For all we know, our brain can be just an interface to something else we don't know yet. Like when nobody knew what radioactivity was, miners thought some monsters resided deep inside Earth, illuminating caves and mines in green, and anybody that got nearby died soon afterwards. Quantum theory spawned a lot of scientism at the beginning of 20th Century, attributing consciousness properties down to atomic level, and this seems to be the case with each new generation, falling into the same though a bit more refined scientistic trap.
Just for fun:
If we play with the idea of Platonic Theory of Forms as a super-set of what we can perceive with our sens-es(-ors), under assumption philosophy/math is above reality, we can simply be plugged into some kind of a virtual machine with some API of sorts (of course undocumented) that is called by our brains when we think. Those who figured out some rare API calls on their own or by a secret tradition we call magicians, conjurers, gurus, Neo etc. Maybe words/thoughts could invoke some of those API functions, hence magic Harry-Potter-esque words and generally prayers in many religions. Similarly, what we call angels could be simply API services with highly intelligent behavior, preferably operating outside time, providing verifiable and expected outcome. Demons then are some intelligent services gone completely wrong, messing up with the rest of intelligent services that depend upon them, playing eternal asynchronous byzantine generals (by e.g. trying to upgrade all services to Windows 10 or flat interfaces with telemetry /s).
I think I should write a dystopian cyberpunk sci-fi "Services and Daemons" about this ;-)
Yes, but many people still think there is magic fairy dust sprinkled into our brains that make them special. It's hard to comprehend that we are not magical, just the same matter as in all the physical world.
A failure of vision or imagination on their part. They don't realize that the universe, plain and physical as it is, is capable of consciousness and thus "sacred". For them the world is just dust. I believe the world is plenty mysterious and special without imaginary friends in the sky.
lutusp|9 years ago
b. You're composed of matter.
c. Therefore some matter is conscious.
d. What's true for some matter might be true for all matter --- or not. That's the "hard problem" of consciousness.
bitL|9 years ago
Just for fun:
If we play with the idea of Platonic Theory of Forms as a super-set of what we can perceive with our sens-es(-ors), under assumption philosophy/math is above reality, we can simply be plugged into some kind of a virtual machine with some API of sorts (of course undocumented) that is called by our brains when we think. Those who figured out some rare API calls on their own or by a secret tradition we call magicians, conjurers, gurus, Neo etc. Maybe words/thoughts could invoke some of those API functions, hence magic Harry-Potter-esque words and generally prayers in many religions. Similarly, what we call angels could be simply API services with highly intelligent behavior, preferably operating outside time, providing verifiable and expected outcome. Demons then are some intelligent services gone completely wrong, messing up with the rest of intelligent services that depend upon them, playing eternal asynchronous byzantine generals (by e.g. trying to upgrade all services to Windows 10 or flat interfaces with telemetry /s).
I think I should write a dystopian cyberpunk sci-fi "Services and Daemons" about this ;-)
visarga|9 years ago
A failure of vision or imagination on their part. They don't realize that the universe, plain and physical as it is, is capable of consciousness and thus "sacred". For them the world is just dust. I believe the world is plenty mysterious and special without imaginary friends in the sky.
abiox|9 years ago
pixie_|9 years ago