On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 4:02 PM, Brent Meeker <meeke...@dslextreme.com> wrote: > On 5/1/2010 12:25 PM, Rex Allen wrote: > > On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 3:14 PM, Brent Meeker <meeke...@dslextreme.com> > wrote: > > This argument is not > definitive mainly because we don't have a definitive theory of > consciousness, but to the extent we assume a physical basis for > consciousness it seems pretty good. > > Ha! As long as you assume there is no problem of consciousness, then > there's no problem! That is pretty good. > > > So you do have a theory of consciousness in which we can have timeless > thoughts?
I'll go with Kant. Time is an aspect of consciousness, not something that exists independently of conscious experience. So one possibility is that the universe exists and causes our conscious experience...that our conscious experience is an aspect of the physical world. But what stops us from reversing that and saying that our consciousnesses exist and the physical world is just an aspect of that conscious experience? How do you justify accepting the former while rejecting the latter? I accept the latter and reject the former because I don't see what introducing the "physical world" as something prior to and independent of consciousness buys us in our attempts to explain our orderly conscious experiences. If it is intended to explain the order and consistency of our experiences, then what explains the physical world's order and consistency? It seems to me that we've just changed the question, not answered it. And in the process introduced the additional question of how consciousness arises from matter. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
