Tag: philosophy

‘All animals are conscious’: Shifting the null hypothesis in consciousness science

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

Abstract

The marker approach is taken as best practice for answering the distribution question: Which animals are conscious? However, the methodology can be used to increase confidence in animals many presume to be unconscious, including C. elegans, leading to a trilemma: accept the worms as conscious; reject the specific markers; or reject the marker methodology for answering the distribution question. I defend the third option and argue that answering the distribution question requires a secure theory of consciousness. Accepting the hypothesis all animals are conscious will promote research leading to secure theory, which is needed to create reliable consciousness tests for animals and AIs. Rather than asking the distribution question, we should shift to the dimensions question: How are animals conscious?

link

That is the Buddhist position. All animals are sentient and sentience extends beyond earthly animals and beyond the human realm. I personally think and act as if everything is sentient or conscious. If you treat all things with respect and even talk to them or commune with them, life is richer and provides more feedback and deeper meaning in wondrous ways. Besides, it’s not possible to separate our sentience from everything else that is. Just because that’s a lot to take in doesn’t mean it’s not that way. ABN

The Astral Plane

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

The astral plane, also called the astral realm or the astral world, is a plane of existence postulated by classical, medieval, oriental, esoteric, and new age philosophies and mystery religions.[1] It is the world of the celestial spheres, crossed by the soul in its astral body on the way to being born and after death, and is generally believed to be populated by angels, spirits or other immaterial beings.[2] In the late 19th and early 20th century the term was popularised by Theosophy and neo-Rosicrucianism.

Another view holds that the astral plane or world, rather than being some kind of boundary area crossed by the soul, is the entirety of spirit existence or spirit worlds to which those who die on Earth go, and where they live out their non-physical lives. It is understood that all consciousness resides in the astral plane.[3] Some writers conflate this realm with heaven or paradise or union with God itself, and others do not. Paramahansa Yogananda wrote in Autobiography of a Yogi (1946), “The astral universe … is hundreds of times larger than the material universe … [with] many astral planets, teeming with astral beings.”

link

My sense is the term astral plane has fallen a bit out of favor. In some cases it is replaced by ethereal plane. In Buddhism, it is traditionally referred to as ultimate reality or vaguely as nirvana, or what comes after nirvana. More recently among scientists and philosophers, we are seeing the concept of a conscious universe or a thinking universe, a universe in which consciousness is a primary force, feature or dimension. However we refer to it, we need a term that evokes dimensions or planes of awareness beyond earthly or mundane awareness or ‘relative reality’, as it is put in Buddhism.

The concept of an astral plane dates back to Plato if not before. The Buddha was referring to something like that without using any term when he spoke about nirvana. The Buddha was a Scythian who argued against the strong Scythian belief in an absolute distinction between right and wrong and a single, great God (Ahura Mazda) who created the world and could be known only through doing good.

It’s a good development that scientists and philosophers today are increasingly seeing what the Buddha and many others have seen throughout the ages. I believe deep meditative states and a moral life afford us frequent opportunities to commune with or glimpse dimensions or realms beyond our normal default cultural behavioral realms.

Buddhism is a profoundly ethical teaching but it also rejects absolutes. We humans are characterized by emptiness, impermanence, and the suffering wrought by clinging to any concept, belief or idea, and yet are capable of freeing ourselves from ‘relative reality’ through ethical practice and experiential samadhi states.

The Buddha remained silent on matters related to anything like the astral plane because he knew that focusing on ethereal aims (especially in his day?) tends to reify them, which then leads to ossification, doctrine, worship without reason. I wonder if in our day, the Buddha would reason differently as many reasonable thinkers now accept that consciousness may be inexplicable by rank materialism or particle physics or biology based on those; and thus may/must be a primary aspect of all that we know of.

My current understanding of Buddhism and ancient history has been recently influenced by Christopher Beckwith’s The Scythian Empire: Central Eurasia and the Birth of the Classical Age from Persia to China, which I highly recommend to Buddhists and everyone else. ABN

‘Dear Americans, please pay attention to what’s happening in Europe. The globalist takeover is happening at an incredibly fast pace’ — Eva Vlaardingerbroek

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

Dear Americans, please pay attention to what’s happening in Europe right now. The globalist takeover is happening at an incredibly fast pace over here.

France just arrested Pavel Durov, founder & CEO of Telegram.

