How did matter become aware of itself?

a reply to: neoholographic

Think about how this sounds. You're saying because atoms in your body was in stars, it's evidence of matter becoming aware of itself. When did this matter become aware of itself? Was it aware when it became a brain? What evolutionary steps evolved this awareness and made matter aware of itself? Was matter aware of itself when it was subatomic particles? When and how did this awareness come to be?

These atoms traveled from near and far, and from every direction. They once were close friends, then blown apart, only to meet new friends and combine to become bigger friends, in an unfathomable expanse of eternity, only to meet the fabric of the realm they traverse, causing themselves to coalesce a third or more time. That wasn't the end either, we're experiencing the death and birth of stars actively in the universe. More atoms are being flung around, and eventually will coalesce somewhere, or fade off in to near non-existence. At this points atoms are not aware or conscious, they are attracted by physical forces. Awareness came much later.

a reply to: neoholographic

The idea that awareness just is : resonates here.

In subsequent posts, the question of whether ideas make sense, or not, is discussed.

Where does this need for the universe, experience, awareness, consciousness : having to make sense come from ?

Why is an idea discounted, if it " doesn't make sense " ?

Where does this 'sense' come from, and what exactly is it ?

a reply to: neoholographic

I'm more a friend of decoherence but in general I agree.
And liked this part:

I think consciousess is how fast can an organism process information about it's environment and how much information it can process about it's environment.

Except that I'd have said consciousness is the system processing information. I'd assume it goes way beyond organics.

a reply to: Peeple

Actually you have no idea what your talking about.

Check out en.wikipedia.org...

Life, and especially conscious life, dissipates energy faster.

Increasing the surrounding entropy/disorder more quickly.

Life is simply natures was of maximizing the second law of thermodynamics.

Fight me.

But before you fight me. Do some research. It will shock you.

If you consider matter as "particle physics" and "geometric physics"; that there is an unnoticed geometry that arranges the protons, electrons, etc..

Then you just have to introduce the idea that the geometry can be fluid.

Consciousness = fluid geometry.

Add time to matter.

a reply to: Zitterbewegung

lol I was talking about information, you come at me with energy and matter.
I don't fight people who can't read

originally posted by: TzarChasm
a reply to: neoholographic

I feel like there's more to this than just projecting our sentience on the universe. You maybe want to tell us what it's thinking, don't you. Enlighten us what the universe is doing with all this consciousness and why it matters to our tiny little slice of the galaxy.

Your first sentence is the problem with materialism. It's egocentric and small minded. You said "projecting OUR sentience on the universe." It's like, we're the pinnacle of intelligence and nothing in the universe can be more intelligent than us so sentience must emerge from us in some magical way.

We're not even a type 1 civilization and we have the hubris to think that sentience is limited to our 3rd rock from the sun.

It's like when we look at superposition, We say the wave function collapses and has to conform to our observation of one of it's probable states. Maybe it's just we can only observe one of it's state because of our limited view of reality. This is why I mentioned recent Wigner's Friend experiments.

I think it makes way more sense to say the wavefunction represents a multi-dimensional reality of awareness and we're just one of it's probable states, a microcosm of this non physical being rather than sentience must emerge from us and we must project it on the universe. It's egocentric and small minded.

So all quantum fields, black holes, vacuums, space and time is nothingness and sentience only emerged from us after magic mushrooms and lighting strikes?? THE HUBRIS OF TYPE 0 HUMANS!!

Our awareness is a microcosm of universal awareness in one of it's probable states. You said:

You maybe want to tell us what it's thinking, don't you.

I wouldn't think to say what a non physical being that operates in multi-dimensions is thinking. Again, the egocentric, small minded nature of materialism makes no sense.

a reply to: neoholographic


For this thread to go further you need to define a couple of things:

1. What is matter
2. What is self awareness

If you cannot define those thing this thread will go nowhere.

Wait wait, I see many people here wanting to make up definitions to what they think words are, and/or mean.

Maybe we should get an accepted glossary? If anyone would like to, feel free to fill in the definitions for the following words;

Conscious -

Aware -

Matter -

Evidence -

Materialism -

a reply to: Zitterbewegung

lol you noticed it the same time as me

a reply to: Peeple

You do realize information is related to energy and matter don't you?

en.wikipedia.org...

aip.scitation.org...

a reply to: neoholographic

I wouldn't think to say what a non physical being that operates in multi-dimensions is thinking. Again, the egocentric, small minded nature of materialism makes no sense.

