Are you talking about the part where he writes about integrated information being conscious as a self contained system with no need for anything to exist outside of the system? What you lay out below is very different, on my reading, from what Tononi sets out. Tononi talked about different degrees of consciousness depending on how much information is being integrated - but remember in IIT, integrating information is not a path to conciousness, it is consciousness.
No, I was not referring to that concept. I will quote from his paper "From the Phenomenology to the Mechanisms of Consciousness: Integrated Information Theory 3.0":
Thus, IIT predicts that, even if all the neurons in a main complex were inactive (or active at a low baseline rate), they would still generate consciousness as long as they are ready to respond to incoming spikes. An intriguing possibility is that a neurophysiological state of near-silence may be approximated through certain meditative practices that aim at reaching a state of "pure" awareness without content.
This corollary of IIT contrasts with the common assumption that neurons can only contribute to consciousness if they are active in such a way that they can "signal" or "broadcast" the information they represent and "ignite" fronto-pariental networks. This is because, in IIT, information is not in the message that is broadcasted by an element, but in the shape of the MICS that is specificed by a complex.
-Page 17-18 (emphasis added). Link to full paper:
http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003588
Arouet said:
Ok, so let's accept this.
First of all, when I wrote "if we can't grasp it", I hadn't caught your dinstinction between intellectually grasping it and grasping it in other ways. For my point I don't think it matters.
For something to have meaning to you, you have to grasp that meaning, no matter which "you" you are.
I would agree with you. The meaning is only grasped through the direct experience itself, but it is not something that can be fully grasped intellectually, or fully expressed through language since it is an experience. In a way, it would be similar to, say, trying to explain the smell of cinnamon to someone that has never smelled it before.
Another example is the NDE. Many of us here have read a lot about NDEs and have an idea of what the experience might be like, and for some of us it may have changed our views or beliefs to a degree. But now compare that to someone that has actually
experienced an NDE--these people have their lives changed essentially
permanently. The attempt at an intellectual grasp is really nothing like the experience.
Arouet said:
You're positing an idealistic Bernardo-style Mind-at-Large base unitary concsiousness that splits itself into many localised centers of consciousness. When talking about meaning, I think we have to approach it from each entity. That is MAL will have its own meaning, as will each localisation.
What you seem to be describing here is individual localisations keying into the meaning that MAL has of itself and for each localisation.
The meanings would not be split because any time a being reaches that state described in the quote above by Tononi, and described in mystical texts, it would be "unified" with the single consciousness. "Unified" is a bad word, since everything is always unified, but it's more that obstacles to that realization are removed, allowing for the direct experience, and in this case, this is a direct experience of reality compared to how it is normally experienced through the senses and mind.
Now each individual would come back and try to
express the experience differently, which I think you see in various religious texts, and within Hinduism especially because of it's lack of structure. In Hinduism you see canonical texts like the Upanishads that are from various authors and each one has a unique way of expressing their experience in words. This wouldn't mean that the meaning they experienced is different, but rather that their attempts to express it differ.
The other thing is that I am careful to say that the unitary consciousness would have it's own meaning. I haven't read Bernardo's book yet (although I have it sitting on my desk), so I am not familiar with the exact usage of his MAL idea, but to me the unitary consciousness itself doesn't have it's own meaning, but rather through us, and through that direct experience, there can exist meaning.
Arouet said:
So accepting this as MAL's meaning for us (as instruments of knowning itself) what is the impact on the localisation (ie: what is the impact on us.)
Many: won't have had the mystical experience that you describe, this direct access to MAL's meaning - in which case they will either have:
1) heard about MAL's meaning through some other means (reading about it or being told about it)
2) have come up with the similar idea just through intellectual means
3) have no conception of it at all.
Of those who have no conception of it it simply won't play a meaningful role in their lives (life being defined I think as our incarnation here on earth).
Of those who do have a conception of it, some might be on board, and it serves as a driving force for them (which I think is really what we mean when we ask: what gives your life meaning).
Some might be appalled by it, or indifferent to it - rejectiing it as a driving force for their lives.
We could lay out inumerable different reactions - therefore innumerable different meanings.
My point above is: just because MAL has a particular meaning for us, should we localizations necessarily adopt MAL's meaning - or can each localization have their own meaning for their lives?
I do not accept the idea of MAL having some meaning that is imposed on us. Through the conscious state described above, the experience is that of unity. There is no MAL imposing a meaning on individual beings in that state. There is no transfer of information or meaning. It is simply a state that is experienced and through us gains meaning.
But what you described is basically what you see within Hinduism, where mystics have a prominent role, and many texts attempt to describe their experiences for the benefit of others, yet of course you run into the problems you mentioned. Within Hinduism you have schools that are over 2000 years old that reject these ideas and claim that everything is a result of matter. This carvaka school is essentially an old materialist school. But what can you do?
However, I do think that it is possible that science could eventually point us in this direction to reduce the disagreement and rejection. What if through quantum theory, IIT, parapsychology, NDE research, reincarnation research, etc., there begins to be a scientific consensus that consciousness
is fundamental and unitary? And that the direct experience is not only possible, but
scientifically verifiable through analysis of qualia spaces ala IIT? If specific shapes in qualia space could be pinned down, and the people coming back from that state report the subjective experience of nirvana (or nirvikalpa Samadhi), then we now have much more significant evidence to support this. I am not saying that this
will happen, but rather thinking that
if this were to happen, it could have an enormous influence on peoples' lives in the same way science has had an enormous influence today to create ideas of atheism and no meaning.
And what if technologies could be developed to help achieve these states? And through scientific support, negative beliefs about the possibility of this occurring could also be reduced, which would be conductive to achieving these states. Perhaps through better scientific understanding of these states and what is actually experienced (again assuming this is correct), then these states could become more accessible and many more people could then have the experience.
Arouet said:
For example, should I have to worry about how I'm contributing to MAL's expansion of knowledge about itself. If I'm just a cog, never really doing anything extroadinary, never really doing anything novel. Just living my life. Should I feel guilt and bad about myself because I haven't really pushed MAL's knowledge of itself further? Should I constantly be seeking novelty? Should I value my life primarily in terms of knowledge generation?
I am going to borrow a line from one of my favorite mystics, Ramana Maharshi: Realize that state first and then ask those questions. The point is that these questions arise from your current intellectual perspective, but with the direct experience of the unitary consciousness, the questions will not even arise.
Some might say that this is dodging the question, but in the case of Ramana Maharshi, he claims to have experienced this state, and his life seems to indicate that it probably was genuine, and he says that these questions are essentially "answered" by the experience. To me it makes more sense for some deep meaning of the universe to have this sort of nature. Does anyone really expect that digging deep into the nature of reality, we would then come back with some meaning like "the meaning of life is to love" and then be like, 'oh, cool, so that's the meaning'?
Arouet said:
For that matter, won't people interpret how to contribute in different ways? And isn't it possible that we contribute to MAL's knowledge of itself no matter what we do? In which case, how does it serve in a meaningful way?
This isn't an argument against the scenario you painted. I'm just questioning what role it plays in terms of giving our lives meaning.
It's not about accumulating knowledge or information. Once the experience is had, the actions will take care of themselves, as will the questions of meaning.
Now this is just my idea and I could be wrong. But like I said before, I hope to at least create thought that goes beyond the normal subjectively created or externally imposed intellectual meanings that could be found on fortune cookies.