The UK is locking up its own citizens for years and years for the ‘crime’ of standing up against mass migration and writing posts about it online.

In the meantime Europeans keep getting randomly stabbed by immigrants on a daily basis and since the legacy media does nothing but protect the establishment and hide the truth from us, their next main goal is to ban @X

. The only platform where we can find and speak the truth.

It’s so clear what they’re doing and frankly it’s not looking good for us – especially because we don’t have a Second Amendment that could protect us against tyranny.  

So please, vote wisely in November. For your sake and ours: Vote for

@realDonaldTrump

link

Readers of this site have seen this coming for years. There are several obvious fronts that may soon climax in violence and ruthless totalitarian takeover: Regional war in the ME possibly escalating to WW3; war in Ukraine spreading into Russia and leading to wider war in Europe and WW3; assassination of Trump; another stolen election; crackdown on speech à la Europe; asymmetric war in USA incited by illegal immigrant military operatives; economic crash; digital internet crash; another plandemic, a mixture of any or all of the above. Beyond these, there are many other plans to seize totalitarian control. We are on the edge of an extremely dangerous precipice. Yes, human history has ever been thus. Except this time the powers of the totalitarians are many orders of magnitude greater than ever before.

We are right now living through the culmination of a KOBK battle at the top of the global power structure. Some readers have wondered why I have written about KOBK. The reason is KOBK describes the ‘game theory’ and ‘morality’ forced on people at the summits of political power. Those people have no choice but to seize all the power they can get. If they back away, someone else will do it. If they are not strong enough, they will be killed and they know it. KOBK is the ultimate zero sum game. There will be only one winner and their win will always be only temporary no matter how ruthless they are. The world has ever been thus but the power and means to attain power have never been as extreme as today. The odds of the world descending into an abyss of savage totalitarianism have never been greater. ABN

Tulsi Gabbard supports Trump because Kamala Harris is as bad as Hillary and represents the same elite cabal

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

I highly approve of Gabbard saying this. We live in a world ruled by elites, but we are capable of having some influence on them. When Gabbard, a Democrat, shows she is willing and able to publicly support the candidate of the other party, she is showing she understands the deep political structure of our world today, which is no different in this respect from all of human history.

My partner just reminded me that the cabal behind Kamala is never going to allow her to run. They will put in someone else just as bad or worse. That’s been the plan all along. By kicking Joe out late in the game, cabal can choose whoever they want without input from the Democrat voter base. The deep point of this post and my reason for praising Gabbard is we have to understand what is actually politically possible in this world and how to work pragmatically with that. I would support Hillary Clinton if I could somehow be sure she would do everything I thought a president should do. Buddhist practice is all about not clinging to impractical ideals, desires, thoughts, or behaviors. ABN

Who is JD Vance and why is he dangerous? And what can we do about it?

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

UPDATE: This is an excellent essay and I encourage everyone to read it. I believe this is the kind of outlook we want to get massive numbers of people to understand. We the plebs have some say in how we are ruled pretty much only through public opinion. The better many of us understand the world we really are living in, the more likely we will be able to humanize post-modern totalitarianism if we cannot defeat it entirely, which is a very daunting task. With Sundance’s permission, I have posted the entire essay on this site. ABN

_________________________________

Abandoned by his father to a troubled single mother; eventually raised by grandparents. He is then recruited from an Ivy league law school by shadow figures, a specific billionaire and a network of interests. He changes his name, writes a book about his life story, and with the support of the aforementioned – who eventually pays for the assembly of a strategic campaign influence network, becomes a Senator for 2 years before being quickly elevated into position in the White House.

Many people reading that paragraph would be familiar with the life story of Barack Hussien Obama. However, that paragraph also explains the right-side version of the exact same storyline, James David Vance. It’s a mirror.

On one side of the UniParty mirror we have an emotionally constructed political figure for the left.  On the other side of the UniParty mirror we have an emotionally constructed political figure for the right.  Each person, each emotional narrative, carrying the specific nuances to appeal to their wing of the UniParty audience.  However, both are following the same playbook.

It started with a conversation several weeks ago.  Who is JD Vance and where did he come from?

How does a person without any baseline in politics, not a council member, not a mayor, not a state rep – or state senate, governor etc., become a U.S. Senator and then quickly get into the White House?

What I was told sounded eerily familiar.

