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Tomdstone
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Inside a black hole?
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Partinobodycula
Guest
The first part of the above quote highlights the fact that although there’s a general sense of what consciousness is, there’s no consensus as to its cause. How does a tangible physical object like the brain, give rise to the immaterial, incorporeal experiences that constitute consciousness? The current best answer is, we’re not sure.
The highlighted portion of the above quote touches on the subject that’s under debate. Does consciousness require a non-conscious medium from which to emerge? If it does then either God isn’t the first cause, or He isn’t conscious. This would be true because consciousness would then be an emergent phenomenon. In which case it would be the non-conscious medium that’s Aquinas’ first cause, i.e. God. If on the other hand consciousness doesn’t require a non-conscious medium, then God could indeed be conscious, but then who’s to say that my consciousness would require a medium either? Who’s to say that my consciousness is an emergent phenomenon? It could just as reasonably be argued that I’m the first cause. That it’s my consciousness that creates reality, and everything in it. If you’re going to argue that God’s consciousness doesn’t require an underlying cause, then there’s no rationale for why mine should require one either.
It’s unclear because I don’t assume that a biological nervous system is the only way of producing consciousness. Not knowing the mechanisms involved in the generation of consciousness I can’t discount for example the possibility of conscious computers, or of consciousness spontaneously arising out of quantum fields. But based upon an admittedly small sample size, i.e. humans, consciousness is based upon coherent patterns of thought arising within a non-conscious medium. Consciousness is an emergent phenomenon, and therefore cannot be the first cause.
Again, if one is going to argue that God’s consciousness is capable of existing without a cause then by what reasoning am I to assume that my consciousness isn’t capable of the exact same feat? The impression that it’s the brain that gives rise to consciousness could then be attributed to being nothing more than an illusion.
Once you posit the possibility of consciousness without a cause, then you give merit to the argument that it’s I who might ultimately be that cause. On the other hand if one posits that consciousness by its very nature necessitates a cause, then I can no longer be the first cause, but unfortunately neither can the first cause be conscious.
Pardon my skepticism, but I fail to see how such experiments prove anything. To argue that the mind isn’t capable of producing all manner of illusions, even tactile ones, is to underestimate the capabilities of the conscious mind. He who believes that he cannot be deceived, already is.
Continued next post:
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Partinobodycula
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Continued from previous post:
Likewise, a solipsistic consciousness and the reality in which it exists may have simply emerged in the same symbiotic manner. Consciousness didn’t need to know how to create anything, for it didn’t so much create the world around it, as much as it naturally emerged within it. Now all you need in order to create such a consciousness is a medium capable of generating random fluctuations. Oddly enough, it’s theorized that chaos should spontaneously produce consciousness, i.e. a Boltzmann brain. In such a case consciousness doesn’t create reality, it emerges within it. Consciousness and the context in which it exists emerge together.
You seem to have fallen into a common misconception concerning solipsism. Namely that the conscious mind creates reality from whole cloth. Remember, I maintain that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon, and it’s the manner in which it emerges that’s the source of your confusion. Let me offer an analogy. Evolutionists believe that a random string of RNA molecules billions of years ago set off a long series of adaptions and mutations that eventually led to us. But how did that random string of RNA know how to make a human, much less the entire ecosystem necessary for human survival. The answer is, it didn’t, but it didn’t have to. The conscious human and the ecosystem in which he exists simply evolved, simply emerged, together. Each whole and complete.
Likewise, a solipsistic consciousness and the reality in which it exists may have simply emerged in the same symbiotic manner. Consciousness didn’t need to know how to create anything, for it didn’t so much create the world around it, as much as it naturally emerged within it. Now all you need in order to create such a consciousness is a medium capable of generating random fluctuations. Oddly enough, it’s theorized that chaos should spontaneously produce consciousness, i.e. a Boltzmann brain. In such a case consciousness doesn’t create reality, it emerges within it. Consciousness and the context in which it exists emerge together.
