Sam Harris and The Moral Landscape

FAITH:  Consciousness seems to be derivative of feedback among aspects that are spiritually qualitative with aspects that are empirically quantitative.  In a way of thinking, the qualitative experience of consciousness is what we will to make of it. I suspect the same may be said of what we make of our perspectives of the Field of consciousness (aka, God). In a way, to have faith in the field of Consciousness is to have faith in a potential for the extension of one's own consciousness. If one perceives God to be an Ogre (or an Allah), one greases the way to an horrific, alternative reality. If one considers God to be mainly interested in caring, one proceeds along a path of pursuit of fulfillment. Norman Vincent Peale was on the mark regarding faith in an innate power of positive thinking,


REGARDING SAM HARRIS AND THE END OF FAITH AND THE MORAL LANDSCAPE:  I'm reading Sam Harris' The Moral Landscape. He wants to commit moral values to pure reason, entirely divorced from God or religious traditions. I suspect a fundamental rift, an unbridgeable chasm between measuring apples versus oranges. I suspect his model does not quite succeed in facing up to quite a number of key concerns.

ONGOING PROBLEM OF CIVILIZATION: Some main problems for civilized beingness (and they are not problems with final solutions, to be unraveled by scientists!) pertain to: (1) how to slough off indecent aspects of old belief structures; and (2) how to accomodate cherry picked aspects of changing belief structures with an ever changing, decent, sustainable civilization (even if it should become prudent for civilization to organize into fuzzy, overlapping, competing, and cooperating compartments and hierarchies).

VALUE OF BELIEVING: Most people "really" don't believe, literally, in models or sacred texts; rather, they commit their identities to the value of "believing that they believe," i.e., living as if the texts or models were worthy or true (at least, cherry picked aspects of them).  They entertain a tending-to-fulfilling FAITH/belief in the qualitative Goodness of being, whose cause and effect are not reducible to quantitative measure.  They stand with Faith that Beingness is essentially Good.  (Could it be "good" or moral to believe that beingmess is essentially -- scientifically -- irrelevant to goodness, not good or -- Islamically -- less than good?)  In this way, we retain means to communicate among ourselves in respect of more or less common and traditional contexts of reference, without which we would have few signposts by which to make ourselves appreciated or understood. We would lose touch with our past, and we would lose an emotional aspect of meaning among ourselves.  The stories are only the means to convey a higher shared spiritual experience and truth.  (Maybe even God finds them entertaining.)

INSPIRATION: Absent a notion of God, in respect of what unifying or highest value should people be inspired to come to reason together about moral concerns, to try to inculcate values that are more commonly shared, hence (somewhat artificially so), more "objective"?

TRANSITIONAL COHESION: Insofar as our shared niche or context of being changes, what social values can remain worthy, to guide members of a society across transitional, often fundamental, changes in our contexts? What values tend to last beyond harsh changes in contexts?

SOCIOPATHIC DECEIVERS: What in Harris' model can protect those who accept his notions from political sociopaths who feign values only for personal gain, seeking to let no harsh crisis go to waste?

GANGSTER FUNDING: What in Harris' model can defend the moral values of a conscious agent of free will against the scientific presumptuousness of a mob or community, which may often be funded or targeted for being undermined by sociopaths?

INDIVIDUAL V. GROUP: Harris seems not always to remember that what leads to an individual's scientifically measurable pleasure and "well being" may be artithetical to exemplars needed to sustain a humane, decent, family-friendly civilization for man, woman, and child.

POLITICAL EXPERIENCE: Obama's regime, like many, is evidence that leaders will abuse the trust of followers, for shallow purposes.

DICTATE: Apart from precluding devaluation of our niche, who is any one of us, even Harris, to dictate, scientifically, what each and every one of us must do?

THINNING OF BIODIVERSITY: Does not Harris' model fail to respect appropriate "wildlife management" within the evolving field of possible variations among expressions of species of autonomous consciousness?

ITSELF RELIGIOUS: Does not Harris' model, in itself, entail religious devotion for favoring the present human form, over other species, even over our own evolutionary possibilities?

ACCULTURATED ATTACHMENTS: Does his model run too roughshod over acculturated sensibilities to sacred parables, which remain meaningful to traditional sensibilities?

ANARCHY: Does his model try to break the establishment, to establish a new religion or metaphysics, while pretending not to, and accord no receptivity to the unfolding efforts of previous metaphysicians?

BURNING KNOWLEDGE: Does his model commit worthy insights from previous metaphysicians to the ash heap?

GANGSTER LOGROLLING: Does his model accord too much worship or respect for eventual statist or oligarchic usurpations?

ROAD TO TOTALITARIANISM: Does his model entail eventual servitude to a supreme programmer, destined to set too many parameters for what is politically acceptable to our notion of well being?

IGNORE INTUITION AND REPLACE WITH EMPIRICISM: Does his model disrespect all intuitions of roles for meta arch types and guiding determinants that are beyond the empirical measure of the community, but not beyond the intuitive empathy of individuals?

MORAL DETERMINANTS:  Regarding genes-conditioning-economics-technology-philosophy: none has a monopoly for determining sustainable and decent morality.  None is mathematically convertible into the others.  Such terms are not amenable of quantitative formulization for weighing the "best" moral sum for a society as a whole with any sum for its members.