JD Vance was born James Donald Bowman in Middletown, Ohio (August 2, 1984). He then changed his name to James David Bowman. He then changed his name to James David Hamel. Eventually, in 2014, notably after Yale Law School (class of 2013) and after marrying his wife Usha, now age 30, he changed his name to write a book.

It was 2014, that’s when JD Vance was born.

Vance’s book, Hillbilly Elegy was published by Rupert Murdoch’s publishing house, Harper Collins in 2016. The book was made into a Netflix movie, [Reed Hastings] created by Imagine Entertainment and directed by Ron Howard (2020).  However, the interesting background on JD Vance goes back to Yale, and the Obamaesque tap on the shoulder that comes from a billionaire most are familiar with, Peter Thiel.

Continue reading “Who is JD Vance and why is he dangerous? And what can we do about it?” →

An evidence-based critical review of the mind-brain identity theory

~ ABN ~ 2 Comments

Abstract

In the philosophy of mind, neuroscience, and psychology, the causal relationship between phenomenal consciousness, mentation, and brain states has always been a matter of debate. On the one hand, material monism posits consciousness and mind as pure brain epiphenomena. One of its most stringent lines of reasoning relies on a ‘loss-of-function lesion premise,’ according to which, since brain lesions and neurochemical modifications lead to cognitive impairment and/or altered states of consciousness, there is no reason to doubt the mind-brain identity. On the other hand, dualism or idealism (in one form or another) regard consciousness and mind as something other than the sole product of cerebral activity pointing at the ineffable, undefinable, and seemingly unphysical nature of our subjective qualitative experiences and its related mental dimension. Here, several neuroscientific findings are reviewed that question the idea that posits phenomenal experience as an emergent property of brain activity, and argue that the premise of material monism is based on a logical correlation-causation fallacy. While these (mostly ignored) findings, if considered separately from each other, could, in principle, be recast into a physicalist paradigm, once viewed from an integral perspective, they substantiate equally well an ontology that posits mind and consciousness as a primal phenomenon.

UPDATE: Below is a comment from a reader. I am reposting it closer to the article it refers to because it greatly widens the discussion of what consciousness is and how to understand it. ABN

Please allow me to point out a clear oversight in this abstract. This abstract implicitly suggests that if one rejects material monism, they must subscribe to either dualism or idealism. This binary framing excludes other philosophical perspectives such as Radical Empiricism (R.E.) that do not fit neatly into these categories, which prioritize substance (whether mental or physical) over pure experience.

As proposed by William James, Radical Empiricism offers a distinct alternative that is neither strictly materialistic nor dualistic/idealistic. It posits that consciousness and experience are integral and interconnected aspects of reality. It’s core tenets embrace two assertions which fundamentally align with Buddhist aggregate theory: (1) the primary substance of reality is pure experience, which includes both the subjective and objective aspects of reality without privileging one over the other. (2) Experiences are fundamentally interconnected and relational.

In R.E., consciousness is not an independent fundamental substance (as in idealism) nor merely an epiphenomenon of the brain (as in material monism). Instead, consciousness is a function of the elements of pure experience, which are continuous and interwoven.

Other non-dualistic and non-materialistic perspectives, such as process philosophy and phenomenology, also challenge this simplistic binary framing.

However, R.E. is the most explicit in asserting elements of pure experience as more ontologically fundamental than either the mental or physical worlds of experience, which are seen to be mere abstractions from pure experience.

In Radical Empiricism, consciousness is not the fundamental substance of reality but a manifestation of the dynamic interplay of experiences. This view avoids the pitfalls of both dualism and material monism by grounding consciousness in the relational fabric of pure experience.

What I wish to emphasize in this commentary is that consciousness, while central to understanding human experience, is not an isolated phenomenon but intricately linked with the flow of experiences.

The abstract’s presupposition that rejecting material monism necessitates adopting dualism or idealism is a form of a false dilemma, which is a logical fallacy. By not considering other viable philosophical approaches, it limits the scope of the discussion and potentially misleads readers about the diversity of thought in the philosophy of mind.

Thus, an integral perspective stemming from a more holistic approach (such as the chain of interdependent originations in Buddhist aggregate theory) aligns well with Radical Empiricism by considering the interconnectedness and relational nature of experiences. This is the justification for explicitly asserting such discussions, as this abstract invokes, must include R.E. as a valid and valuable approach to understanding consciousness.

