[Anagogy]

Originally Posted by Melchior

Well, I, for the most part, agree with you here. What I'm saying is that even this "well being" isn't love or joy though. However, that 'harmony', that aspect of 'living' that leads to 'growth', perpetuation and evolution of a pattern, I think is something more universal. As for how I know, I don't know if it counts, but I've done thought experiments where I was essentially an 'inert' particle 'experiencing' the world. (yeah, that's a lot of little ' s around the words, but they help the fact that I'm not using the 'standard' definitions )

I see. You define well being differently than I do. I see joy, love, [insert positive emotion here], yada yada, as all the same thing. From my perspective, there are actually only two emotions. One feels good, the other feels bad, with a continuum of varying intensity between the two. We give them different names based on the circumstances of their arising (and based on their intensity level), but there is a positive experience and a negative experience, and I believe they are universal to all consciousness.

Originally Posted by Melchior

And again, I agree with you for the most part, up until the end. Why an exception at the very end? why hold onto something that you've essentially just rejected as true?

I think I'm not explaining myself clearly enough. I see no contradiction.

All that exists is experience (which is consciousness). Everything already exists in pure potentiality from my perspective. This would be the highest expansion of consciousness. The level our focus exists at is but a portion of the whole, thus, variations appear at our level. The absolute sees "wholes", but relative beings (such as ourselves) see portions. Again these "wholes" and "portions" are merely experience. The absolute connects all the relative realities. The intangible is the container for the tangible -- the unquantifiable contains the quantifiable.

Creation only exists at the relative level of reality, because to create, there must be change. If everything already exists, there can be no creation. It needs some sort of backdrop, you see. There has to be some sort of contrast to differentiate anything from anything. So relativity also involves duality, necessarily, just as result of not taking in the whole picture at once.

Because we are portions of the whole, we can choose what we allow into those portions (or conscious experience). This would be equivalent to reality creation. Conscious attention causes cognitive objects to be attracted into our relative experience or existence, from the continuum of infinite potentiality. This is "particle collapse", kind of.

Originally Posted by Melchior

Perhaps I am, then. Where do you draw the line between consciousness and unconsciousness? You've already told me that everything, even "inert" matter is, so to speak, conscious (i.e. you've already reduced consciousness yourself, even if you don't believe that to be the case).

How is it reduced? My point was simply to illustrate the idea that consciousness is not simply an artifact of neurology. It's either everywhere, or it's nowhere, in other words.

From my perspective, consciousness can exist without matter, but matter cannot exist without consciousness, because it is an expression of consciousness.

Originally Posted by Melchior

If those two worlds behave identically even though one doesn't have 'consciousness' in the sense that qualia doesn't exist, then I would propose that qualia doesn't necessarily exist for "us" either. Perhaps qualia is another one of those 'evolutionary abstractions' that describes a rather complex stimulus/response mechanism. Why would things like that and consciousness as we know it evolve? It would seem that, logically, there are actually evolutionary benefits for it to happen that way, even if you can't come up with a good reason for why exactly.

Can you tell me what that evolutionary benefit is? Why have any subjectivity at all? The thought experiment is actually a variation of the famous thought experiment by David Chalmers where he claimed that since it is logically conceivable to have an identical physical system, but without qualia, that qualia and sentience cannot be explained by physical properties alone.

But aside from hypothetical thought experiments, I find people who have spontaneous psychic experiences where they were given information that was clearly beyond the reach of their physical apparatus far more compelling evidence of the non-locality of consciousness. I've seen WAY too many examples of that phenomenon to doubt it's reality, even if many scientists stubbornly continue to do so.

Originally Posted by Melchior

As a note though, I would also say that in the case of your 'zombie', if everything objectively were lined up right, then theoretically, that 'zombie' would be conscious just as we are. If it isn't, then it's a different world altogether and can't be used to justify this one. In a sense, the question of comparison is somewhat unanswerable, if the two are actually the same, then there's nothing to compare, if they are different, then you can't compare them either. Granted... it does make it a lot easier to 'live' under the assumption that you are 'alive'.

Fair enough. And nice comic btw.