Tag: Consciousness
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A Juxtaposition
The Wordsworth poem reminds me that we are all made of ‘star dust’. We’re made of exactly the same atoms as everything else in the universe. These atoms of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, calcium, phosphorus, sulphur, potassium, sodium, chlorine and magnesium were created millions and billions of years ago in the nuclear furnaces of massive,…
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Awareness, Consciousness, Experience, Mind
Is there anything we can be absolutely certain is ‘real’? The answer to that question is, yes! There is one thing, and it is consciousness. Always however, and especially here, we need to define our terms, lest there be any misunderstandings. By ‘consciousness’ I mean subjective experience, whether of thoughts, of feelings, or of sights,…
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Let me tell you where I am (ii)
Borrowing from ‘Dragons’ Den’ tradition, in my previous post I decided that “I’m out” as far as the phrase “Intelligent Design” is concerned if it’s implying that, at the source of all that is, there’s a ‘Personal Designer’. ‘God’, for me, is more like an evolving trail and error ‘process’. It can’t be a ‘once…
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Let me tell you where I am
To borrow the oft-repeated, regulation ‘death blow’ verdict from ‘Dragons’ Den’, “I’m out” as far as the phrase “Intelligent Design” is concerned. It’s too tied-in to fundamentalist and, in my view, obscurantist religious views. “I’m in”, however, as far as the phrase “intelligence and design” is concerned. To me, “Intelligent Design” (especially with capital letters)…
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Let’s get ‘Real’ (ii) ‘The Lord of the Dance’
My previous post was about Materialism, which the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines as “the theory or belief that nothing exists except matter”. My point was that Materialism, arguably, ‘doesn’t have very much in it’, since matter is made up of atoms that are 99.99% ‘empty space’! The truth of the matter (!) is that…
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So what do I now believe in?
As a blogger, often about ‘matters religious’, I’m prompted to ask myself, what does religion now mean for me? Its most significant meaning is no longer an institutional one. I was once the minister of a church with several hundred attenders. Having a ‘way with words’, spoken as well as written, I enjoyed the experience…
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Jung, Archetypes, Arts, Religion
Arising from recent dialogue with a friend, I’m posting this one-off to try to clarify my thinking about Carl Jung, archetypes, the arts and religion. In Jung’s view, the human psyche has three different but interacting ‘levels’, which should not be thought of as separate ‘compartments’. There is consciousness, which enables us to perceive, and…
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Common sense? V
After four posts suggesting that ‘common sense’ can be deceiving, I want to conclude this series by suggesting an area in which ‘common sense’ may be spot on. One of today’s most obstinate mysteries is the origin and nature of consciousness, especially in the form of self-awareness. We humans, at present, are the most advanced…
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Consciousness, Mind and Whirlpools
My previous post was about Panpsychism, a long held, newly resurgent view of mind, consciousness or awareness. Consciousness, I suggested, should neither be regarded as an illusion, nor as miraculously ’emerging’ from unconscious matter. Rather, it should be viewed as ‘built in’ with the bricks of the universe – a ‘given’, like photons, electrons and…
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