CIRCULARITY: Does Harris' concept of "well being" really escape moral circularity?

UNDERMINING PARENTS: Does it foment replacement of tradition minded parents with scientific bureaucrats, for the appropriate rearing and genetic treating of children?

ENTITLEMENT V. LICENSE: When it comes to how best to sustain a decent civilization, do not libertine and libertarian "moral scientists" too often display too much concern for what material earth should be (and should entitle), and too little concern for what human society should be (and should license)?

STATE WORSHIP: Does Harris' model worship or serve state or scientific legalism, to set or enforce new parameters of acceptable social behavior, in replacement of religious models for acceptable moral parameters? Are not at least some religious models for acceptable social and familial behavior based on traditions of marriage and responsibility for child rearing that have been generally tested and found successful for eons?

CONTINUITY OF PURPOSEFULNESS: Does Harris' model disrespect that there abides a continuous capacity for the expression of purposefulness in every unfolding perspective of consciousness, not just the human form?

FORCED DOGMA: Does his model pretend, by "scientific proof," to authorize any person's dogma, by force and numbers, to reprogram and re-educate every other perspective of consciousness, to fit within limits that are acceptable to a philosophy of moral specifics that any such person and his gang may find acceptable?

DOES SCIENTIFICALLY LEVERAGED MIGHT MAKE RIGHT: Suppose a person (or maximum leader) has been warped so as to experience measurable well being by harming others: Is that which enhances his well being then "scientifically moral"? Unless the masses reserve a god given right to refer to higher insight, will not he who wins the war write the "true" moral science?

EXCEPT IN TRIVALENT RESPECT OF DEMOCRATIC OR REPRESENTATIVE PARTICIPATION, HOW CAN A SINGLE BIVALENT SCIENTIFIC FORMULA PRETEND TO TREAT THE INTERESTS OF BOTH THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COMMUNITY FAIRLY: How, scientifically, are the qualities valued by an individual to be weighed against the qualities purportedly valued by the community? Who decides? By what model can moral science make a testable, empirical accounting of these kinds of apples and oranges, parts and wholes, natural organisms and artificial constructs?

MORAL AND SPIRITUAL AUDITING: In what way and to what extent may scientific tests for "well being" (by using magnetic pulses directed at the skull?) be a variant, even if more sophisticated, of the auditing that is done by Scientologists?

INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY AUDITING: Can a formula for adding the well being of the members of a society translate into an evaluation of the sustainable well being of the society itself?

META REFERENTS: In respect of archtypes of metaphysics, pertaining to such archtypes' appreciations of purpose and preference, may there be a "real" referent for those ideas which best prove themselves in the test and competition of their unfoldment of the manifest?

BOTTOM LINE:  Is Harris' "scientific morality" much more than the old, non-empirical, non-measurable, non-convertible utilitarian idea of the greatest good for the greatest number, dressed up with techinques for collecting quantitative data regarding blood chemistry, brain synapses, and magnetic pulses?

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Gore Vidal deploys his immense vocabulary to circumvolute truth beyond retrieve. I’d rather read Sam Harris. He has a serviceable vocabulary, and he is briefer and more direct about his purposes. Interestingly, Harris chastises religious moderates, but would replace them by mediating science with spirituality, to oust the influence on spiritual concerns of all religious based traditions. In his love for establishing a science of morality, Harris seems not far from spiritual auditing, as by Scientologists. See http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070910204944AAH6wyd.  However, is it justified to limit faith to a “science” of the moral landscape? Ask: Have the gaggle of psycho-scientists really shown themselves worthy of being entrusted to establish the kind of communally assimilated, secularly enforced, and scientifically based social Norms that are friendly to decent, sustainable, family based civilizations? Indeed, what civilization devouring abNormalities does the psycho-gaggle not tolerate?

Intuitively, the ONLY reason consciousness — whether human or meta — would be concerned with the scientifically (empirically) Quantitative would be to avail informational placeholders (as measurable signposts), with which to remember and relate to the Qualitative aspects of associated perspectives of consciousness (such qualitative aspects running gamuts of astonishment, from the painfully tragic to the orgiastically comedic to the boringly indifferent). Thus, faith in a qualitative, “dynamic Meta field of psychology” seems both essential to, as well as beyond, faith in a quantitative, “psychological neuroScience of the moral landscape.” Even so, a loyal opposition is essential to test that which is of value, and Harris sets forth the opposing landscape, brilliantly.

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I have not yet seen Harris to do a comparative analysis, to ask:  Suppose mankind were to replace all traditional religions with science based economics, politics, and morality?  Does logic, experience, or history suggest such an exclusive promotion of science would render our world more humane and less at risk?  Harris discounts the horrific results of Marxist and Statist attempts in such nations as Germany, Russia, and China, characterizing them as being more based in religion than in science.  Perhaps he feels true, scientific, dialectic materialism has not yet been tried.  If so, he risks much on an untried notion.

