But a computer that could truly reason would think "I wonder what that file really is". But even this I wouldn't call 'awareness'.

Surely somebody has worked on criteria for what constitutes 'aware' in regards to this.

For me personally, I view this differently. Although I confess not to have the bugs worked out.

I don't think of individual 'spirits' existing 'outside' of the physical universe. I think of the universe as being made of 'spirit'.

Any part of the universe that becomes sentient is automatically spirit. In fact, even the parts that aren't sentient are still spirit. Kind of like my hand is still me, even though my hand doesn't have it's own self-awareness.

The problem with the idea of 'individual spirits' is that this perpetuates a sense of 'ego' or 'individual self'.

The pantheist view that all is spirit doesn't truly support this notion of a field of 'individual spirits'.

It's a notion of 'mysticism'.

What's 'mysticism'? It's mystery!

No one knows how it can work. The concept of 'pantheism' (all-is-one, or all-is-god) is a difficult notion to comprehend.

The 'ego' doesn't want to let go of the notion of 'individuality'.

The 'ego' doesn't want to DIE!

The thought of dying scares the ego to DEATH.

But what does 'death' mean to the 'ego'? It simply means that it will lose it's identity as an individual.

The more we LOVE ourselves, the more we want to preserve our 'ego'.

And that doesn't need to be in a negative way that society often uses it. I mean, it can be genuine LOVE. Not conceit or arrogance. We just LOVE the human form that we have been gifted to experience.

There's nothing wrong with this. In fact the more we love ourselves the more we love our creator. After all, if we hated ourselves, then why should we be happy with our creator?

Like Deepak has said, we can't hate the creation and claim to love the creator, that makes not sense at all.

If we claim to love the creator it can only be because we love the creation, and we are the creation!

To love the creation is to love the creator.

The point to pantheism is to realize that while we love 'characters' we have become in the play of life, that's not truly who we are. We are the ACTORS, not the characters that we are playing.

Once we realize this, then the 'ego' should vanish, because the 'ego' thinks the character is the actor!

We are the eternal actor. Not the fleeting characters that we fall in love with.

Our true love is with the actor. But we fall in love with the character that we are playing and don't want to let go. So we create this idea that there must be a bunch of individual 'souls' or 'spirits'. One for EACH character.

Pantheism is saying that, somehow, in some mystic mysterious way, there is only ONE actor. And we are ALL it!

This isn't solipsism. Solipsism holds that only one individual is real and all other individuals are figments of the one individual's imagination.

Pantheism isn't saying that. Pantheism is saying that we are all the same 'being'.

One-in-many.

How does this work? Nobody knows! That's why they call it "Mysticism". It's a mystery!

But the idea of some individual external 'egotistical' spirit that creates 'souls' and maintains their spiritual individuality for all of eternity wouldn't be any less 'mystical'. Nor is it any easier to explain.

Complete total atheism (no theism), suggests that we're nothing more than an accidental collection of random atoms and when we fall apart that's it. That in itself is not less mystical (a mystery).

Between these three ideas Pantheism makes the most sense to me. Although I confess, that all three of these idea are totally incomprehensible and all could potentially be true. Or maybe there's some third option. I'm not sure what the third option would be.

Well, actually the idea that there exists individual spirits seems to be an idea of polytheism where there are many 'individual gods' (individual spirits) with potentially no single godhead in charge of the overall project.

So I guess that's a fourth possibility. In fact I've entertained that idea quite a bit myself. I think in a very real way that's the best of all ideas. Not necessarily anymore sound, but just the most desirable. That would preserve the 'ego' that we all refuse to give up, whilst maintaining an eternal spiritual essence.

What could be better? If we're in the dark and have to guess, why not guess for the best possible choice?

Some sort of pantheistic 'individualism'. A bit of a contradiction in terms, but I can understand the basic idea. Everything is spirit, and spirit is impossible to comprehend, so we may as well imagine it to be whatever feels inviting at the time.

Hmmm? Pantheistic Individualism.

That's an interesting concept. I like it.

It's saying, "All is spirit, but spirit is so impossible for us to comprehend then if it makes us feel good to believe in individual spirits then go for it!"