So you're absolutely sure the fabric of the universe is self aware and cognizant of everything from astrophysics to individual biomes and subatomic quanta, but you have no idea what's going on in its brain or how to communicate with it. Is that the correct understanding of what you shared here so far? That's interesting because if you don't know what it's thinking, how do you know the Universe™ is actually cognizant?

a reply to: neoholographic

Great post. And beyond humans, we look to plants

"Backster has conducted hundreds of experiments demonstrating not only that plants respond to our emotions and intents, but so do severed leaves, eggs (fertilized or not), yogurt, and human cell samples. He’s found, for example, that white cells taken from a person’s mouth and placed in a test tube still respond electrochemically to the donor’s emotional states, even when the donor is out of the room, out of the building, or out of the state."

Re Wigner's Friend: Aligns to my understanding of the Biocentric philosophy, which I'm not totally subscribed to, at least at the moment. Maybe I'm not following it in its entirety?!

Thanks

a reply to: Zitterbewegung

'Related' sure. Show me something in this universe that isn't 'related' to everything else...

Increasingly, the physicists and the information theorists are one and the same. The bit is a fundamental particle of a different sort: not just tiny but abstract—a binary digit, a flip-flop, a yes-or-no. It is insubstantial, yet as scientists finally come to understand information, they wonder whether it may be primary: more fundamental than matter itself. They suggest that the bit is the irreducible kernel and that information forms the very core of existence. Bridging the physics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, John Archibald Wheeler, the last surviving collaborator of both Einstein and Bohr, put this manifesto in oracular monosyllables: “It from Bit.” Information gives rise to “every it—every particle, every field of force, even the spacetime continuum itself.” This is another way of fathoming the paradox of the observer: that the outcome of an experiment is affected, or even determined, when it is observed. Not only is the observer observing, she is asking questions and making statements that must ultimately be expressed in discrete bits. “What we call reality,” Wheeler wrote coyly, “arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions.” He added: “All things physical are information-theoretic in origin, and this is a participatory universe.” The whole universe is thus seen as a computer—a cosmic information-processing machine.

source

a reply to: Peeple

I'm not sure what you are asking. "show me something in this universe that isn't related to everything else?

a reply to: Zitterbewegung

I'm not asking anything. I was pointing out it's a dumb statement because everything is related to everything

originally posted by: FreeOrigin
a reply to: neoholographic

Great post. And beyond humans, we look to plants

"Backster has conducted hundreds of experiments demonstrating not only that plants respond to our emotions and intents, but so do severed leaves, eggs (fertilized or not), yogurt, and human cell samples. He’s found, for example, that white cells taken from a person’s mouth and placed in a test tube still respond electrochemically to the donor’s emotional states, even when the donor is out of the room, out of the building, or out of the state."

Re Wigner's Friend: Aligns to my understanding of the Biocentric philosophy, which I'm not totally subscribed to, at least at the moment. Maybe I'm not following it in its entirety?!

Thanks

Biocentrism is very interesting and intersting link.

Does this refer to awareness, like an insect has, or self-awareness, like humans have?

Anyway, our existence is not bound by matter, we are self-aware, and so are other life forms, others are not self-aware in the same way as we are, but still are aware they exist, in their own ways.

Our existence is spiritual, not material.

first, i appreciate this topic and the consideration of those earnestly participating. interesting points all around.

now, what struck me through this discussion was, regarding the OP, i feel this is a bit like asking how a white horse is not a horse; or giving a piece of software two dimensional data and requiring it extrapolate third dimensional properties. the question being posed invites applying a specific to a general, when rationally only the reverse can be argued. IMHO, the white horse paradox popularized by gongsun long baaaaasically shows that convoluted logic can be formed to reach nearly any conclusion if you place logic above and independent of rationality.

that is to say, the prompt of "darwinist, how did non life evolve awareness of itself" sort of boils down to "assume darwinism; show the path to sentience." i personally believe the rational approach would be either,
"assume sentience; show plausibility of darwinism" (which is i think, close to the OP's purpose)
or
"assume darwinism; show plausibility of sentience" (which was touched on in a couple of replies).

to be fair, i'm not sure how relevant this actually is, maybe neoholographic can weigh in. and, personally, i do not feel qualified to attempt a theory/explanation as i am not a darwinist or versed in quantum implications of sentience.


edit:
(to qualify, in my experience, darwinists generally consider their position eshewing a "belief" in favour of rationality, so i myself would not tend to simply ask, "what do you believe")

a reply to: neoholographic
What if there is only now?
And now is constantly changing the way it appears?

Is awareness actually needed?

Nothing can be apart from now.....no thing separate.


So no matter and no awareness......just whatever appears..... always just this.

One without a second.