I can’t simply imagine myself on a mountaintop eating a brownie because it would be logically inconsistent. And the mind is coherent precisely because it’s consistent. Basically it’s the anthropic principle, consciousness will always see a world that’s logically consistent because consciousness can only exist in a world that’s logically consistent.
And so why do you ascribe to God the property of being conscious, if not from an appeal to your own experience?
First, I don’t conceive of God as being contingent on something else, I conceive of consciousness as being contingent on something else. What I don’t do is conceive of God as being conscious. You insist upon portraying God as a conscious entity, as if consciousness is an attribute to be desired. But I say that consciousness is by its very nature an isolated and solitary thing, and not at all becoming of the nature of God. I’m not arguing about the need of a first cause. I’m arguing about the nature of the first cause.
I posit that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon. That it allows me to add caveats to the statement “I am”. Caveats that God doesn’t possess. To be conscious is to be cognizant of one’s own isolation. An isolation that extends even beyond space and time to the very essence of what it means to be me. I posit that God knows no such isolation. I believe God is that which gives rise to everything else, and that men anthropomorphize Him, because it’s the only way that they can relate to Him.
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Bahman
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Black hole to the best of our knowledge is a dot, hence doesn’t have any inside.
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Tomdstone
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Oh. I thought that a typical 10-solar-mass black hole would have a Schwarzschild radius of 30 kilometers, so it would not be a dot. A dot has radius equal to zero.
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808Catholic
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Had to ask Wikipedia what’s a Schwartzschild radius to figure out what you’re referring to!
Would it be accurate to say, the SR is the boundary of the effective limit of the black hole and does not actually describe the physical dimension of the black hole itself?
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Bahman
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That is horizon of a black hole.
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spiderweb
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That depends on what you mean by “be experienced”. If you mean that it has the potential to be experienced, even if it never is experienced, then I don’t think so. On the other hand, if something must be experienced in order for it to exist, then I can think of lots of things. The things existence (whether living or inanimate) must be first before something else can experience it.
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Bahman
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I meant the first case. In reality we are simply consciousness which means that we can experience and affect reality. Affecting reality is necessary otherwise no one could know about our existences.
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Gregory_Olson
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Haven’t read other replies. 'pologize in advance.
I may seem to ramble at first, but stay with me…
The argument from contingency depends on one thing, along with one given… The one thing is that the universe needs a cause. This is easy to demonstrate because everything in the known universe today is contingent on earlier causes. The given is that endless regress is impossible–apparently this actually comes up in higher philosophy a lot, and is well-established as impossible. A good example is thought: a thought cannot always be the result of an earlier thought, because with this restriction a thought could never actually occur; at some point a thought must logically be caused by something that isn’t a thought. There are a bunch of these, but the thought one is famous. Here–James Sadowsky explained it better than I did:
And this is one of the best ways to try to understand what is meant by God: I AM; Being itself.
Your idea that consciousness can’t give rise to itself is true, and even from what I understand, famous in the world of philosophy. And philosophically I think it would be inaccurate to say God ‘has’ anything, including consciousness. It would be more accurate to say God IS everything. Not of course in an Eastern sense, in a Thomist sense: God plus creation is in no way whatsoever greater than God alone. All ontological reality, including consciousness if consciousness is real–which I think it is–must be able to be derived from and find its ultimate in its Source.
In this sense, God can be thought of as the ultimate yard stick–anything that has any quality necessarily can only have that quality because it can already be found in God at its ultimate. It’s kind of like flipping the argument from contingency backwards; it’s just another way of saying that everything can be derived from its Source.
…Including consciousness.
Greg
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Partinobodycula
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Greg, I really liked your post, and in truth there’s almost nothing about it with which I disagree, but one could argue that there’s a bit of a dichotomy within the following lines.
Thus I have a bit of a problem with the statement that God is the ultimate in all attributes, because there’s a difference between possessing attributes and being the Source of those attributes. Indeed the attributes cannot have an expression beyond the capacity of the Source to produce them, but this doesn’t of necessity mean that the source possesses them in any substantive sense of the word.
