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I don't know.You didn't answer my question.
When one's brain dies, does the consciousness in which was in that brain continue?
I don't know.
After body death questions I'm unable to answer until that happens. The questions I asked have been explored by following Consciousnesses with answers that point towards our Consciousness as being the Universe being aware of itSelf. Or another way of answering is that Consciousness is God's way of being aware of It's Self. Out of that comes a knowing of Oneness. And that's an aspect of this Creation that has been mostly lost in the West. That's quite a different thing than a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.That is a great answer.
Maybe find out the answer to that question. If some consciousness exists outside human minds, then the other questions may be explored, like the one's you have asked. But until then, such questions would be like pondering any other invented question, such as, "why is there always a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow?"
The same may possibly be said about consciousness itself. Maybe it is better stated that space and time are mainly irrelevant to mystical experiences.Mystical experiences, by their very nature are outside of space and time.
No, it is an argument against the hubris of believing that ignorance can be anything other than a central part of the existential state of being human.
A whole half of the brain of humans and mammals too is devoted to processing the ignorance and chaos that is a central part of the environment.
That is the most important tenet of Christianity. The body dies but the 'soul' lives on. Part of the soul is the consciousness of the person who lived.You didn't answer my question.
When one's brain dies, does the consciousness in which was in that brain continue?
Where then does Jesus come in in your view?I would not say that God "exists" at all, since I would not view God as an entity, spiritual or otherwise, that possesses existence as one of its properties. Are you familiar with theistic concepts like divine simplicity? (I.e., the notion that God is without parts.)
One of the trickiest debates within Christian theism is between the Orthodox view of God as being "Beyond Being," and the Catholic conception of God as "Being Itself." This debate revolves around a disagreement concerning what we mean by the word being, and how fundamental it might be. The Orthodox follow Plotinus in believing that existence requires composition, and therefore that God, being in no way composed of parts, must in fact be beyond existence. For this reason, you'll find the Greek Fathers saying radical stuff like, "God does not exist," since the idea is that God could not exist in any way analogous to the way in which creatures exist.
In the Western tradition, Thomas Aquinas reconsiders what is meant by the term "existence," takes it in an Aristotelian rather than Platonic direction, and claims that God is neither beyond existence, nor something that exists--God is correctly identified with existence itself, with the "power" that makes things real and actual instead of merely abstract and potential. To exist, in a sense, is sharing in God's nature, but God is not another instance of existence.
So traditionally, the question is not about whether or not God "exists," but about what existence actually is at all.
It's a mystery, I know. While the physical body is tied to time and space, that’s not the case for Consciousness. Consciousness can move about in time and space as well as outside of time and space. To understand that aspect of Consciousness is a beginning of understanding the Mystics.
Just a side note: I'm treating Consciousness as a verb in this discussion.
Here's another question, is a person's Consciousness separate and apart from a Cosmic wide Consciousness?
Or from another perspective in asking the same question, is a person's Consciousness separate and apart from the Consciousness of God?
After body death questions I'm unable to answer until that happens. The questions I asked have been explored by following Consciousnesses with answers that point towards our Consciousness as being the Universe being aware of itSelf. Or another way of answering is that Consciousness is God's way of being aware of It's Self. Out of that comes a knowing of Oneness. And that's an aspect of this Creation that has been mostly lost in the West. That's quite a different thing than a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.
To assume the categories illusory, is a methodologic assumption though. The set-up to reduce things to broader and broader rules or categories via hypothesis, will ultimately suggest a monistic One. This is why Neoplatonism or the Eleatics did so, too. It doesn't mean they are ultimately so reducible, and our hypothesis is a deduction from a method that implies thus. We believe the 'lower' categories less real then the 'higher' ones. On what grounds? Is atomic forces and gravity more real than the falling rock? Is force not itself an illusory concept, merely the name we apply to an attribute describing observed change of position or state? This is confusing the abstractions drawn from the empiric data as more fundamental, so how is this not a sort of Scientific Idealism?
Monism hasn't been established, and if true, is both counter-intuitive and negates our ability to conclude that everything is monistic. For we are doing so by observing change, in position or state, and then describing this in terms of force or time. Zeno's Paradoxes enter here, for in like manner we are assuming by observing change, in the tortoise or arrow, that such change is false. This is inductive reasoning masquerading as deductive. Not that there is inherently something wrong with monism as concept, I don't think the argument for it stronger than not. It does negate the possibility of veridicality of our Reason though, so essentially robs itself of its own laurels.
Freudian slip, I assume.
