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July 5th, 2024

The Nature of Consciousness

Alan Watts explores consciousness, language's impact on understanding, critiques creationism, and advocates for an interconnected worldview based on patterns rather than distinct matter. He promotes a holistic perspective for aligning sensations with reality.

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The Nature of Consciousness

Alan Watts discusses the nature of consciousness in a seminar where he delves into the fundamental ideas shaping Western perspectives. He explores how language and logic influence our understanding of life, referring to these foundational concepts as myths that help us make sense of the world. Watts contrasts two prevalent models of the universe: the ceramic model based on creationism and the fully automatic model. He critiques the idea of the universe as an artifact, emphasizing the limitations of viewing the world as made of distinct matter separate from spirit. Watts challenges the traditional hierarchical views of the universe, such as those seen in religious and political structures, advocating for a more interconnected and pattern-based understanding of reality. He highlights the inadequacy of seeking a fundamental substance or "stuff" underlying the universe, arguing instead for a focus on perceiving patterns and shapes in our experiences. Watts encourages a shift towards embracing a more holistic and interconnected image of the world to align our sensations and feelings with a more sensible worldview.

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By @munchler - 5 months
It's a problem when "philosophers" opine on physics without understanding physics very well. A few obvious examples:

> Long, long ago, physicists stopped asking the question 'What is matter?'

Physicists are absolutely still asking this question. One of the major open problems in physics is how to unify quantum mechanics (the law of small things) with general relativity (the law of heavy things). String theory looked promising for a while, but hasn't lead to a testable hypothesis. Whoever eventually solves this will be immortalized alongside Newton and Einstein.

> There are basically two kinds of philosophy. One's called prickles, the other's called goo. And prickly people are precise, rigorous, logical. They like everything chopped up and clear. Goo people like it vague. For example, in physics, prickly people believe that the ultimate constituents of matter are particles. Goo people believe it's waves.

This is so misguided, it's not even wrong. There are no "goo" people in physics, because vagueness is not scientific. Any decent physicist understands wave/particle duality, and will tell you that, actually, fields are the ultimate description of matter, as far as we currently know.

(BTW, putting this on Genius is clever, but painful to read. I could only browse a few screenfuls before I gave up.)

By @dash2 - 5 months
Is this maybe what some cognitive scientists call "pseudo-profound bullshit"? [1]

I'm open to being persuaded otherwise.

[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/c...

By @leopoldhaller - 5 months
> "You see, when you make something, you put it together, you arrange parts, or you work from the outside in, as a sculpture works on stone, or as a potter works on clay. But when you watch something growing, it works in exactly the opposite direction. It works from the inside to the outside. It expands. It burgeons. It blossoms."

Reminds me of this great quote by Terrence Deacon on a podcast (I believe it was one of his Mind & Matter episodes). From memory:

> Engineering is in some sense the opposite of life: Engineering involves assembling components. Life involves differentiating wholes.

I highly recommend Deacon's 'Incomplete Nature', and I'm very psyched about his upcoming book “Falling Up: Inverse Darwinism and Life’s Complexity Ratchet”