As you might imagine this means that I have a bit of a problem with Aquinas’ Fourth Way, in that people use it to anthropomorphize God. Somehow people have come to believe that if you remove all of the attributes from God except for “I am”, then God becomes a cold, impersonal entity to which they can’t possibly relate. God must be like me, only better. God must be conscious, only more so.
To me God shouldn’t be thought of as possessing all things, but rather as the Source of all things. And that nothing can exist except that it derives its existence from Him, and no attributes can be expressed beyond His capacity to produce them.
And so it comes to be that I have a fundamental disagreement with what most people believe to be the nature of God. I don’t think He’s conscious.
The dichotomy lies in the notion of whether God possesses certain attributes or whether He’s simply the Source of those attributes. To me, when you consider God’s statement to Moses, “I am, that I am” it holds within it every attribute that God possesses. He is. This is an attribute that you couldn’t even imagine taking away from something and have it still exist in any sense at all. The thing either is, or it isn’t. Other attributes, like consciousness for example, you can easily imagine taking away from something and still have that thing exist. You might change the essence of the thing, but the thing would still exist. It seems to me that God is the simplest of all possible things. He’s that from which nothing can be taken away, but from which everything can be derived.
Thus I have a bit of a problem with the statement that God is the ultimate in all attributes, because there’s a difference between possessing attributes and being the Source of those attributes. Indeed the attributes cannot have an expression beyond the capacity of the Source to produce them, but this doesn’t of necessity mean that the source possesses them in any substantive sense of the word.
As you might imagine this means that I have a bit of a problem with Aquinas’ Fourth Way, in that people use it to anthropomorphize God. Somehow people have come to believe that if you remove all of the attributes from God except for “I am”, then God becomes a cold, impersonal entity to which they can’t possibly relate. God must be like me, only better. God must be conscious, only more so.
To me God shouldn’t be thought of as possessing all things, but rather as the Source of all things. And that nothing can exist except that it derives its existence from Him, and no attributes can be expressed beyond His capacity to produce them.
And so it comes to be that I have a fundamental disagreement with what most people believe to be the nature of God. I don’t think He’s conscious.
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Gregory_Olson
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Why complicate things unnecessarily then? It would be inaccurate to say God possesses ultimate consciousness. I think theologians have traditionally agreed the essence of God is too simple to be dependent on something like that. It would be better to say God is ultimate consciousness.
Who says consciousness has to be an attribute? And what makes thinking of it as an attribute different from thinking of anything else as an attribute? It would be just as easy to say God ‘has’ reason instead of God is Reason, or God has goodness instead of God is Goodness. These are human attributes as well, and in us they can be taken away… You could quickly find yourself, by this argument, in the absurd position of saying there isn’t anything to God whatsoever.
If something is a reality in creation, it must be a reality already in God. Forget ‘possess;’ saying God is the source of something that does not exist already in the essence of God runs into this problem of saying something came from nothing. Goodness is ontologically real, therefore goodness must be able to be derived from a first, ultimate Goodness. Reason is ontologically real, therefore reason must be already in its Source. Consciousness is ontologically real, therefore ditto the above! Endless regress is impossible, and our own consciousness’ aren’t self-sufficient, therefore consciousness needs a first cause which already encompasses consciousness–just as the same can be said for everything else which is real.
What’s wrong with God having similarities to human beings? After all, he created us from himself. It seems to me creation not reflecting its Creator in all things would be less likely.
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Partinobodycula
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Attributes are those properties which things possess. People and things have many attributes. God has but one, He exists. Now you can try to use semantics to ascribe more attributes to God, but saying that God IS consciousness, is like saying that God IS human. Surely you see the folly in such an argument. Consciousness, like humanity is made up of many different attributes, but the fact that God is the source of them doesn’t mean that he IS them. When you take away a thing’s attributes, it no longer exists. God is that from which all other attributes can be removed, and yet He still exists.