Our minds create these categories by differentiation. If some category, the Self say, has to exist, then a mind makes them. So if something were to exist prior to our knowledge of it, to human ability to differentiate it from the rest, is not a mind required? Nay, a Mind? Are we recognising an actual distinction or creating it ourselves? So if I as a being exist in an intersubjective sense, an external order had to have been at play. It is either an solipsism and illusion, or Intersubjectivity and external creation of category. As I can only be aware of my own subjective qualia, any attempt at intersubjectivity or objectivity requires metaphysical input, and we only have evidence of things existing when placed in relation to an Ordering mind. To assume something can exist outside of such a relation, unperceived, is an utter a priori position counter to all data we have, of necessity. So in a theist view, God's perception creates them - almost a Berkeleyan Idealism perhaps, one could say.
Depends what you see as reality. I meant pre-existent as before we humans differentiated it as such. So do we have fundamental differentiation and thus things that exist, or do we have no such fundamental differentiation but our facile schemes placed thereon, and thus no thing really exists per se? The latter unfortunately includes ourselves as well, so as explained above, I would opt for the former as more coherent, though the latter remains possible but unsupportable without cutting off the branch we sit upon.
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I agree they fundamentally exist, but I disagree that this is plausible outside a categorisation by a mind. We have no evidence something can exist not in relation to a mind, as everything we know to exist has of necessity undergone this. This is a complete shot in the dark, in the face of all evidence, of which this intelligibility is a fundamental attribute. You are extrapolating phenomena that has been perceived to the hypothetical unperceived, but we know that perception or observation impacts the nature of what is observed. Schrodinger's Cat is alive and dead till we take a look; light a wave and a particle; etc. Why are we assuming the fundamental rule that the observer impacts the observation, would not be radically other? How can we determine it would be similar without our application of our perception to it, beyond an unsupportable conjecture?The koan only exists because it was conceived; and any categorisation or abstraction assumed on grounds thereof, as well.
More Scholasticism and pseudo-Berkeleyan Idealism than Deism. You asked about the nature of the concept of 'exist', not specific proselytism. God exists because inherently things need to be differentiated to do so, implying a Mind, which implies a Person. From there it is just a hop, skip and a jump to the Christian God as purposeful entity, in my opinion.
That is a great answer.
It seems as though that question would need to be resolved prior to moving on to yours. Maybe find out the answer to that question first? If some consciousness exists outside human minds, then the other questions may be explored, like the one's you have asked. But until then, such questions would be like pondering any other invented question, such as, "why is there always a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow?"
Where then does Jesus come in in your view?
I also think the view that the rock is more real than the particles that make up the rock is an epistemological dead end. The entirety of scientific and technological progress is primarily driven by figuring out what stuff is "actually" made out of.
There's a whole lot more than Faith going on. There's also the Divine Mystery to explore.There's nothing there to understand, only to religiously believe on faith.
Take your argument up with the Mystics.There is zero evidence for this. In fact, all the actual evidence points to the opposite.
How is consciousness not a verb?It's just one more way that you are wrong.
I understand. When ones structure is doctrine, ritual, dogma and organization it becomes a lot harder to express the Divine Mystery.To me, it sounds like the same thing.
Except that pots of gold at the end of rainbows actually sounds somewhat comprehensive, while your "explanation" reads like word salad.
I don't mean to be rude. It genuinely sounds like word salad. I can't make heads or tails of it. It's abstract mumbo jumbo with no grounding in reality at all.
At least I know what a rainbow and a pot of gold is....
What evidence?All the evidence suggests that consciousness = a functioning brain. Nothing more or less.
I don't think it's so much as "what" as much as it is "doing".And what is a "cosmic wide consciousness"?
There's only One Divine source.Which/what god?
Trees have consciousness as do all plants.The evidence suggests that consiousness is produced by a living functioning physical brain.
Imagine two people sitting on a hill top. They both witness lightning strike a far-off tree. The first person says, "That lightning is real for me. The experience of lightning is more real than anything else I could see. I am content." The other person says, "I want to know what that lightning actually is. What is is made of?"
The first person is at an epistemological dead-end. He can known nothing more about lightning.
The second person will go on to discover electricity, electro-magnetism, light-bulbs, radios, computers, the internet, Wifi, satellite GPS, and much more. All because they sought to better understand lightning in a more fundamental sense rather than seeing it simply as it is in a subjective way.
So I suppose neither view is "correct" per se, but one view has lead to greater understanding and technological progress whereas the other has not.
