Musings from Jay (blog site permanently frozen 11/05/2024 morning)

This essay is roughly in the realm of epistemology (closest I could find in philosophy). It describes the “algorithm” I use to acquire knowledge. Conversing with friends is not a knowledge acquisition exercise but an exercise in having fun or a social interaction!! Information is strings of zeros and ones. Knowledge is information which is the closest you can get to the truth. How do you know if a result, finding, or statement is true? You do that by examining the source and method and judging your confidence in that. You are not going to independently ascertain it. You accept it if you accept the source and method used in arriving at it. Logic has an extremely solid foundation, and you can accept a logical statement or reasoning. Science is based on the scientific method which is an extremely solid foundation, and you can accept that. Political science and economic science are also sciences and can be accepted. Math has an extremely solid foundation and can be accepted. Your sense...

A key reference is Prof Daniel N Robinson of Oxford University.  What is self-consciousness? What is it like to be the subject of the experience (thinking, desire, feelings, etc)? Can we ever know what it is like to be somebody else - say a bat or even another person? There are many dimensions to a study of consciousness (like evolutionary perspective, neurological perspective, philosophical perspective, and psychological perspective). Here I will focus on only philosophical aspects - primarily a western philosophy perspective (eastern philosophy perspective is very different). The views here are not harmonized with views from other dimensions.  There is a difference between unreflective and reflective consciousness. The reflective conscious experience humans experience invariably includes self-consciousness, but also the focus is the self as the subject. But what or who is this self? One line of thought is that many things change about us from moment to moment and there shoul...

I have written quite a bit about physics and the universe and to some extent on creation. In science there is a clear separation between the observer and the observed (in this instance the universe). I have talked about the observed, but not at all about the observer. We perceive the universe through our senses and distinct from our senses is an “I”. Who is this “I”? I understand within psychology, there are many concepts that deal with the notion of self as in self-concept, self-image, self-esteem, self-control, self-regulation, and more recently ideas involving mindfulness. If you would just like to see what psychology has to say on self, below are three references. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/archive?search=self&section=1&_wrapper_format=html&page=0 https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/what-matters-most/201306/top-10-things-most-people-don-t-know-about-mindfulness https://mindfulhawaii.org/ A summary of various notions of self in western and eastern philosophy...

  Most of this material is from the National Institute of Health web site.  Are animals conscious? If so, when did consciousness evolve?  Evolutionary biology forms a cornerstone of the life sciences and thus the neurosciences, yet the emergence of consciousness during the timeline of evolution remains opaque. It has  become  clear that consciousness must have a point of emergence during evolution and that point likely occurred before  Homo sapiens .  There are many dimensions to a study of consciousness (like evolutionary perspective, neurological perspective, philosophical perspective, and psychological perspective). Here I will focus on only evolutionary aspects. The views here are not harmonized with views from other dimensions.  Phenomenal consciousness is subjective experience itself, whereas access consciousness is that which is available to other cognitive processes (such as working memory or verbal report). Thus, the scientist ...

This is the highlight of an article from the economist that I thought was interesting.  The greatest question posed in science is what is consciousness? "I think, therefore I am." Rene Descartes’ aphorism has become a cliche. As Descartes observation suggests, a conscious being knows he/she is conscious. But he cannot know that any other being is. Consciousness is subjective. Other apparently conscious individuals might be zombies programmed to behave as if they were conscious, without actually being so (though for other humans it is farfetched to believe so). It gets even muddier with other species. Are chimpanzees conscious? Dogs? Codfish? Bees? It is hard to know how to ask them in a meaningful way. Blindsight is an interesting neurological disorder - it happens when blindness is caused due to certain damage to visual cortex in the brain. Those who have blindsight have no conscious awareness of being able to see. They are nevertheless able to point to, and even grasp, ...

  The Greeks tied theology, science, and philosophy together. But later around the time of Newton, (and especially after the work of Bertrand Russell) physics became not an explanation of nature (which was philosophy and theology), but a mathematically accurate description of natural phenomenon and the interconnectedness of natural phenomenon. It became a self-contained discipline, borrowing tool of logic and math (which are parts of philosophy) to accurate describe reality. When two or more natural phenomenon was connected branches of physics merged. When a description of a natural phenomenon raised new questions, a branch of physics was spawned off. For example, mechanics, gravity, and thermodynamics merged as Newton outlined the laws of gravity and motion and showed gravitation motion and mechanical motion are the same and Maxwell showed that thermodynamics was due to motion of molecules. Optics, Electricity and Magnetism merged when Maxwell showed the relationship between elect...