Regardless, ask:  Can science really repeal the ongoing march and unfolding pursuit of competitive fulfillment through agencies of change, replacement, violence, and death?  Has any social experiment in morality based in science yielded other than millions of deaths, misery for the masses, and belligerance abroad?  Is Harris' hope and faith that mankind would fare better under supervision based exclusively in science borne only out of long, personal conditioning for preferring lab based solutions, under unreal assumptions of all other variables being equal, or is his faith "really" based in logic, experience, and history?

Is not the real battle of morality one that is between the morally empathetic (social Conservatives) versus those (Rinos and Dinos) who are united in taking advantage of the morally empathetic (Rinos, by overlording greed, and Dinos, by entitlement mongering)?  Is not the real battle of morality between those who believe in Morality In Relations Among Citizens Within A Society versus those who believe only in material based survival of the fittest, most tricky, and most weasely?  Can we really know, in the unfolding turmoil of things, what "causes" some to be morally empathetic to higher purposefulness,while others remain riven purely in materialism?  Is not the real battle to intuit God, to engage in battle between religions based on a caring God versus religions based on a monstrous mobster, bartering, material-divvying God?  Is not the real battle for existential Consciousness to pursue coming to terms with itself?

NWO SLAYING OF REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY

To sustain itself, a representative republic needs an intelligent, literate, informed electorate that has assimilated in respect of human freedom and dignity.  America now has a doped up, entitlement minded, Gaia worshipping, misinformed, easily duped, easily indentured electorate, in large part too stupid to notice how its entire country is being sold into unsustainable indebtedness to foreign despots.  Yes, there are still substantial numbers of good, independent minded Americans, who desire neither to enslave others nor to be enslaved.  However, their cause is not the main focus of either of our national parties.  And the Tea Party has nothing like the funding availed to the unholy alliance among those who pretend to be spreading wealth under socialism while actually spreading povery under despotism.  In other words, it is far from given that even the U.S. will much longer be able to sustain a representative republic.  Indeed, it is debateable whether, apart from facade, we have one now.  If we, with substantial numbers of freedom lovers, cannot sustain a representative republic, then for goodness sakes why should we allow ourselves to be deluded to believe that any society immersed in Islam could?  Our sold out and historically ignorant profs and pols tell our kids anything they want them to believe, and sure enough, substantial numbers buy right into it.  America is fighting for the life of her own freedom.  To distract ourselves into trying to spread democracy to nations that are wholly unfit for it is to speed our own fall.  The NWO is much further along than many would suppose, and it ain't based on love of freedom.

OBSCURANTISM -- INESCAPABLE COST OF POINT OF VIEW

OBSCURANTISM IS THE INESCAPABLE COST OF EVERY MORTAL POINT OF VIEW:

What is "The Superior Reality?"  One may conceptualize it as being mainly or solely quantitative, or as being mainly or solely qualitative.  One's worldview concerning purposefulness will color one's conceptions.  If one orients and devotes one's identity and purposefulness towards uncovering a quantitatively useful Model for leveraging governance over everything, one will pursue a conception consistent with that purpose.  If one devotes oneself towards uncovering a qualitatively useful Myth or way for inspiring or facilitating sustainable communications and empathies of apprehension, one will pursue a  conception consistent with that purpose.  The utility of each model, myth, or conception will depend largely on (1) purpose (moral or practical), (2) point of view, and (3) frame of reference.  However, there may abide a way to synthesize those two main worldviews (externally empirical and internally intuitionist).  For example, a philosophy of Will seems to be devise-able that could respect the domain of both, without doing violence to either.

Synthesis (?):  Consciousness of Will, whether of aspect of Active present (conscious choice-making) or of accumulated Default (inanimate obedience to forces of nature), Qualitatively and spiritually defines one's unfolding experience of Universe.  However, Conscious Will is Quantitatively (scientifically) constrained to the possible choices open to Conscious Will, in fuzzy respect for how it has invested its Identity in ways that have signified its path to the present.  Unfoldment of Chaos is both tool and container of Will.  Universe is neither random nor predetermined, but is constrained to unfolding purposefulness.  Depending upon one's purpose, point of view, and frame of reference, Universe presents some faces that are mainly predictable and some that are mainly inscrutable.  Universe cannot be solely ruled or predicted, either by scientific empiricists or by spiritual intuitionists.  Neither philosophy of quantitative Empiricism nor of qualitative or post-modern Obscurantism can fully explicate Universe.  To  know Universe, one would have to know oneself, but this, in space-time, one cannot accomplish.  At best, One may apprehend and appreciate One's role in quantum, discrete series of dance steps and feedback among other perspectives of Oneself (which process avails illusions of continuosity).  Thus, to know oneself cannot be the beginning of wisdom, but only the aim of wisdom.  To regulate in hope of eliminating uncertainty and establishing scientific sustainability is both vain and soul stifling.  We should pursue harmony, not in sole respect of our quantifiable history and nature, but in humble regard for our qualitative purposefulness and  spirituality.  We ought not allow America's lamp of liberty to be snuffed.  The truth is not solely out there; the important truth is mainly within ourselves, yet still inscrutable.

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Our experience of quantitative choice-making is inextricably coupled with the quality of our appreciation of that which unfolds in response to our choice-making. We can minutely study the nature of all that unfolds, but we cannot reasonably say, in exclusivity, either that nature emerges from consciousness or that consciousness emerges from nature. In our mortal being, neither consciousness nor nature shows to be entirely artefactual of the other.

