Theism and consciousness in light of stellar astronomy

Theism should not take much consolation in the problems which philosophy and neurology face in accounting for the simple fact of consciousness.

Prior to quantum theory, the creationist could take shelter in theism because the evolutionist had no chemical explanation of a sun of solar mass "burning fuel" for billions of years.

But it was chemistry itself that was to receive a new foundation which would permit a nuclear theory of stellar 'evolution'. Neither the subsequent discovery of quasars or black holes or the hypothesizing of dark mater or dark energy have placed this stellar model in question.  Quite the opposite is the case.

The solar story is not trivial : the time for a photon to reach the surface of the Sun from a fusion event in the core of the Sun is astonishing ... as astonishing as the roughly nine minutes to reach the Earth.

With the Hubble use of Cepheid variable stars as a standard, the size of the visible universe became truly astonishing.

We can expect to be just as astonished by an account of the emergence or appearance of "what it is like to be a young crow observing an older crow accomplishing a task" in a universe that at one time did not have the form bird or the substance of individual birds let alone problem-solving birds or the observing of those performances.

The issue is not materialism or mechanism. The double-slit experiment involves no clear commitment to either, but the theories proposed do reveal some surprising mathematical affinities and some very high confirmation of experimental predictions.

Chemistry has no option to return to pre-quanta days and philosophy has no prospect of returning to the "rational soul" of Aristotle or Aquinas — nor is there any hope of animal souls being material while human souls are "rational". That ship has sailed off the end of a flat earth.

See: Thomas Nagel: Mind and Cosmos

---

Delphine Chatouille L'Adoptée (Delphy)

The mind of a cat.

The sound of a spoon in a bowl holds her attention and she may even call and pace about before she is finally allowed to lap up the last traces of milk and such.  Typical.

Today I had a small scoop of vanilla ice cream with a serving of apple-mango streusel: Delphy was in licking the bowl as soon as I put my spoon down.

But I had put the spoon in the bowl, so when she stopped licking, I removed the spoon, exposing more yummy ice cream melt.  No reaction as she sat by the bowl washing.  I made the usual noises of a spoon in the bowl when cleaning up after cereal or ice cream.

Stimulus constancy is not enough?  Delphy walked calmly across the dining room table, hopped to a chair and then down to the floor and on her way.

She was done with that bowl.  She had finished.  Demanding and insistent and persistent pest that she is, she was done and on her way.

Chalk it up to animal behavior Psy201 "distractability" as "failure to emit response" to "ambiguous stimuli".

Stimulus, a goad or prompt to action.

A long stick with a pointed end used for prodding animals. 2. An agent or means of prodding or urging; a stimulus

"attention": concept with a dubious history in psychology; compare "attitude", "awareness","threshold"

The world of the cat is not our world, but a cat-world, and only as typical as a cat will have it.

Quasi-Russian: [ вид ]  now cat you seeing:  seen [kind of] cat which happens here, which does things there.

Harry Frankfurt and non-science in Scientific American on the "Mind"

If you thought the book on "Bullsh*t" was unnecessary, I suggest "Terror Management Theory" as an eye-opener.  It is in sciam on Mind and it has a related documentary film tied to a "foundation".

Three guys who think an author might have been onto something, might have seen society and personality for what they are - essentially are, reduced to the core, the nub.  A bit scarey - (Irus Murdoch has suggested that you can scare yourself just by vividly imaging that your chair is mostly empty space and atoms - and that the atoms are mostly empty space [try not to think of fields and probability waves, just little dots] - but do not try this if you are in early stage of treatment for a schizophrenic break with reality or other psychotic episode.)

An exercise for undergraduates: devise alternate experimental protocols for the judges which relate instead  to some of Ernest Becker's outrageous statements about the weakness of homosexuals, weakness and depression, your moral character as a "lie", frigidity and fetish, your unfaithful spouse, or religion and psychiatry.  Shock them, but not obviously so.  Create a certain unease, a sense of transience, a feeling of a need to resist or fight back.

Exercise: replicate the experiment of the three professors, but tie it to an explanation totally unrelated (best option, be able to give your theory the acronym "TMT" or at least "TM" or perhaps "TNT".