Radical Empiricism’s emphasis on direct experience and empirical grounding aligns with the empirical findings in neuroscience that challenge simplistic materialist explanations. Highlighting this alignment is important in order to show how and in what manner R.E. can bridge empirical data and philosophical insights.

In conclusion: The abstract’s oversight in presenting a false dichotomy between material monism and dualism/idealism is a significant limitation. Radical Empiricism provides a nuanced and comprehensive alternative that views consciousness as a function of the elements of pure experience, rather than as a separate fundamental entity. A more inclusive and accurate discussion would acknowledge this and other philosophical perspectives, enriching the debate and providing a more robust framework for understanding the nature of consciousness.

~John Range

Panpsychism, pansignaling, and Buddhism

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

Panpsychism means “all mind” or mind in all things, with an emphasis on cognition being a fundamental aspect or part of nature.

Pansignaling means “all signaling” or signaling in all things, with an emphasis on signaling being a fundamental aspect or part of nature.

I like the term pansignaling because it gets us to look at the signals, without which there is nothing.

Another word that is close to these two is panexperientialism, which connotes that “the fundamental elements of the universe are ‘occasions of experience’ which can together create something as complex as a human being.”

These ideas or similar can be found in the Huayan and Tiantai schools of Buddhism.

Highly recommend giving these ideas some thought and reading the links provided above.

I  tend to favor thinking of this stuff from the signaling point of view. A signal can be found, defined, analyzed, and so on. A signal is a fairly objective thing. When we consider signals and consciousness, it is very natural to consider that signals are parts of networks and that networks can be parts of bigger networks.

As I understand it, panexperientialism holds the view that atoms have experience, and that molecules have experience as do the atoms that make them up… and so on till we get to cells, organs, brains, human consciousness. Human consciousness, which is fundamentally experiential, is what humans mainly think of as experience. At all levels, the “parts” of human consciousness also are conscious or cognizant and thus capable of experience. Thus, there is no mind-body problem. Cognition or awareness is part of nature from the very bottom up. For example, a single bacterium can know to move toward something or away from it.

Life is “anti-entropic signaling networks” that organize, self-organize, combine, cooperate, compete, eat, and change constantly. From this, we can see where impermanence and delusion as described in Buddhism come from.

When matter breaks down into waves and laws, it becomes information, but similar processes are still at work. In Buddhist terms we find again dependent origination, no intrinsic self separate from other information, impermanence, rational structure, karma (the work of this producing that), the primary consciousness found in deep samadhi.

first posted FEBRUARY 25, 2017

A picture of early Buddhism based on what we can be reasonably sure of today

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

As ascetics,31 the Śramaṇas (Buddhists) owned little more than a simple robe and a few other necessities. Thus did Gautama Śākamuni, ‘sage of the Scythians’, wander, meditating and searching for answers, before his “awakening”. He may well have met others doing the same thing, and studied with some of them, but we have no remotely credible evidence that he knew anything about Jains, Ājīvikas, or other non-Brahmanist sects. The traditional view, which actually accepts this problematic notion as dogma, has not been seriously questioned for a long time. Yet these sects are unattested in any dated or datable Pre-Normative Buddhist sources. It is because their teachings needed to be refuted and rejected by much later Buddhists that they eventually appeared in the written Buddhist tradition, but in works that are patently late doctrinally, full of magic and other forms of fantasy, and unreliable in every other way. Chronological incongruities reveal that the putatively “early” forms of what eventually became identifiably Jain, Ājīvika, and so on, did not yet exist as such anywhere near the time of the Buddha, but took on recognizable forms only much later due to heavy influence from Normative Buddhism, therefore no earlier than the Saka-Kushan period.

~Beckwith, Christopher I.. Greek Buddha: Pyrrho’s Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia (pp. 70-71). Princeton University Press

Greek Buddha: Pyrrho’s Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

Pyrrho of Elis went with Alexander the Great to Central Asia and India during the Greek invasion and conquest of the Persian Empire in 334–324 BC. There he met with early Buddhist masters. Greek Buddha shows how their Early Buddhism shaped the philosophy of Pyrrho, the famous founder of Pyrrhonian scepticism in ancient Greece.