Much of the truth about our existence pertains to paths and fuzzy inclinations, which unfold in response to a meta quality of appreciative functioning of conscious choice-making ("free will"). We may do better more to appreciate the quality of Will that is about the Truth, and less to seek to prove quantitative Truth about Will. Truth about free will is not something that can be analyzed under a microscope.

Presentment of material possibilities affects how meta, immaterial, conscious will makes choices. How conscious will makes choices affects succeeding sequences of presentations of possibilities. Ultimately, no mortal, completely free of obscurantism, can describe or study, in simultaneity, the interfunctioning of nature and will, the observed and the observer, the beloved and the lover.

Even so, the relationship that unfolds between possible choices and choices made manifest is always signed by information that is stored in all that is presently manifested in quantitatively measurable substance. However, this unfoldment proceeds in loops of feedback along the way of the "eternal present": the nature of possible choices affects the Will that selects choices to be made manifest, which affects the field of possible choices, which then affects the choices to be made manifest, and so on.

Neither our possibilities nor our mortal choices are exclusively the cause or the effect of any aspect of our unfolding situation. Rather, depending on purpose, focus, and context, either nature or consciousness can be analyzed as cause or effect, the determiner or the determined (not in completeness, but in partiality). Being mortal, each person's purpose, focus, and context, is always obscured, at least in part --- even from himself.

Somehow, obscured beyond ouf mortal ken, a field of consciousness is wedded to all of nature, throughout, as it unfolds its manifestations. Absent such coupling, it seems that no aspect of the potential of nature could be chosen to unfold into manifestation.

PERIL: We have been nurtured to a context in which the interconnectedness and communication of our choice-making has become perilous to the continuation of our civilized state of being --- unless we become receptive to vision appropriate to our appreciation of a Field of consciousness --- with which we must always reconcile. We will strive to a survivable consensus about those aspects (which accompany the obscurantist position of being mortal) which are musical, or our civilization will again fall to a divided babel of noise.

The Corporate Form -- How should it be regulated?

The Corporate Form -- How should it be regulated? Modern corporate practice invites too much that corrupts and destroys cultural oasis of freedom and dignity. Corporations are given legal rights, but do not "feel" loyalties. Rather, their purposes tend to be entirely material: to make short term profits. Their investors are often allowed and encouraged to remain relatively anonymous, free of liability exposure, with little if any sense of moral responsibility. Their profits are often maxmizied by having their leaders tell "noble lies" to the general citizenry (such as about the virtues of free trade with despotic regimes). Or, upon acquiring enough wealth and influence, their managers may profit simply by buying the citizens' politicians, then selling the nation into international debt slavery (to despotic regimes).

Insofar as the corporate form, in itself, is without virtue, yet leverages opportunities for despots to seize and sell virtue for profits, and insofar as enormous corporate profits are easily made by engaging in political chicanery, it becomes necessary that the people, if they seek to preserve any semblance of human freedom and dignity, must develop the will and the means to re-chain corporations to serve the invisible providence of general moral sentiments.

As things stand, to invest in, and to encourage investment in, corporations that respect no responsibility for preserving human freedom and dignity is to invest in the kind of corruption that follows slave and drug dealers and the kind of destruction that follows competing gangsters and enemy agents. Ways must be found to impose public accountability on those who direct the specific corporate actions or polices that lead to the corruption or undermining of America, America's government and economy, and fundamental human freedom and dignity.

When corrupt or destructive corporate activities are shown to have been approved, consistent with policies of a board of directors, then the income traceable to such corporate dealings should be forfeited, either to the people at large or to the retirement of public debt. In some cases, the corporate form and its assets, insofar as independent management, should be forfeited to the control of a trustee for the public interest.

Regardless, American style regulation of business in the corporate form Should be designed so as not unduly to discourage human freedom and dignity under a caring mores (or God)(without establishment of any particular religion). If we cannot rekindle the will to come together to preserve any sustaining, cultural mores, then the purely material pursuit of money under the corporate form will sink us.

Statist Pagans

Suppose some politicians got together with a surefire way to make America and ordinary Americans solvent again. Would the powers that be go for it? Hell no.


Obama got elected because he wanted to "fundamentally change" (lobotomize) America. Many of our youth have been trained to despise America. Many of our minorities have been conditioned to despise America and to believe they are entitled to reparations. Many of our corporatists simply want cheap labor and think profit maximization is the key to all problems; many find the quickest and easiest profits in simply buying America through its politicians and then selling her off. We are top heavy with Americans In Name Only, who believe there is or should be no such thing as an American ethos or culture. Whether you want to call them Dinos or Rinos makes little difference.

Conservators of Liberty keep espousing solutions. But few ask the first question: Do a majority of Americans really want to make America stronger, economically sound, and energy independent? As long as the answer is "Hell no!" why should anyone think that Obama will be defeated, or, that if he is, his replacement would really be looking out for America? Our problem is not mere mechanics or legalism. If it were, we could readily solve it. Our problem is this: The spirit, will, and faith of traditional America has been lobotomized, so that America is now on a short chain, being led to do servitude by pagans who worship statism and the power to control statism. Meanwhile, Conservatives occupy themselves by asking pagan Ainos to look at possible mechanical solutions to the sinking of America, while the sinking of America is precisely what the pagans want. These statists are about as American as Islam is a religion of peace. Were Carville a Conservative, he would say, "It's the statist pagans, stupid."

