Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

That consciousness cannot fundamentally grasp the materiality of matter seems to me the inverse of the problem of matter giving rise to something immaterial like consciousness. The exclusivity of each from the other is not however incidental. It lies in how we are defining consciousness and matter, as contrasting antipodes to each other. How are we defining consciousness such that it is opposite to matter? How are we defining matter such that it is opposite to consciousness? There must be a synthetic third state between the two antithetical states--a merging together wherein they intertwine and make real the being of each to the other. We experience this in the body itself. In the syzygy of non-consciousness as matter and sentience as consciousness. The twofold problem of materialism is thus resolved in the lifelong interplay of embodiment and psyche. The simultaneous and energetic co-generation of matter and consciousness from each other. Once again it seems what we call "energy" is the key where the two unite/oppose each other. Think how the energized matter that is our bodies is able to both move and initiate action while at the same time experience stimuli. It is IMO this twofold property of energy that allows it to be the medium between the interaction of matter and consciousness.

My latest gripe: We always name mountains, and rivers, and forests, and lakes, and valleys. Why do we not name one of my favorite outdoor features--meadows? Who doesn't love a good meadow? I'm starting a petition drive to get them all named and put on the map.

The physical universe is the set of all sets that is also a member of itself. The mind is the set of all sets that is not a member of itself. The former is a closed reality. There is no outside to it. The latter is an open illusion. There is an outside to it. Physicality is totally immanent. Mindedness is totally transcendent. Yet both the reality and the illusion are the same in every sense. I experience the reality by being a part of that reality--a physical body. I experience the illusion by being a part of the illusion--a thinking egoic self. To die is to cease to exist as a physical body. But to die is also to cease to be the illusion of an egoic self. By no longer being part of the dream we thus wake up from the dream.

Imagine a being called Mr. Cube. He lives in a world where everything is made up of cubes. He himself and all his friends are also cubes. One day someone tells him they want to introduce him to someone and that this being does not have 6 sides facing different directions. That it in fact only has one side that faces all directions! Mr. Cube laughs and replies, "Nonsense! Such a being cannot exist! This would violate all the laws of cube physics." Then up walks Mr. Sphere! Moral of the fable: Even the unimaginable sometimes just has to be seen to be believed.

Every now and then I try to move objects with my mind. They call it psychokinesis. But I never quite make it to the kinesis stage, winding up instead in nothing but the psycho stage.

A brief phenomenology of reading and thinking..

Reading--the magical and mysterious art of seeing what can only be perceived by being spoken. The read text NOT seen in itself as reflected on but blindly performed as imagined speech inside one's head. Like how one plays a musical instrument.

So much is automated and unconscious here--the deciphering of the observed symbols of text. The saying of the words to oneself. The remembered definitions of those words. The grammar of sentences. Their contextual meaning. The source. Even the stream of ideas and images conveyed to one's mind. As if that stream of introspectively experienced ideas and images is occurring in our minds autonomously and without our performance of it. Like thinking itself, only cued for us at every point by the sentences we are unconsciously "seeing".

Is it any wonder that the ability to think in our species arose around the time of the invention of written language? Is not thinking perhaps nothing more than our internalization of reading text to ourselves? As if meaning could subsist entirely on its own, as self-referential abstractions and truths without the action of deciphering the meaning of a text? As if meaning and propositions could be free-floating and autonomous and exist independently of spoken words?

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Being yourself is so cliche and boringly redundant. Everybody is saying it, so much so that it doesn't even mean anything. I say "simply BE", whatever that entails and wherever it leads. Existence before essence. There is no yourself to be until you just BE. BE from the inside out, not from the outside in.

It is advisable to remember, before summoning angels, their twofold purpose in this world. One is to protect you from danger. And the other is to take you home. One should think twice before rolling such cosmic dice.

People who are both good looking AND smart disturb me to no end. I don't need someone who is getting all the sex they want telling me the meaning of life.