Evolving: The Awakening of Psyche

Sam,

Thanks for your candid response. I have yet to write a fully drawn-out philosophical/intellectual piece explaining the reasoning behind these views, not to mention their implications, as I’m sort of working through all the symbolism and more emotive shades of the whole deal in my writings right now. Again, before we get into discussion, I want to thank you for reading and taking the time to respond and contribute all these ideas. And if you’ll indulge me, how do you consider these writings have evolved? I’m not saying they haven’t, heaven forbid, but they’re really still sticking to the same point, if from different angles.
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I am fully aware of the fact that scientists are more concerned with constructing explanatory models rather than understanding essences. By virtue of the same ultra-specialized culture, this is strictly the task of philosophy. But I hope we never forget that the search for truth, and the goal of science, is ultimately to understand reality, not explain or manipulate particulars, which are rather proximate causes to this fundamental one.
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I completely agree that we are far from a full understanding of the phenomenon of consciousness; I am not aiming for that. To reach an understanding, we must first acknowledge the phenomenon. That is what I am pushing for, like many; a perhaps rudimentary conceptual framework, on which a new science and research might spring.
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With regards to the physicalism/subjectivism dichotomy, which is not elaborated on in these writings, the way I see it is “two sides of the same coin”; resulting in monism, i.e. body is mind—it’s just a question of which is “more fundamental”. The snake biting its tail, is it the biting or the being bitten?
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This now is a general response to your feedback, hopefully a clearer expression of what I mean.

I am convinced that science will one day figure out the riddles of consciousness, human existence, all that, for the entire world to share, but it will simply never do so under the conceptual confines of materialism. Reverting this ontology is what we are talking about, completely reassessing the very language on which our models are built. Isn’t it almost intuitive, that the problem is the most sacred assumption?
Then we can get started with 21st century science, then we can get to mapping the mind, to under-standing ourselves. Because the fact is that all we have is that “ontological subjective”. All we can ever know and ever will know is by virtue of our knowing, so let’s stop pretending to somehow transcend our subjectivity when we haven’t even acknowledged it.
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Present science holds humanity to be united in matter, to be one and the same substance with the universe, that substance being the conceptual construct we term “matter”, or “matter and energy”, postulating that human experience, consciousness, what we informally call “my life”, is but a fluke, a mere randomness in the vast physical universe. And yet, it also somehow pretends to be working towards the reduction of that very phenomenon to the laws is has derived from observing material movements.

Such is how the materialist paradigm is completely inconsistent and unsustainable. On the one hand, it banishes consciousness, naively ignores the “problem of perception”, saying it is purposeless, negligible, or simply unexplainable. And on the other hand, it ingenuously hopes to “explain” this same phenomenon by the physical concepts and patterns it so proficiently develops. Because after all, a complete theory of nature must account for all of nature, right?
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But it is different when we start not from the premise that “the world is”, but from the premise that “I am”. Because one can go on asking “What is? What is? What is?” ad infinitum but will never get to the “I am”— the agent doing the searching; the same substratum it desperately seeks.

So it is science’s duty to look for alternatives. Can we unify with nature not by way of “matter” but by mind? Can we build from the assumption that “I am”?

That is the unity professed by religions: a unity of Being, a unity of intent, a unity of purpose, which science will only reach when it acknowledges itself, its being, its goal. Then science will profess Tat Tvam Asi, In Lakech, Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh.

Meaning what exactly?

That biological evolution is not random nor guided. Those positions both stem from a denial of self, an abdication of self-awareness, our consciousness of our willing. Such existential shame!

No, evolution is intended. Life is intention-al, or do we not intend?
If we start from the inside, if we can say that all living beings intend to grow, survive, and propagate (which the standard conception of evolution already does with its implicit “will to survive” necessary for the model to work) and if we define life not as growth, movement, reproduction, metabolism, etc. but as perception, as experience-of-world, then that “will to survive” becomes the “will to perceive”. Something which the evolutionary tree clearly demonstrates: advancing adaptations; growing intelligence; deepening perception of the world.

And if we acknowledge the "problem of perception", if we take face on our self-awareness and embrace the reality of perception, to see that perception is creation, then that "will to perceive" becomes the "will to create".

Enter science, or the conscious human effort to understand reality. Science is not a gratuitous human fancy—it is a force of nature, a very real, very purposeful phenomenon; a crucial stage in the creation of “the world”. Because again, reality is not “objective”, the "real world out there" is subject-ive; it is teeming with sentience, world-conceptions, versions of reality if you will; scaffolding bricks sustaining this here human experience of the world. We too are that world-creating force, and it is almost finished.

The problem here is not so much one of logical, rational thought, as it is one of identity, of self-image, of emotional attachment to our inherited ego notion of self.

Hope that gives you a better picture. Thanks again.

Peace

Let's do some Conscious Science!