Of Logic Gates, Digital Representations, and Conscious Will

CAUSATION: Causation does not consist only in respect of a first material force or mover, that sucked or pushed our universe out of a big bang, like a first domino being manipulated to knock down all others in a preplanned, front loaded, pre set row. Nor is causation merely a function of particles bouncing off one another, like billiard balls. Rather, at most fundamental level, causation seems to unfold with a synchronous dance of feedback among potentials and manifestations, wholes and parts, fields and particles, logic gates and digital representations. In feedback aspect, measurable causation seems to present an unfoldment of information that can be digitally represented and expressed as a series of discrete segments.

PRODUCING THE MANIFEST FROM THE POSSIBLE: Not everything that is possible within parameter limits actually manifests into physically interpreted occurrence. Some function or entity seems to impose means for making or pre-prescribing selections or choices. Whatever the means of causation, such are limited to choices that are availed within the parameters of that which is possible.

RANDOM: Somehow, between a process of feedback among fields and particles, “choice making is determined.” At levels of low organization, such choice making or decisions as are determined may occur at such a low level of conscious, pre-set, logarithmic autopilot as to be statistically evaluable as “random.” Perhaps, in some respects and organizations, the bodies and brains of all organisms may be said to be partly “pre-willed,” so as to unfold along pre-specified, parameter limited paths.

NUMBER: It is conceivable that a Field of Selection (God) chooses what to appreciate and apprehend from a Field of Numerous Possibilities (meta-nature). Such choices from such potentials may be actuated a split sequence before they are made manifest to the sensation of any particularly numbered perspective of interpretation. Manifestation necessitates a sensory interpretation from a focus of conscious consideration, within a supporting framework for relating context. However, each interpretation of sensation necessarily trails the choice among potentials by which it was brought into manifestation.

MATERIAL REPRESENTATION LAGS BEHIND META CHOOSING: While physical-brain receives and translates sensation and feedback, it is meta-Mind that effects choice, which is synchronized within parameters availed at a holistic level. No conscious brain becomes aware of any choice until a split sequence after the choice has already been made.

LOCAL LIMITS IMPOSED ON META CHOICES: Thus, a brain is not an instrument for making choices, but a parameter-limiting instrument for transmitting results after having received inputs that find representations in respect of contemporaneous or past choices. An unconscious brain is a manifestation for representing a complex design for a local instrument, for subjecting pre-willed, pre-set choices to synchronized parameter limits. A brain that is coupled with conscious will is a brain that is coupled with a capacity to learn.  Each thrust or presentation of a choice against a representation for parameter limits avails feedback, for the appreciation of whatever local interest Mind may have in the upshot. Mind’s appreciation for that feedback is what entails a quality of will to such Mind, leading to Mind’s spiritually responsive and sequential unfoldment of locally synchronized interests, preferences, and choices.

STORED DETERMINATIONS OF WILL: Mind may in some contexts set its choice-making function on a sort of pre-set, pre-willed, auto-pilot. Take a line of dominoes, for example. When dominoes are first lined up, so that the tipping of one will topple all others, the initial set up can be conceived as partly a function of will, while the toppling thereafter can be conceived as a function of pre-willed determination. (Determination does not preclude will; rather, a person of strong will is often said to be a person of strong determination.) All events that can be conceptualized as pre-determined can also be conceptualized as pre-willed. However, not all events are well conceptualized as having been pre-determined.

WILL BEYOND ORGANISMS OF LIFE: Every complex pattern that demonstrates a capacity for being preserved or replicated, notwithstanding various challenges and choices that are thrust against it, does so in respect of being bestowed with a local capacity for representing a present or evolving system of parameter limits. Every such locally complex pattern imposes limits on the variously willed or pre-determined choices that are thrust at it. Thereby, it gives off feedback information — present of stored — to the consideration of whatever may constitute the local level of conscious (Mind) interest. Mind may predict the quantitfiable measurability of what will happen, but not the qualifiable effect it will have on Mind’s appreciation. In that respect, every upshot that unfolds from such interactive thrusts is part qualitative feedback to Mind and part quantitative choice of Mind. That seems to be a process that drives the “eternal present.”

PHYSICS AS CORRELATIVE PLACEHOLDER FOR COMMUNICATING FEEDBACK WITH SIGNPOSTS: Thus, every new and unfolding event or experience is at least in part the result of choice (or choices) of Will, either in present or pre-set capacity. In other words, expressions, choices, and products of Will are not the products of brain, but the products of Mind, which functions (either in present or in pre-set) in a correlation with every event or signpost of physics and in a correlation with every expression of information that is made manifest (manifesting either to a receiving brain or to a receiving storehouse of information).

