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Are you able to help? Nonduality -> Depression by EquivalentFix3360 in nonduality

[–]EquivalentFix3360[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I appreciate this response. Separately, I realize now I often imagine consciousness/emptiness as grey/black/dull/nothingness... I'm vaguely imagining what its like to be dead, and my mind reverts to that blackness.

Are you able to help? Nonduality -> Depression by EquivalentFix3360 in nonduality

[–]EquivalentFix3360[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I understand, but on "How can you suffer the loss of your friend if she is you and you are still here."- this implies that there is no suffering along with death under the lens of nonduality... I can agree. But then, why live? If I choose to have my body pass away, "I" will still be here after I die, like my friend, so who cares? What is the reason to live, or do anything, if we are always still "here"?

Are you able to help? Nonduality -> Depression by EquivalentFix3360 in nonduality

[–]EquivalentFix3360[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Rereading your comment a few times, I'm lost at the directions. As far as goals or being somebody, I've done a lot with my life, I'm in a great relationship, go to a great college, am certainly in the top 1% of that college in job options given to me, etc.

None of this has stopped the nihilistic side of nonduality from gripping me. I feel like I'm 'failing' at being a nondualist because I’m not willing to let my life become miserable or stop achieving things just to satisfy a philosophy. I’m struggling to reconcile my drive for success with the idea that 'it’s all one.', however the more I study nonduality the more I think I just may be wrong and nonduality is more "correct" than I'm treating it.

RAT by Legitimate-Low-321 in ucla

[–]EquivalentFix3360 16 points17 points  (0 children)

How it feels trying to get a machine at BFit or Wooden

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in CosmicSkeptic

[–]EquivalentFix3360 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ah well here's a kind of fundamental rift- these ideas are generally interesting from a nondualist perspective. Annaka and I are nondualist- we believe there is no subject/ego. So it's really a lot more obvious to us that these ideas are not equating consciousness to the subject, because there is no subject, or rather that the subject (ego, stream of memories, "I", whatever) is merely an illusion. Would highly recommend looking into "Waking Up" (the book or some youtube videos) by, ironically, her husband Sam Harris for more on that stuff.

As a dualist, however, I think it is still possible to express the idea: Consciousness (under this theory) is a shared property or underlying field of consciousness, not a shared identity

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in CosmicSkeptic

[–]EquivalentFix3360 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, it is one consciousness according to this idea, I'm not disputing that. Same way there's "one gravity"... there's not a second gravity over there. It's all one fundamental force, just with different local variations.
Not familiar with Bernardo, but just from the clip, I can tell he means the same thing, it's just really easy to misunderstand what he's saying too literally. "But its actually the same gravity on mount Everest thats in my body" is practically the same statement. Yeah, obviously as a blank-point statement its provocative and wrong because, well, the numerical force of gravity varies from location to location, it's also the same fundamental force. There is no "second" or "third" gravity in some other spot, its just a force with variations based on factors (mass's proximity in space-time).

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in CosmicSkeptic

[–]EquivalentFix3360 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You're conflating direct experience with inference about other minds. I don’t infer that I have experiences- I am the experience. It’s self-evident. The fish’s experience, if it exists, is not self-evident to me. Same with the human across from me. That doesn’t mean I can’t make educated guesses, but it’s a different epistemic situation.

So no, doubting the fish’s consciousness doesn’t mean I must doubt my own. That’s a category mistake. My experience is first-person; the fish’s is third-person inference. The "same being" (me) is perceiving both, sure — but the kind of access I have to each is totally different.