Christopher I. Beckwith traces the origins of a major tradition in Western philosophy to Gandhara, a country in Central Asia and northwestern India. He systematically examines the teachings and practices of Pyrrho and of Early Buddhism, including those preserved in testimonies by and about Pyrrho, in the report on Indian philosophy two decades later by the Seleucid ambassador Megasthenes, in the first-person edicts by the Indian king Devanampriya Priyadarsi referring to a popular variety of the Dharma in the early third century BC, and in Taoist echoes of Gautama’s Dharma in Warring States China. Beckwith demonstrates how the teachings of Pyrrho agree closely with those of the Buddha Sakyamuni, “the Scythian Sage.” In the process, he identifies eight distinct philosophical schools in ancient northwestern India and Central Asia, including Early Zoroastrianism, Early Brahmanism, and several forms of Early Buddhism. He then shows the influence that Pyrrho’s brand of scepticism had on the evolution of Western thought, first in Antiquity, and later, during the Enlightenment, on the great philosopher and self-proclaimed Pyrrhonian, David Hume.

Greek Buddha demonstrates that through Pyrrho, Early Buddhist thought had a major impact on Western philosophy.

link

Recommended reading for The Ethical Skeptic, and others of course. I am just finishing Beckwith’s Empires of the Silk Road, which will transform your understanding of world history if you are not already familiar with his work. Looking forward to reading Greek Buddha next. ABN

AI synopsis of High Plains Drifter with Clint Eastwood

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

High Plains Drifter is a 1973 American Western film directed by and starring Clint Eastwood. The movie follows a mysterious gunfighter, known only as “The Stranger” (Clint Eastwood), who rides into the small town of Lago, a mining community in the American West. The townspeople are initially wary of the Stranger, but after he guns down three outlaws who try to kill him, they begin to see him as a hero and hire him to defend them against a group of ruthless outlaws who are planning to attack the town.

As the Stranger becomes embroiled in the town’s affairs, he begins to uncover a web of corruption and deceit that threatens the very existence of the community. With his unique skills and mysterious past, the Stranger must use his wits and his guns to protect the town and its people from the outlaws and the corrupt officials who are working against them.

Throughout the film, the Stranger’s true identity and motivations remain unclear, adding to the sense of mystery and intrigue. The movie’s climax features a dramatic showdown between the Stranger and the outlaws, and the film’s ending is open to interpretation, leaving audiences to ponder the Stranger’s true nature and the fate of the town.

High Plains Drifter is a critically acclaimed film that explores themes of justice, morality, and the American West, and features Eastwood’s characteristic blend of action, suspense, and dry humor.

A comment on X from TES I saw this morning:

Since I often post links to TES’s work, I feel mildly compelled to post an answer to the above. From it and some of his other writings, I diagnosis a commonplace Western (mis)understanding of religion which entails seeing all of them as similar in important ways to the Abrahamics. There are literally thousands of competent Buddhist teachers who could disabuse TES of his wrong views if he would but ask. Since Buddhism is both complex and fundamentally a mind-to-mind and experiential body of knowledge, deeper understanding will take some time but it is there for the taking if he wants it. TES has been first-rate in his analyses of covid and frequently claims to have expert skills based on both his understanding of how to interpret real-world data and his experience in the real-world doing that. A good Buddhist teacher could be described in just that way. I have a great deal of respect for TES and will continue to post links to his work on covid and global warming and maybe some other stuff. ABN

UPDATE: I should add that TES has a way out since the Buddha himself asked that his teachings never be written down to prevent them from becoming ‘religious scriptures’ people worshipped without understanding. That said, in other places TES has displayed deep ignorance of Buddhism and lumped it together with other traditions in ways that are seriously misleading. Incidentally, for many years Buddhism was considered a philosophy in the West rather than a religion. American tax laws settled that argument. In truth, Buddhism is both a religion and a philosophy. It is the philosophical side of Buddhism that is most often misunderstood, not unlike how skepticism is often misunderstood. Moreover, ironically, it is highly likely skepticism has been influenced by Buddhism and vice versa. ABN

Aleksandr Dugin on liberalism in the West

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

This interview is interesting and I appreciate Dugin’s perspective, but it also strikes me as simply intellectual decoration on the surface of a clandestine war which has been raging inside the West over the course of several generations. Everything is being destroyed not for transhumanism, which is real and yet also an excuse, but for totalitarian control of, first, the West and eventually Russia and the rest of the world. Control of the West has been seized through millions of acts of individual violence designed to shape society by disabling (usually not killing) promising young people, particularly young males. The West did not provoke the Ukraine War for transhumanism but as a step toward weakening Russia to eventually destroy and control whatever is left of it. ABN