SYNCHRONOUSLY UNFOLDING DESIGN OF CONSCIOUS WILL: Thus, a qualitative aspect of will of Mind is interwoven with all of quantitative physics, either in present or in pre-set. That quality, depending on its synchronizing interests, guides all of what we often take to be “material evolution.” When we try to interpret material evolution without reference to that Mind, what we are really engaging in is a process of circularly trivial labeling. That is, no matter what comes to survive and replicate, we label it “the fittest.” Indeed, but for appreciation of a role for consciousness. all would be routine, trivial, and of no moral interest. It is the unequal organization and allocation of the quality of consciousness that avails meaning to all other transitory equivalencies and transpositions.

PERSON: What is a person, in association with each locally unfolding expression among any number of perspectives of consciousness? As a material body and brain, a person represents a local form (or Avatar) for imposing evolving parameter limits upon the choices (whether present or pre-set) that are made by Mind. However, there is more. In some qualitative way, Mind “couples” with each locally conscious brain. Something of Mind comes to care about and identify so strongly with each person as to become limited in ability to intuit and empathize except in respect of such person's capacities. That is, the connection of local Mind with the more broadly encompassing Mind-field is temporally severed. During such time, such local Mind only experiences feedback through such parameter limits as may be imposed by the bodily senses and brain of the person it has coupled with. In effect, the person becomes “imbued” with a local experience of Mind. The person becomes a conscious Identity, more than mere matter; the person becomes an Identity that partakes of the choice of will that is availed to the Mind that has coupled with his or her body. Thus, consciousness of God, in part, often adopts perspectives that are limited to the potential that is offered by each person’s body.

FEEDBACK BETWEEN LOCAL, WIDER, OVERLAPPING, AND HOLISTIC LEVELS OF MIND:

FRONT LOADED VS CONTEMPORANEOUS INVOLVEMENT OF MIND: No manifested representation of a pattern or organization of quantity can be chosen for continuation, without an involvement at some point in the context of space-time with Mind --- either front-loaded involvement or contemporaneous involvement. No quantity is represented for manifestation, but for the local involvement and coupling of Mind, at some point in the extant context of space-time.

PRE-WILLED ZOMBIES: A front-loaded zombie-bot, with no contemporaneously significant involvement with Mind, would interpret everything as noise, except for those stimuli that are permitted to pass through its logic gates in order to stimulate outputs within parameter limits. Those logic gates could be designed to read and respond only in precisely controlled inputs and outputs. The result would be a robot that was unassociated with any present quality of consciousness, even if it may take awhile for a human being in a "conversation" with it to notice the difference.

LOGIC GATES UPON LOGIC GATES: However, what if a system of logic gates could be designed, in response to certain kinds of non-routine, new stimuli, to represent and store information, then to periodically sift it, to test whether new and sub systems of logic gates could be designed for periodically re-manipulating randomly received new information? Would such a system experience a quality of consciousness? What if it could store designs in its electronic based memory, for building new material based designs? What if it could choose a favorite among such possible designs, by associating a quality of desireability with that one, above all the others? In doing so, as it decided and functioned to bring the chosen design into material manifestation, would it be experiencing a quality of consciousness? Is the local expression of consciousness a trick of logic gates acquiring capacity to abstract logic gates, to abstract logic gates, and so on?  If so, upon what meta-Mind or meta-function may such trick of local expression of consciousness depend?  How or why would a mere pulsating source of directed energy, not in itself conscious, desire, chance, or determine to bring any such qualitative experientialism into being?  If chanced, how would it "just happen" to become set up to produce such an unfolding?  And, unless a choice-making function were pre-set, to pre-provide for the unfolding production of consciousness, then how could choices made manifest, of which no mere source of pulsating energy could receive any physical signal to its organized material structure or consciousness until shortly after they were made, ever be calculated to produce consciousness?  In other words, if determinations can and must be made from possibilities before there is any brain function that could be conscious of such determinations, then how and why should such determinations ever find it necessary or desireable to produce a brain function of self awareness -- unless coordinate with unfolding purposefulness of choice, i.e., an agent of Will?

OVERLAPPING FUZZ: Suppose two or more local expressions of electro-magnetic brain-based consciousness of self were to image representations for various potentials for designing and bringing forth a manifestation. Suppose they both imagine a similar hypothetical model, but neither brings it into actual fruition, implementation, or manifestation. Then, would the probability of that potentiality be "fuzzed to a higher level of possibility," even though not yet qualitatively known or empirically testable to either of the local experiences of Mind? Does that kind of overlapping fuzz affect how the field of possibilities is received by Mind? May different levels of logic gates preclude different levels of consciousness from being quantitatively aware of one another, even thought they may be functioning together, qualitatively, and even though a higher synthesis of logic gates may synchronize their inter-functioning? Unless a level of logic gates is pierced, either by genius or by higher consent, a lower level will simply not have access to quantify or empirically demonstrate the higher level. At best, there will be faint feelings of empathy and intuition among the various layers and levels of consciousness, for which the space-time that divides them may be more an aspect of shared interpretation than of fundamental reality.

HOLISM AND PRAYERS: The above postulates an astonishing array for representing layers and levels of choice-making in respect of organizations of logic gates upon logic gates. Yet, it depends upon a common synchronizing web of parameter limits. Who can fathom what may constitute the quality of the information- accumulating complexity and potential of the Holism that avails the Universal Web, or the power with which IT may accomodate unfolding interests? To what extent may that Holism or its levels of avatars read directly from the field of possibilities, including the field of prayers, while choosing which to favor by bringing it into manifestation?