With 'spirit' all things are possible.

Why not? This way the ego and spirit coexist in harmony.

'Ego' being used here simply to mean a sense of 'individuality', not necessarily carrying with it any of the negative connotations that society often places on the word associate with conceit or arrogance.

Why make a sense of individual so negative. What wrong with a positive sense of individuality?

After all this is the whole concept behind the Abrahamic religions. Individual souls go to heaven (or hell) and their 'egos' (sense of individuality) are preserved for eternity. There's nothing bad about a sense of 'ego' in the Abraham religions, the whole thing is entirely based on preservation of the 'ego' (individual souls).

Spirit as a whole permeates everything. Individual points of view (souls if you will) have gathered a certain amount of information and capacity for consciousness. This information is contained in some sort of field as a spirit moves from body to body.

A spirit who has occupied a human body for several lifetimes is not going to want to occupy a rock or an insect the next time it enters the world because its frequency will not match that occupation and it will have to forfeit much of its information and it will be very limited in conscious awareness.

Therefore a spirit with the capacity for human consciousness will look for a humanoid body to occupy. The better the vehicle, the more evolved (the more capacity for consciousness) the spirit is likely to be.

The ultimate goal of a spirit looking for a life in this world is a body that can be self aware. As you look at the animal kingdom, and evolution, humans are the most self aware creatures here, even though some chimps and apes have demonstrated awareness of self also.

It's impossible to even determine if another human being is truly aware.

This is why solipsism is a valid philosophy.

There's no way that any of us can prove that we aren't the only truly aware being and the entire rest of the universe is just a figment of our imagination.

Other people have suggested that we are in some sort of holodeck where everyone we meet is just a computer simulation. We are the only truly aware person.

We can't disprove that.

To reject this is purely a matter of personal choice.

I reject it. I believe that other people are truly sentient and fully aware individuals in their own right.

But I can't prove it.

James,

Individual souls and individual units of consciousness is not "ego."

Rather, I see them as unified fields or pockets of information and experience that surround an individual observer or point of view.

As the observer moves through the body, (its lifetime birth and death) it gathers information and experience and that experience is kept inside of its field, changing its frequency so that it can occupy different forms.

Ego has to do with a single incarnation or a single life experience. Ego always dies when the body dies. "The person" you have been in this life dies when the body dies. Your spirit however takes all that it has learned from your life with it as it move on to the next occupation. It continues to grow. Growth is life and it is how the universe expands.

Well unless you consider a valid philosophy to be one that can help explain the world, one which allows you to gather knowledge, in that case solipsism is not valid, becuase it fails to tell us anything.

JB, this may not change your point, but many file managers are able to determine the kind of information in a file by examining the file. We've had them on linux based systems for many, many years.

I'm not trying to nit pick, but i'm a bit passionate about how microsoft's complacency has created an artificially low expectation for the typical user; apple and linux are only recently giving MS the incentive to deliver decent products.

For the solipcist, it tells you everything. Still not very much, but everything there is to tell.

No it does not change my point. It is still doing what it was programed to do. It is not 'thinking' on it own. No matter what I try to tell my computer, it will not learn how to look at a file and tell me what it is. I would have to create a program for it to follow.

I don't know if a computer programed to 'learn' could figure this out or not.

Well then your done as soon as you begin your journey for knowledge. I am a firm believer that solipsists should commit suicide upon deciding they are solipsists.

In an abstract way solipsism is the same thing as pantheism.

Where it is misunderstood is that people identify self with their body.

If the identification of self is with God or prime source, (All that is,) then solipsism is absolutely valid especially if your premise is that there is only ONE BEING or one God who is dreaming or who divided itself into many different aspects of Itself to experience itself as existing.

That would change it a little however. All other things and people you see are not illusions but they are parts of YOU.

I am you and you are me.

Look what we have done to each other.

There, but for the grace of God, go I.

The golden rule is do unto others as you would have them do unto you, simply because.... they are you in another life.

Most people have the wrong idea about solipsism.

