Well rather than drop it, perhaps you can explain in really simple words that I am bound to fully understand, what you meant by
Can a non-sentient consciousness exist?
I am sentient (I hope), and I can spawn something that "completely obeys its inbuilt patterns and regularities; for it , there is no possibility for free will", only I usually call it a computer program. I think we need to be very clear about the dividing line between computer programs and consciousness.
I think that physics exhibits the tendency to spawn fantastically complicated, non-intuitive theories based on very limited data, and unfortunately some areas of non-material thinking are going the same way. What I'd say to physicists who claim to detect particles that only last for 10^-25 sec, is to beware of escaping into a fantasy land fuelled by very shaky data, and I guess I would say the same about Bernardo's ideas.
IMHO we (everyone interested in the larger reality) really are at the very beginnings of studying non-material realms, and if we start building 'non-material string theory' we will get nowhere.
David
Okay. I'll try again. I said:
Non-sentient entities are ideations of a different stripe in that, whilst still in NSRC's (MAL's) consciousness, they completely obey its inbuilt patterns and regularities; for them, there is no possibility for free will.
The theory is that M@L is aware, but not aware that it is aware; so it's a non-self-reflective consciousness (NSRC). M@L simply
is, and happens for whatever reason to manifest itself according to inbuilt, innate rules. It's a bit like us being in a state of deep sleep, when
we are aware, but not aware that we're aware; yet we're still able to carry out innate internal organ functions such as breathing, pumping blood, producing urine and digesting food, etc. Psychologists might think in terms of being "unconscious", but as long as we're alive, we're never really unconscious. Rather, when in deep sleep, we're aware, yet unaware that we're aware.
Again, analogising, M@L might be thought of as having dreams. These are what I am terming its thoughts or ideations: they are wherein we exist as SRCs (dissociated alters of M@L). It seems to our perception that the non-sentient elements of M@L's dreams are concrete and real -- "things" like tables and chairs, our bodies and those of other organisms, planets, stars, galaxies, and so on. We have plenty of theories about what's going on, and the materialists think of things, ultimately, in terms of particles and forces: but that's just a model that happens to help us with our technologies -- think of scientific theories as modern versions of ancient myths, but rather more useful because based on testable notions of logic and rationality.
What M@L "dreams" seems to us, in our ordinary waking state, to be reality; these dreams are permeated by its patterns and regularities, i.e. the "things" that are studied in science, especially physics. What it dreams seems to come into being; we may sometimes think in terms of its having a conscious will, and of it purposely creating real "things".
At any rate, modern science tends to take things literally: for it, there really are particles and forces, and thinking this seems to have proved itself in so many ways in technology. There's so much consistency and predictability in M@Ls dreams: so, the thinking goes, what else could they be but actual, literal reality? What need do we have of M@L or a God?
All seemed fine, with reality being exactly what it seemed to be, until the advent of quantum theory, which has well and truly upset the apple cart and led to quite a number of physicists speaking in almost mystical terms about the nature of reality and how it seems to depend on consciousness. Does the moon exist when we aren't looking at it? Maybe not...
You say:
"I am sentient (I hope), and I can spawn something that "completely obeys its inbuilt patterns and regularities; for it , there is no possibility for free will", only I usually call it a computer program. I think we need to be very clear about the dividing line between computer programs and consciousness.
Human beings certainly seem to be able to create things, just as M@L seems to. But just because you can use analogous language doesn't mean you are talking about the same processes: you can't necessarily project your way of thinking about reality onto M@L. As an alter SRC, it's not unnatural for you to do that, or to conceive of universal consciousness also being an SRC, but it ain't necessarily so. The only way we can think seems to be self-reflectively; it's very difficult to think in terms of an NSRC apparently "unconsciously" creating something that seems to be an SRC, but nonetheless, that is my understanding of BK's thesis.
That said, if M@L
were an SRC, then it would think like we do, and its creations would be just very much more limited versions of itself -- and maybe be regarded as its playthings, with which it could do whatever it wanted in a fairly arbitrary way. Which is essentially the Abrahamic conception of God around which such religions are constructed. And then, we have seemingly insurmountable problems about the nature of evil and why a good God would allow evil to exist. The thing about SRCs is that by their very nature they
have to have free will: one can't be an alter with SRC unless one has free will; otherwise, one would be a completely meaningless, deterministic robot following fixed rules, just as are computers.
In the Abrahamic conception of an SRC God, He's a very much more intelligent being who has to plan out all of our destinies in an essentially deterministic way; there would be very little scope for any individual acts of free will. But to us SRCs, it seems that we
do have free will: there seems nothing to stop any of us deciding to perform the most atrocious acts. What prevents that, we put down to having a
conscience, an innate sense of right and wrong, a morality.
What I put having a conscience down to is the fact that at some level we are dimly aware of our origin within the NSRC of M@L. We are made of the selfsame "stuff" as it, and M@L would hardly do anything to harm itself. What we call "love" could be quite simply M@L's entirely natural propensity not to harm itself -- I mean, why would it? On occasions that we harm ourselves, most normal people can sense that they have done "wrong" and feel bad about that, or may sometimes have to suppress such a feeling to justify their actions.
M@L isn't (yet at any rate) a wholly SRC, but maybe one can think of it as being able to share an interface with SRCs: the interface provided by our perceptions, something akin to a "Markov blanket". Perhaps it is via this interface that it might be able to experience, vicariously, our SRCs, and gradually "will into being" changes in those of its "dream ideations" we think of as animate.
If so, just maybe, M@L is gradually evolving into something more than it presently is, and relies on the evolution of SRCs to do that. In effect, we could be "organs" for its own evolution.