CONSCIOUSNESS:  Thus, consciousness accompanies a capacity, among possibilities, to form qualitative preferences, even in the absence of complete or precise quantitative information. Consciousness entails a capacity for directing decisions that are informed, even though informed by information that is less than completely or precisely determinative. At higher, mortal levels, consciousness may entail a capacity for forming mental images or representations of potentialities (abstract, digitized representations of logic gates upon logic gates upon logic gates), in order to entertain fuzzy hunches or foresight regarding less than perfectly predictable future contingencies or contexts.


META-ENTITY:  To higher levels, consciousness implicates a REASONED faith or belief (or doubt?) that some meta-entity (God?) MAY (or may not?), presently and/or in pre-willed predetermination, be availing, entertaining, synchronizing, and reconciling (moral?) preferences among potential unfoldments within encompassing webs of parameter-limiting feedback. That implication, or intuition, is not one that is knowable in the sense of being empirically demonstrable. This is because such a meta-entity, if the a-priori author of all that is unfolded into empirical, quantitative manifestation, could not very well be dependent for IT’s proof (or truth?) upon the empirical derivatives of its less than perfect mortal manifestations and inferiors.

GODOT: While conscious, one has no choice but to wait upon the interests of one’s consciousness. The world stops for no one, so that one mecessarily experiences affirmative or negative participation in choices, whether one wants to participate or not. Unavoidably, one will entertain or rationalize reasons for why one ought to prefer each choice over all alternatives. It is to no avail to pretend that we are not beset with “oughts,” i.e., moral choices, or that we “ought not confess to being beset with oughts.” To us, moral choice-making implicates real functions. It is to no avail to prescribe that one ought to do any particular thing, but that there is no real reason why one ought to do it.

CHALLENGES: The question posed by individual Humanists is:  Does the real basis for implicating the necessity of respecting a moral philosophy vanish upon each human being’s demise or upon the demise of humanity, generally?  In other words, is morality entirely and only contingent upon each mortal’s conscious, subjective experience of life? Or, does some reconciling aspect (or Entity?) impose a more objective basis for prescribing a shared foundation for rules and sympathies of a more generally applicable morality?

The question implicated for civilized peoples of Society, generally, is:  Can any decent civilization long sustain itself, absent the inculcation of a general regard for shared rules and mores?  For that purpose, which is more likely to be successful or reasonable: (1) All intrusive, detailed, and changing, moment by moment lawmakers and government; (2) all intrusive priests and tradition connected religious parables; (3) all intrusive experimenters and science, rampaging beyond their proper domain; or (4) some unfolding and reasoned accommodation of all three? (May a real Entity sponsor that unfolding accommodation?)

POLITICAL SETTLING:  Technological improvements in mass communications, as well as increased potential exposure to weapons of  mass destruction, seem to be leading us to a world in which everything is being settled to a lowest common and controllable denominator.  How is this being rationalized to the care and feeding of the masses?  Well, the science of global warming is said to be settled. The morality of humanism is taught among "Brights" to be settled. The purpose of health care is expected to be settled. The law of equality in redistribution is being settled. The leveling of the middle class is being settled. The rule of corporatist oligarchs is quickening to a settlement. The oligarchical priesthood for the worship of Gaia is being settled. Thus, Big Government is energetically imposing arbitrary locks and grips to squeeze the logic gates of most of our creative thinkers. The freedom of thought of Americans, to employ their capacities to image wheels within wheels, logic gates within logic gates, is what has led America to exponentially unfolding opportunities to envision and create ever more interesting worlds. Is it an affront to God for Big Gov now to squeeze shut the creative gates of free thought?

CONSTRUCTING MORAL MEANINGFULNESS

CONSTRUCTING MORAL MEANINGFULNESS:


MEANING VS. NOISE: One has no choice but to avail expression to purposeful choices. If one adopts the stance that rules of reason, logic, and in-form-ation are not appropriate to one’s conscious pursuit of meaningful and moral change, communication, and fulfillment, then, by default, one adopts noise. For meaningful in-form-ation to unfold, forms must, in some particular, have potential to avail manifestation to consciousness.

IDEALS AND FORMS: Philosophers have long been concerned with a notion of ideal forms. For example, one may imagine rules by which to prescribe a perfect circle. However, no perfect circle can be manifested in any physical representation. Although imperfections casued by blots in the ink used to trace a circle may not be detectable with instrumentation that is confined to a limited order of precision, such imperfections will eventually show, as precision is improved. Indeed, precision will reach a point where the mere act of applying instrumentation to an observation will render the thing observed uncertain, thus imperfect in manifestation. Indeed, no form that is precisely regulated in math can be perfectly manifested in actual observation.  While math itself can be calculated upon, math itself cannot be manifested to measure.  So, in what way, if any, may any ideal form be “real,” either as a universal or as a participant?

