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Degrees of Consciousness
Degrees of Consciousness “Consciousness is the water we swim in, and in our everyday lives we have almost as little distance on it as fish do of the sea. We can’t ever climb out of the water and stand on its shore .”[1] Michael Pollan In his excellent book about consciousness, A World Appears, author…
Keep readingArtificial Intelligence and Consciousness, Part 6
Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness, Part 6 “Nothing living, conscious, and full of love can arise from the dead binary codes of artificial intelligence.”[1] Ivan Antic Before moving on from this exploration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and consciousness, I want to speculate about how the basic architecture of AI can provide an imperfect model for a…
Keep readingArtificial Intelligence and Consciousness, Part 5
Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness, Part 5 “Nothing living, conscious, and full of love can arise from the dead binary codes of artificial intelligence.”[1] Ivan Antic The book I published earlier this year, Crucifying Christianity, Resurrecting the Way, brought an unfamiliar twist I had not experienced before. I was asked whether I used AI in its…
Keep readingArtificial Intelligence and Consciousness, Part 4
Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness, Part 4 “Nothing living, conscious, and full of love can arise from the dead binary codes of artificial intelligence.”[1] Ivan Antic Artificial Intelligence (AI) may not be a threat to consciousness, per se, but it may become (and perhaps already is) a threat in our quest to be. The threat does…
Keep readingArtificial Intelligence and Consciousness, Part 3
Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness, Part 3 “Consciousness is the capacity to have subjective experience – there being something it feels like to be you.”[1] ChatGPT The past couple of weeks I have intentionally minimized the abilities of AI as it relates to consciousness, which I do not believe it is capable of attaining, at least…
Keep readingArtificial Intelligence and Consciousness, Part 2
Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness, Part 2 “Consciousness is the capacity to have subjective experience – there being something it feels like to be you.”[1] ChatGPT In 1440 CE the printing press was invented, which eventually allowed for the mass production of printed books for the first time in history. Of course, due in part to…
Keep readingArtificial Intelligence and Consciousness
Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness “Consciousness is the capacity to have subjective experience – there being something it feels like to be you.”[1] ChatGPT Is artificial intelligence (AI) conscious? Can it become so? I was discussing these questions with my friend and author, Bryan Welch. He, in his sometimes-annoyingly direct manner, said, “Why don’t you ask…
Keep readingLevels of Consciousness, Part 4
Levels of Consciousness, Part 4 “The key to growth is the introduction of higher dimensions of consciousness into our awareness.”[1] Lao Tzu In order to better understand how consciousness may exist in levels of awareness, only some of which are perceptible to us, it can be helpful to consider other, more familiar aspects of reality…
Keep readingLevels of Consciousness, Part 3
Levels of Consciousness, Part 3 “The key to growth is the introduction of higher dimensions of consciousness into our awareness.”[1] Lao Tzu In order to place universal or divine consciousness into context, it is important to understand that all awareness is contained within the universal consciousness. Our daily awareness, or our reality, is but a…
Keep readingLevels of Consciousness, Part 2
Levels of Consciousness, Part 2 “The key to growth is the introduction of higher dimensions of consciousness into our awareness.”[1] Lao Tzu One of my first formal exposures to levels of consciousness occurred in an introductory Psychology class in college with Sigmund Freud’s model of the psyche. He named three mental foci as the id,…
Keep readingLevels of Consciousness
Levels of Consciousness “The key to growth is the introduction of higher dimensions of consciousness into our awareness.”[1] Lao Tzu Our life on earth can be likened to the intersection of a horizontal line with a vertical line – a cross, if you will. The horizontal line represents the passing of our days. What we…
Keep readingThe Perplexities of Consciousness, Part 2
The Perplexities of Consciousness, Part 2 “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”[1] Max Planck As we lay the groundwork for an exploration into consciousness, I find it interesting to ponder the…
Keep readingThe Perplexities of Consciousness
The Perplexities of Consciousness “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”[1] Max Planck What is consciousness? Where does it originate? Where does it exist? What is the relationship between consciousness, the mind,…
Keep readingBlessedness and Woe, Reprise
Blessedness and Woe, Reprise Blessed are you…; and woe to you… If there is an overriding lesson in the Beatitudes, found in Matthew 5, and in the Blessings and Woes, found in Luke 6, it is that life is full of blessings. And life is full of woes, at least from an emotional point of…
Keep readingThe Woes, Part 2
The Woes, Part 2 “Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.”[1] “Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will weep and mourn.”[2] These passages are the second and third of the four Woes found in the sixth chapter of Luke. At first glance they seem to indicate that…
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