wikipedia!). Nagel is also the author of the influential 2012 book, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False.
Really? Then why did my consciousness completely disappear due to a simple drop in blood pressure?If one single physical variable (like blood pressure) can completely wipe out consciousness, then it's hard to explain how consciousness is non-physical.
fainting or "becoming unconscious"
is not the consciousness that is being discussed.
You are confusing bodily awareness and objective measurability of consciousness with the ontological reality of consciousness. No one disputes that if I whack you over the head with a hammer, you will be unconscious by any objective standard and most likely as you subjectively experience this state. This does not necessarily mean that your consciounsess has "completely disappeared." In the Pam Reynolds NDE case and others like it, she was clinically dead - and yet her consciousness was intensely active.
In my case, I was completely “gone” for several minutes. I was so far gone that I didn’t even experience the time in between. From my perspective, I was sitting on the chair getting blood drawn, and then instantly I was laying on the floor several minutes later. It was completely seamless. Hard to be any less conscious than that. So my consciousness completely disappeared, at least from my subjective perspective.
Quote:
Originally Posted by O'Darby
Does TV programming "completely disappear" when the set is turned off? Does the TV generate the programming? Does the programming exist regardless of whether the TV is on or off or smashed to smithereens? An imperfect analogy, but that's basically the question. Does the brain generate consciousness or is the brain more of a transmitter and filter of consciousness?
Yeah, I’ve heard that claim before: that we are antennas getting our consciousness beamed to us from a distant source...but I’ve never been able to change the channel. You might as well believe we are all living in The Matrix, or that we are all just brains in vats being fed stimuli.
fainting or "becoming unconscious"
is not the consciousness that is being discussed.
they are not the same.
I did not know there were different kinds of consciousness. Please explain.
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