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Comment by monero-xmr | Hacker News Reader

Consciousness - what it is, how it arises - not proven. A subject full of quantum woo and statements declared as facts but the conjecture is everywhere.

In broad strokes you have the majority which are physicalists, which leads to strong determinism. This is where thoughts and consciousness arise purely from physical reality and have a chemical and physical basis (“thoughts have mass”). If you rewound the universe to the beginning, always the same outcome, free will is a delusion.

In the minority you have dualism, where the mind and body are separate. This is metaphysics. I subscribe to the latter belief.

My personal (insane sounding) opinion is that there is one universal consciousness and we all channel into it with our minds.

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Ever watch someone's personality change after they develop Alzheimer's or dementia? It can be rather disturbing.

Same goes for people who drift in and out of depression or bipolar disorders. There are mood changes, but with them come changes to risk tolerance and a host of other fundamental things.

At the end of the day, a person's character is in some way biologically defined, so any expression of consciousness must also be affected as well.

Like I said my view is complete conjecture and based upon my own religious and spiritual beliefs. I think the brain is channeling the universal consciousness and as it is filtered by the mind, it results in different personalities. The essence of “you” is always there, whether you are asleep or demented or unborn or an infant. Obviously who you are can change.

This is a very complex topic I cannot articulate hardly at all in this comment. I also believe in God and practice Catholicism but I think Jesus was a supra-conscious supernatural being.

I know I sound totally insane but this is my personal belief system so no one can take it away from me!

Just wait until you ask a Buddhist monk the question ‘what is “me”’?

Acquaintance of mine had a benign brain tumor removed maybe a decade ago. It’s subtle but their personality changed a bit.

They’re aware of it too, they talk about a feeling just a little different.

It’s normalized over time, like they just are who they are now, but of all the things to experience in life I bet that’d be a wild one. I appreciate our personalities can change over time but the overnight shift is fascinating to think about.

In some way? A person is biological. Everything about them (barring the occasional medical implant) is wholly biologically determined.

A great many people believe there is some intrinsic connection between body, mind, consciousness and soul.

They think that when they die, their soul will retain the memories of their life, and will bear culpability for the good and bad actions in life (karma, divine judgment, etc).

For this to make sense, the soul has to in some way influence or be responsible for a person's character. My argument was only that it cannot be directly and completely responsible, given the obvious changes to character as the brain undergoes changes.

Having read the post I was replying to, you'll note that your suggestion has already been made in the context of physicalism. I merely offered a mild critique of the opposing view, metaphysicalism.

>For this to make sense, the soul has to in some way influence or be responsible for a person's character.

Why couldn't the influence go the other way, with a soul left behind that was shaped by physical events it had no effect on? Insofar as the idea of a soul can make sense, that seems the only way.

That depends on the brand of mysticism you prefer. Early forms of Buddhism would agree- that which was reborn was the accrued karma. Living a life of enlightenment let you die without karma, ending the cycle.

On the other extreme end, Christianity favors a version where the soul is responsible, and held in judgement. Some branches allow for purgation, others are a "go straight to heaven or hell" variety. What's the point of rewarding or punishing a soul that had no agency in life? What of a soul that was shaped by a brain fundamentally different at death than early adulthood?

Orthodox Christianity is a little different- there's purgation, without the purgatory. Moreover, the goal in life is theosis- living in such a way that your being aligns with the holy Spirit, essentially attaining sainthood while alive and in direct communion with the divine.

So, many very opposing answers, the truth of which is beyond me to decide for you.

>What's the point of rewarding or punishing a soul that had no agency in life?

So we're to assume that the sensibleness of doctrine is what determines the underpinnings of reality, that some kind of Just World force makes the world work in a way to minimize the injustice resulting from it? That makes even less sense. And anyways, the evidence suggests that such a force is not dominating the other fundamental forces.

I have the same idea about how reality comes together. Hard materialism cannot help but run into fundamental contradictions so it must be false. I think consciousness must be the fundamental nature of reality, and our minds are shards or prisms of it. And the experience of the material world is itself emergent. You might like a book called Biocentrism by Lanza and Berman.

Thanks for the recommendation! I will add it to my list

>In broad strokes you have the majority which are physicalists, which leads to strong determinism.

I'm not an expert in the philosophy of consciousness or free will or anything, but it's my understanding that most philosophers are compatibilists even if they are physicalists. So it's not necessarily true that physicalism leads to hard determinism.

Not proven? It's not even well defined. You can't prove anything meaningful about terms that can't even be defined.

Exactly! But people make all sorts of statements about it and we can’t even agree on base concepts.

This audiobook is a pretty good introduction. The whole thing makes my brain hurt https://www.audible.com/pd/B00D97UL5K?source_code=ASSORAP051...

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