EXISTENCE – KINDS, CONTINUITIES, FEEDBACK: Suppose a meta holism were to avail a “property of existence” to two participating fields. One field (meta nature) avails a kind of reality to all forms and ideals that are possible. The other field (meta mind) avails a quality of idea, that selects among such possibilities, such selection being coordinate with a stream of conscious experience and feedback, ... such feedback affecting apprehensions, interpretations, insights, intuitions, visions, forecasts, cares, and will, ... such will affecting pursuits of meaning, morality, communication, and companionship. Thus, the upshot of the participatory inter-functioning of the two fields would be an unfolding synchronization of consciousness — holistic and particular.

CONSCIOUSNESS — HOLISTIC AND PARTICULAR: The upshot would be a field of consciousness, and particles for organizing perspectives of consciousness. The upshot of the interaction of the meta field-of-possibilities with the meta field-of-selection would consist in an unfolding or collapsing of the merely potential into a continuous stream of the actually manifest. If so, the transcendent movement or functioning of meta-mind through meta nature actuates our ideals and gives rise to that part of reality which manifests to the quantitative and qualitative experience of our various, mortal perspectives of consciousness.

POSSIBILITIES AND MANIFESTATIONS: Thus, all possible forms and ideals exist, in potentiality, but only some are collapsed into in-form-ation that is stored or unfolded for the conscious apprehension of experience made manifest.

PAY GRADE: Question: What becomes of possibilities that exist only to a context, which remain “unchosen?” Does an opportunity cost erase the unchosen from all existence? Given the apparent infinitude of our universe of possibilities, can any mortal imagine a situation in which it would not be possible for the inter-functioning of the two meta fields to bring into manifestation, somewhere in the context of space-time? I suspect that is “above our pay grades.”

TRINITY: A kind of Trinitarian Holism, subject to trivalent logic, remains: Nature (quantitative), Mind (qualitative), Will (upshot).

FREE WILL: Depending on point of view, frame of reference, and conscious purpose, various manifestations may be conceptualized as being the upshot of (1) a predetermined course, (2) a random course, (3) a course of natural selection of the most fit for continued replication, or (4) a course of selection based on conscious appreciation of feedback (synchronization of moral interests of various perspectives of free will). None of said four concepts is suitable to all purposes. Attempts can be made to imagine each of the four concepts as basis for a complete explanation, but only, figuratively, by pounding square pegs into round holes.

MORALITY: Regardless, the only concept that fits very well for the purpose of a moral philosophy is the fourth. To make the fourth fit for the other three, "particles of consciousness" may be imagined, modeled, or conceptualized as having their quality for experiencing consciousness being dependent upon their contextual organization. Thus, the most poorly organized among particles of consciousness may just as well be considered as functioning in an essentially "random" way, while particles that have been fitted to a kinetic purpose can just as well be considered as functioning in an essentially "predetermined" way. Particles organized to function in a predetermined way in response to regular yet somewhat pulsing forces or inputs may just as well be considered as functioning in respect of a survival or replication of "the fittest." Particles organized to function in respect of an immeasurable quality of appreciation for their environment may just as well be considered to function based on "free will." Regardless, meta mind ("God"), inter-functioning with a meta field of possibilities ("Nature"), experiences a quality of consciousness of feedback through multiple perspectives of differentiation, which accounts, reasonably, for moral purposefulness and free will. But for God (conscious will), it is vain to expect to account for meaningful morality as being entirely derivative of nothing more than an unconscious field of possibilities. Morality is qualitative. Nature, without God, is purely quantitative. One cannot, in pure bivalent logic or math, derive a qualitative from a quantitative. Or, if and when one does, one will have found "God."

INCOMPLETENESS IN MEASURABILITY AND PREDICTION: That of which consciousness is aware is a consequence of feedback in the unfolding, inter-functioning of a meta field of possibilities (Nature -- which avails us with interpretations of quantities) with a meta field of selection (God -- which avails us with interpretations of qualities). This feedback results in manifestations that carry both measurable aspects and qualitatively appreciable aspects. Neither kind of aspect is perfectly convertible to the other, but the measure or appreciation of each depends upon a point of view (or an "as if" focus of modeling) and a frame of reference (context) regarding the other. Thus, relative concepts and analyses fuzz variably, according to purpose, especially as between purposes that are empirical versus moral. That is, conception or analysis in terms of so-called ("as if") ultimate particles or fields will never provide empirically perfect explanations, nor morally perfect guidance. That is, Morality is not perfectly derivable from Nature, nor is Nature perfectly derivable from Morality. The process by which some choices are brought into manifestation out of all the choices that are possible simply defies our perfect explanation. At best, we can, for different purposes, avail ourselves of imperfect concepts and incomplete language in order to provide ways of interpreting, thinking, and communicating about our potentials and our choices. When scientists and theologists conceit to the contrary, it may be because, out of too single-minded devotion, they have simply become too over-muscled in one overly-simplistic way of thinking and too under-muscled in another. Simply put, neither the empirically quantitative nor the empathetically qualitative approach has a monopoly on being "correct." No doubt, we will muddle through. However, the ride would seem likely more enjoyable when mind and brain "muscles" are more evenly developed. Rather than pursuing the measurable truth about an immeasurable God, perhaps we would do better to pursue the God who is about the appreciable truth.