Posted inBooks Consciousness

What is it like to be you? Impossible to know.

I bought a book written by Sam Harris' wife, Annaka Harris, because the title appealed to me  (Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of Mind), and I wanted to see if she'd disagree with her husband -- a noted atheist neuroscientist whose Waking Up guided meditations I listen to every morning via an iPhone app. As I suspected, this little (110 pages) book didn't contain much that I didn't already know. But Harris did discuss consciousness in an appealing fashion, and had an interesting take on the possibility of panpsychism.  Here's how she distinguishes between prescientific notions of…
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Posted inConsciousness Reality Science

Science is our best guide to a possible supernatural reality

Here's another comment from David C. Lane on a recent post of mine that makes so much sense, I'm sharing it even before I've even lunch. Sometimes my hunger for transmitting truth is greater than my stomach's yearning for food.  Didn't someone  once say, man does not live by bread alone? (or Trader Joe's meatless chick'n tenders). Lane talks about his Remainder Conjecture in which supernatural claims should only be accepted after a rigorous examination of them through the lens of science. This fits with David Hume's observation, which I wrote about yesterday, that we have a tremendous amount of…
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Posted inBuddhism Consciousness Spiritual practice/meditation

Sam Harris shows my meditation is on the right spiritual track

There's many forms of meditation. They all have strengths and weaknesses, pluses and minuses. But only a few forms of meditation lead to an increased knowledge of reality, since most are based on unfounded religious dogma. I'm confident that the meditation I've been practicing for about fifteen years -- after I wisely gave up a religiously-based form of meditation -- has me on the right spiritual track. I explained why in "Real spirituality is realizing you aren't a soul, or self." Here's how that 2014 post starts out. Just as predicted, I'm really enjoying reading Sam Harris' new book, "Waking…
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Posted inConsciousness

We humans have selfhood without a self

Here's a big question, one of the biggest when it comes to understanding reality and how religions typically view what it means to be human: Do we have a self? Or adding an (important) capital letter, Do we have a Self? To kick off my discussion of these questions, here's some recent right-on comment observations from "JB." Brian: "there is nobody having an experience. There is just experience, which usually includes an experience of being, or having, a self." Rather than no-body having an experience, I would argue that there is a body having an experience. More precisely, I would…
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Posted inAwareness Books Consciousness

“On Having No Head” has a few simple truths

On Having No Head is a book by D.E. Harding. I'd bought and read it quite a few years ago. Then, when I needed to weed out unwanted books to make room for more, On Having No Head was given away.  Recently, though, I heard Sam Harris speak about the book in his Waking Up iPhone app, so I decided to re-buy and re-read it. Here's my review, which is of a second edition of the book that contains a "Bringing the story up to date" section that was written over forty years after Harding wrote the first edition. My…
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Posted inBooks Consciousness Free will

Modern science is more mystical than ancient mysticism

For many years, about 37, I was deeply attracted to mysticism. One of the reasons was that I loved how mystic teachings taught the self was an illusion and our sense of free will masked God's overarching control over all things, including human actions. But gradually I realized the downsides of mysticism. There was no demonstrable evidence that God or anything supernatural existed. And my love of science eventually led me to embrace reality, rather than religion -- of which mysticism is an offshoot. Now, though, I've come to a pleasing conclusion: modern science actually is more mystical than ancient…
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Posted inConsciousness

“I’ is consciousness itself, not a conscious being

I'm pleased to share another email message from JB, a frequent commenter on this blog who has an outstanding ability to write cogently about profound topics.  I was tempted to say "philosophical topics," but as you will read below, JB's thoughts about consciousness really have little to do with philosophy -- at least, as most people regard this field. The ancient Greeks considered philosophy (literally, love of wisdom) to be a way of life, not an academic exercise. So in that sense, what JB writes about is indeed philosophical, since there is nothing more intimately connected with life than our…
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Posted inConsciousness

Can there be consciousness without conscious content?

In regard to the question I asked in the title of this post, I'd say "No." For one thing, how could someone know that they are conscious without an extra something-or-other besides supposedly pure consciousness?  I talked about this in "My (only) big problem with Sam Harris' 'Waking Up' book." Let's be clear: Sam Harris considers that the brain produces consciousness. He doesn't show any sign of believing in a transcendent non-physical consciousness (like soul or spirit) which exists apart from the brain. So I have no problem with this aspect of Harris' view of consciousness. But as I said…
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