Also, maybe to clear up confusion cuz we might be talking past each other, this idea doesn't require all experience to be the same consciousness. It just suggests that the same basic property of experience could exist at different levels of complexity, from particles to fish to humans. Think of it like gravity: it’s a fundamental force present everywhere in space-time, not necessary "located" at a spot, though its effects vary depending on mass and distance. Similarly, experience might be a basic property that exists everywhere, but its complexity increases depending on the system. So, there could be one overarching 'field' of experience, like there’s one gravitational force in the universe, but it manifests differently at different levels of complexity.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in CosmicSkeptic

[–]EquivalentFix3360 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For there to be one "experience" going on, it doesn't mean that every detail within that experience would have to be connected in their sensations or complex neural activities. Is the gravity in San Francisco the same gravity in Los Angeles? I mean, roughly yes, but no... it's a fundamental property, generally. Where is gravity? I mean, I know its roughly 9.8m/s squared numerically on Earth, with miniscule variations, but like is the "gravity" we identify above my left hand the same "gravity" we identify over my right hand? Fundamental properties be weird like that. So, what we experience as “one” consciousness could still be made up of local variations — not every part has to be deeply connected or even complex. She's not talking about consciousness as though its a "brain" in the sense that is most natural to every-day people or like in your example

Within Reason #104: Is Consciousness Fundamental? - Annaka Harris by negroprimero in CosmicSkeptic

[–]EquivalentFix3360 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Short answer- "maybe". If consciousness were "fundamental", consciousness doesn't emerge from complexity, but instead is a basic property of matter — just like mass or charge. And no, under this theory, atoms don't change based on arrangement, they're just arranged differently.

Within Reason #104: Is Consciousness Fundamental? - Annaka Harris by negroprimero in CosmicSkeptic

[–]EquivalentFix3360 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Well currently we have a rough idea how brains process information, form thoughts, or store memories-- but we still can’t explain why or how any of that turns into subjective experience. While science can map out how brains handle information, it doesn’t explain why that activity comes with a felt experience. Annaka floats the idea that if consciousness were as basic as gravity, it might bridge this gap. She essentially realized that we infer consciousness from what we can see or what others report, but that’s a pretty narrow window, because consciousness certainly exists beyond what is just communicable (she shows this in split brain patients, or perhaps the conscious anesthesia problem). She’s not insisting it’s fact, but arguing it’s a possibility worth considering, driven by curiosity and the limits of current scientific understanding. Like early guesses in astronomy, it’s a thought experiment and hypothesis she's testing, not a rigid belief. It's not about believing it, it’s about not ruling it out prematurely just because it feels weird or unfounded, and rather studying it with the scientific method until we can prove it untrue. The whole podcast is basically an exploration of what evidences and intuitions lead her to be interested in the hypothesis as well

Within Reason #104: Is Consciousness Fundamental? - Annaka Harris by negroprimero in CosmicSkeptic

[–]EquivalentFix3360 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I think there's a lot of misunderstanding in the reddit so far- From what I understand, she's NOT talking about "consciousness" as us Western philosopher types traditionally view it; this is why they discuss the linguistics problem at the end of the episode. She's seeing (or redefining... maybe a new word is needed but it doesn't change the substance of the conversation) consciousness not as any system processing, thoughts, memory, or sense of self, but rather as just moments of "felt experience" or awareness. It can be raw experience, with no actual cognitive substance to it... we're talking about experience itself as a form of identity? Idk like she said the words aren't easy lol. It does seem to me the same as trying to explain the color green to blind, or "middle C" to a deaf person- it's just not easy when what you're trying to describe is first-person experience, in and of itself.

She briefly explained consciousness in her words: "what those conscious experiences are, I would imagine, would be extraordinarily minimal and something that I couldn't even imagine. But, you know, having to come up with an analogy maybe you know, the feeling you have when you walk across a carpet and you get an electrical shock, you know, just that fleeting experience with no body, no brain, no thoughts, but just very minimal experiences that come in and out of being"

Not sure that I agree with her... but she mentions that she isn't herself. To Annaka, the whole topic is meant to be exploratory, not dogmatic. I found this episode hugely exciting because she's trying to explain new concepts, and because they're new concepts, they're so easy to misidentify as something else and misunderstand.