My first response was:

Fair enough, if by 'solipsists' you are speaking of people who insist positively that there is nothing outside their own mind. My point is only that your view that solipsism is not a valid philosphy seems to rest on the idea that the material reality is real, and the proper domain for gaining new knowledge.

Which is a perfectly fine view to take, but it strikes me as 'rejecting solipsism' FROM the point of view of a materialist.

after thinking a bit, i wondered....

is knowledge obtained which is predicated on the material reality the only valid knowledge? If we have a newborn brainn in a vat, and we put it in a virtual world that gives it a basis for examination mathematical concepts, and that mind eventually derived advanced mathematical ideas - would all of that be 'worthless' or 'invalid'?

Or, if a solipsist engages in fantasy, and engages on a 'journey' of thought exploring the fantasy, is that definitive 'not knowledge' ?

Even if we insist on the material reality, i see 'knowledge' of a sort being obtained by a solipsist. just not 'further explanation of the nature of reality', as they abandoned the assumption that reality exists.

Well, I was attempting to use the term 'ego' to simply mean 'sense of individuality'.

So if a spirit would have any 'sense of individual' then by that meaning of the term a spirit would have an 'ego'.

I'm not sure how that would work.

It just seems to me that to even talk about 'individual spirits' automatically implies that spirits have some sense of 'individiuality.

I actually had a shamanic vision about being spirit. I don't have time to share it right now. But it was a sense of both individuality and oneness, that would be difficult to explain in words.

As spirit I could read the thoughts of all the other spirits and they also knew my thoughts. Yet even though we shared this open cosmic mind, we still each had access to 'individual' thoughts.

In fact it was like this,...

There was no way that I could prevent any spirit from knowing my thoughts.

However at the same time I could ignore their thoughts if I chose to do so.

Kind of like in the real world, we can see everyone and everyone can see us. We can close our eyes and choose not to look at them, but they can still see us.

We can also focus our attention on any part of the world. But that doesn't make the rest of the world disappear.

This is the way I saw thoughts in the spirit world.

There's a sense of individuality in the sense that we can 'individually' direct our own thoughts, yet at the same time we are all, actually using a single mind that we all have access to simultaneously if we want to.

So it was a kind of simultaneous 'oneness and individuality' all at the same time.

Yes I understand that vision.

We are both THE ONE and the individual.

It seems like a paradox but it is not really.

I call these individual points of view "The eyes of infinity"

Each point of view is an eye of THE ONE.

Each eye has free will.

Each eye is part of the whole.

And each eye has its own unified field which is its own universe in which it collects information and experience unique only to it.

This is where the individuality comes in. Your experience, your point of view, can be shared but it cannot be had by any other. It is yours alone.

Ok, that makes sense.

People often describe the individual consciouness as 'facets' of the diamond of the cosmic consciousness.

The 'eyes of infinity' is a cool concept.

And yes, I understand the idea of specific experiences and points of view (or vantage points) only being accessble to the one who experiences that point of view. So I can see a sense of 'individuality' in that sense.

The only real question in terms of 'physics' is the question of how 'spirit' or 'individual consciousness' is maintained without a physical body or construct.

I guess that's where the 'mysticism' part comes into play.

Mysticism is just the concept of being unable to know the 'physics' of spirit.

That is done via vibrations and frequency and unified fields.

I laugh because I imagine the first real question or problem might have been: "how in the world are we going to maintain the integrity of a physical body? It's so dense... how will we move about?"

Moving about is a bit of a problem here. Even light has a problem getting through this thick space-time environment.

We have to walk. We have to ride airplanes. We have to have automobiles.

In the other world we only had to think about who we wanted to be with or where we wanted to go and we were there.

Oh, I agree with you about my position however . . . .



If we truly end at, cogito ergo sum. Then yes we can never know anything outside of our own experiences.

Solipsism is the ultimate lazy man's philosophy.

IMNSHO, its the Intelligent design of philosophy, if we cant figure it out, it must not exist.

<=== Can't find the 'well there's something to think about' emoticon.

I personally, from the body standpoint of my own human consciousness would never buy into solipsism because although I have a good imagination, I could not have possibly imagined or dreamed up all of this, and I certainly would not have manifested some of the people I know.

Therefore there must be someone else responsible.