I’m not trying to complicate anyone’s understanding of God. I’m trying to clarify the meaning of the statement, “I am”.
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clem456
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The dimension that seems to be always left out of these discussions is time.
Essentially you are asking “what did God know, and when did he know it”?
You are assuming that the whole of existence obeys time.
We believe God is outside of time, not a creature that is subject to it. So your question is nonsensical to a Christian.
Essentially you are asking “what did God know, and when did he know it”?
You are assuming that the whole of existence obeys time.
We believe God is outside of time, not a creature that is subject to it. So your question is nonsensical to a Christian.
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Partinobodycula
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I’m keenly aware of the nature of time. For time, like consciousness, is an attribute, and therefore completely foreign to the nature of God. The objective of this thread is to point out that if God does indeed possesses attributes such as time and consciousness, then He isn’t Aquinas’ first cause.
I realize that many things are nonsensical to Christians, but they don’t have to be.
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clem456
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Well,
We believe God is outside of time, you do not, so…not sure what the point is,
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clem456
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“I am” does not mean that God is someplace taking up space and time.
When you and I say “I am” it is followed by “at work”, or "going home, or “not the same person I was”, or whatever conditions of space and time we are subject to. When God says “I Am” it is simplicity itself, there are no other variables which assume a place or time. It means, as others have said, God alone simply and always “is”. God alone always exists, as he exists always. You get into nonsensical circles trying to describe in human words. All time is present to God. On the other hand, we experience before, now, and after.
So much of these discussion attempt to use the equation “if this…then that”, in regard to God, which assumes the passage of time. God has no before or after and so is not subject to change or cause. Change and cause make a mistaken assumption in regard to God, and that mistaken assumption is that time is a variable that God is subject to. God is not subject to time. This discussion makes an assumption that God is like any other created thing or being. To be created means “yesterday I was not, today I am”. No such thing for God. Simply “I Am”.
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Partinobodycula
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I believe that you’re mistaken about my understanding of the relationship between God and time. Sadly, there’s probably very little that I can do to change that. As I often say, people see what they want to see.Well,
We believe God is outside of time, you do not,
All I can control, is what I show you. I can’t control what you see.
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clem456
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I would refer you to your own OP.
The only other conclusion to be drawn from your own words is that you disqualify God as The Un-Caused because he has consciousness and consciousness must have a cause.
I suppose there’s a semantic argument to be had about what consciousness is. Just as with time, if you inflict God with your human understanding of consciousness then you will be disappointed in God.
Consider yourself as a person who exists and has consciousness. There was a time when you had no consciousness, now you have it. Consciousness has a before and after.
God does not have before and after, he is “I Am”, so he cannot have consciousness as you would like him to.
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Partinobodycula
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Forgive me for the slow response, but I prefer a discussion that proceeds at a somewhat more leisurely pace, and so I will from time to time step aside briefly to allow for a moment of reflection.
I would like to point out what seems to be the misunderstanding created by the OP. It’s often assumed that Aquinas’ Second Way refers to a line of causation that’s temporal in nature, and one is perfectly justified in interpreting it that way. But its intention was also to argue for a sustaining cause. A cause that while coincidental in time, is none-the-less first in the order of causes. So while a causal chain can be thought of as temporal in nature, it can also be thought of as hierarchical in nature. One in which causes don’t precede each other in time, but rather in order.
So when I argue that consciousness can’t be the first cause, I’m not arguing that it’s preceded in time by something else, I’m arguing that it’s preceded in order by something else. And since its preceded in order, it can’t be Aquinas’ first cause.
Secondary to this argument is the argument that God can be defined by one simple statement “I am, that I am”. His existence and His essence are one and the same. If one begins to add attributes to God, then His existence, and His essence are different. Attributes are those things that we use to define the essence of something. God’s essence can only be defined by one attribute…He exists. To describe Him in any other way is to differentiate between His essence and His existence.
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