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Re: CHAT: mass-hallucination?

From:Joe <joe@...>
Date:Saturday, June 18, 2005, 8:26
Ray Brown wrote:

> On Friday, June 17, 2005, at 05:07 , Joe wrote: > >> Christopher Wright wrote: >> >>> On Thu, 16 Jun 2005 19:00:43 +0100, Joe <joe@...> wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>>> I'd suggest two or three axioms for the universe that we can be >>>> sure of: >>>> >>>> 1)A consciousness (namely, me) exists. >>>> 2)There is some ability to process data (although 'process' implies >>>> time, which, again, rather lacks evidence), which leads to the way I >>>> percieve the world. >>>> >>>> >>> >>> Actually, I'd refine that to: >>> 1) A consciousness (namely, me) exists. >> > > If one is questioning absolutely everything, then just how can you be > certain that a consciousness actually exists, still less that that > consciousness is you?
Well, that really depends on how you define 'consciousness', here, but the way I see it, since I'm percieving all of this, I must exist, or it wouldn't be percieved.
> >>> 2) This consciousness is bound to a state or states that allow >>> knowledge >>> and thought. (This does not imply any veracity to that knowledge.) >>> >> >> Hmm. Maybe. I'd suggest that thought is not neccesary. Something >> could be feeding us something that we interpret as thought, for >> example. > > > Quite so - something maybe feeding us something we interpret as > consciousness. >
But if there is a 'me', as far as I see it, there is a consciousness.
>> Knowledge, however, of an instantaneous state, is neccesary. > > > Umm - so not 'cogito ergo sum', but rather 'scio ergo sum' ;)
Something like that. 'Sentio ergo sum', perhaps (Latin grammar not totally up to scratch)?
> > But why? If it is possible that something could be feeding us something > that we interpret as thought, then is it not equally possible that > something could be feeding us something that we interpret as knowledge of > an instantaneous state? >
Totally. But knowledge is not neccesarily true. I'd say that something must have the capacity to 'know' the data that's being fed to it, just as a human (in the conventional world) 'knows' what its eyes are feeding to it.
> At some stage we just have to make an assumption or two - an act of > belief. > In Descartes' case his basic assumption was that he was thinking. In > both > Joe & Christopher's case that they have an individual consciousness.
I don't know about 'individual'. I've seen it suggested that it it's just one part of a greater consciousness.

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Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>