Both have their place in the Human experience. The first experiences a Wowness, a sense of wonder, maybe even a unity of Oneness. That's the mystical aspect of being a Human Being. The second experiences curiosity which turns into the art of harnessing the electricity.Imagine two people sitting on a hill top. They both witness lightning strike a far-off tree. The first person says, "That lightning is real for me. The experience of lightning is more real than anything else I could see. I am content." The other person says, "I want to know what that lightning actually is. What is is made of?"
The first person is at an epistemological dead-end. He can known nothing more about lightning.
The second person will go on to discover electricity, electro-magnetism, light-bulbs, radios, computers, the internet, Wifi, satellite GPS, and much more. All because they sought to better understand lightning in a more fundamental sense rather than seeing it simply as it is in a subjective way.
So I suppose neither view is "correct" per se, but one view has lead to greater understanding and technological progress whereas the other has not.
Rather than asking whether or not God exists, I instead want to focus on the epistemological criteria that we use to determine whether things in general exist and how that applies to God when someone says God "exists".
My personal view is that the criteria should be consistent. If A exists, then we should be able to use the same criteria to determine whether B exists. If B fails the criteria, then B does not exist.
I also think that the criteria should avoid the "Everything Exists" scenario. The criteria should avoid absurd conclusions such as the idea that mermaids, trolls, and snorglezonkers exist.
There are various ways we can define how something "exists".
Category #1: The most common definition would be a "physical existence" in the sense that it is composed of atoms, molecules, and/or energy. It can be seen, touched, tasted, felt, or heard unambiguously by any observer. This includes things like dogs, houses, mailmen, bacteria, the Sun, etc. This is scientific materialism.
Category #2: There is another class of things which are mental objects of the human imagination such as mermaids, trolls, your billionaire self, etc. Everyone can immediately recognize a drawing of a mermaid and identify it as such. These things "exist" in some sense of the word since they are things which we imagine. However, in general, we say that these things do not exist even though they have some sort of subjective existence within the human mind. We do this because otherwise we end up with an "Everything Exists" scenario. If mental objects of the human imagination are included in the category of "existing things", then the whole concept of existence goes out the window.
Category #3: Ideas or abstractions which manifest themselves in actions. This includes things like love, justice, hate, peace. Many people might say that these things "exist" while recognizing that their "existence" is fundamentally different than "physical existence". Love and justice may or may not exist but regardless of where your beliefs stand on this, I think we are all in agreement that love and justice are not the same as dogs and houses. I would argue that these abstractions do not exist in an essential way but are rather contingent upon interactions between things that physically exist. These abstractions manifest themselves in verbs and actions. For example, suppose you were shown three photos: 1) a picture of an empty room; 2) a picture of a room with two people standing in it and 3) a picture of a room with two smiling people holding hands and/or hugging. You are then asked to identify the room with love in it. Everyone picks Room #3 because it shows physical things (i.e. humans) interacting in a way which we have ascribed the word "love" to.
If someone can think of a fourth class of things, please let me know and I will add it here.
My question is: Which category does God belong to?
People say God "exists" but what criteria are they using to define this?
Most theists say that God is not physical, so he is not Category 1.
Most theists say that God is not purely imaginary, so he is not Category 2.
Most theists would probably say that God is not only an idea or abstraction manifested in actions, so he is not Category 3. (Although perhaps some deists or philosophers would be comfortable putting God in Category 3?....)
So then, how exactly does God exist? What category of existence does he fall into?
Many theists argue that God exists because they feel that he does. This is often veiled in Christian-ese metaphorical language such as, "God came into my heart" or some other such thing. This may be compelling subjective evidence, however it fails the criteria because it leads to an "Everything Exists" scenario. If "feelings" are the primary criteria, then if someone "feels" like Cthulu exists, then their claim has the exact same legitimacy as yours. It is well-documented that the mind can lead to illusory subjective feelings.
Some posters might say, "He belongs in none of the categories because he is his own category." This also fails the "Everything Exists" criteria because someone could use the exact same argument to claim that anything exists including mermaids or Cthulu.
Some posters might say something along the lines of, "The Bible says so". They may communicate this via posting various verses or other such things. This unfortunately does not answer the question unless the Bible happens to state clearly that God belongs in one of the three categories above.
Some posters might say, "There is a fourth category of things which exist spiritually." If so, I would like to hear more about how this class of things "exists" in some sense and what other entities exist in this other category. And, more importantly, how we can distinguish this class of existence from Category #2. Is there any method for sorting things which spiritually exist out from the things which exist only as mental constructs of the imagination?
Looking forward to the responses.
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