What is Consciousness?–Getting our Categories Straight and Asking the Right Questions

I know some of you–perhaps many of you–have followed the work of Dr. Robert L. Kuhn on his TV and now Youtube programs “Closer to Truth.” If you have not visited the web site lately, it has been marvelously redesigned and Robert is ever at work with new horizons…see closertotruth.com.  The program looks at the broad categories of Cosmos, Consciousness, and Meaning, drawing upon a wide range of scientific, historical, and philosphical approaches.

I received the following from Robert this week and pass it along with his permission:

My comprehensive review of theories of consciousness, A Landscape of Consciousness: Toward a Taxonomy of Explanations and Implications, derived in part from Closer To Truth, was just published in Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology — and will appear in print in August.

In the paper, I seek an organizing framework for diverse theories of consciousness and to explore their impact on big questions. My central theses are twofold: (i) understanding consciousness at this point cannot be limited to selected ways of thinking or knowing, but should seek expansive yet rational diversity, and (ii) issues related to consciousness, such as AI consciousness, virtual immortality, meaning/purpose/value, life after death, free will, etc., cannot be understood except in the light of particular theories of consciousness. In addition, I want to present consciousness and its significance to broad scientific and scholarly communities.

The paper has good visibility in scientific circles. Any promotion in other communities via social media and/or personal networks welcome (but not expected).

I know Robert has worked on this harder than anything he has ever produced…and the results are remarkable.  I may have mentioned here before that I have a whole series of interviews with Dr. Kuhn which you can find very conveniently collected here: https://closertotruth.com/contributor/james-tabor/

On an even more personal note, I had Robert as a guest in the LAST university class I taught, capping off my 45 year career, when I “retired” in July 2022. Here is a recording of that class for those interested:

The Whole and its Parts…God as Process

The Whole is more than the sum of its parts, but it can not be less than any one “part.”

When I speak of God, that word means to me the unseen force of all forces that drives this universe and cosmos of which we are cognizant and makes you and me the creatures we are with all the mystical existence we know and enjoy upon this earth.

Jack Pyle, personal letter reflecting on our “Closer to Truth” conversations

That Force of all Forces…

New Closer to Truth Web Site–The Best Thing out There!

Dr. Robert L Kuhn’s newly designed Closer to Truth web site is truly stunningly done. Rich content, endless fascination…I know of nothing on the internet that compares. You can subscribe for free. Program content is also available on Youtube and via major Podcasts. If you are mainly interested in the “Big Questions” as I am, this is the BEST thing out there. Check it out.

Click on Image for 45s Introduction to the newly Designed Site

I am also very pleased to note my own contributor page has been wholly reorganized with videos I did not even remember I had done with Dr. Kuhn over the years, links to my books, and an updated Bio. Check it out here–a good place to start in diving into Closer to Truth!

James Tabor

 

John Dominic Crossan–Don’t Miss this Interview!

Over the decades I have heard dozens of interviews with John Crossan, listened to his lectures, read his books, and spent time together in Jerusalem in 2007 with him and his wife Sarah, in endless conversation, visiting some of the “off the beaten tourist paths” places with Shimon Gibson. He and I have our differences on getting at the “historical Jesus,” but we agree on far more than we disagree, and I am happy to stand in his shadow and continue to listen and learn from him.

I just finished listening for the second time (!) to his recent two hour free-ranging interview with Youtube host Derek Lambert of Mythvision Podcast–which includes an hour of Q & A from viewers–really great questions. I have never heard him better–a wonderful combination of his personal experience, his latest insights on Jesus and early Christianity, but also deep dives into his broader theological, philosophical, and scientific outlook on our lives and history on planet earth at the wonderful age of 88, with his characteristic graciousness to all, sprinkled with his Irish wit and charm! Pure delight. Don’t miss it.

What really stood out for me, beyond the many excellent historical points about Jesus and earliest Christianity in its Roman contexts, were his existential perspectives about the process of “Evolution”–which I would equate to my own understanding of what has been called “Process Theism,” as per Whitehead and Hartshorne. Terms like God, Atheism, Theism, Theodicy, Eschatology–easily fail in common usage to reflect much precision of meaning, skewered as they are by . But all in all, Crossan’s vision of “Reality” as both transcendent and distributively “just”–in the way he lays things out, I find profoundly moving.

I usually try to chose categories for Blog posts from a topical “drop down” menu, but for this one I come up with a thick cluster: Death, Future, God, Historical Jesus, Horrors of History, La Condition Humanine, Philosophical Musings, Religion and History, the Bible, the Earth, Time…as I said, “wide-ranging”!

Here is the link–I hope you benefit from the accumulative scholarship and life wisdom of “Dom,” as I have:

Does God Care for Hummingbirds?

I have a group of older friends who go back in our various mutual associations for over fifty years.  We regularly write one another via email of this, that, and the other. Totally spontaneous. Our topics range from the sublime to the mundane, the personal to the galactic. We particularly seem to get into intersections between spirituality and science–along the lines of the topics and questions Robert Kuhn has been exploring for 20 years on his PBS program, Closer to Truth, namely “Cosmos, Consciousness, and Meaning” [1]Kuhn has provided an incredible “Content Guide” for endless browsing here.. We all were brought together in our younger years by our interests in biblical studies–several of us pursued Ph.Ds, but our exchanges are more personal than formally academic.

Recently one of the group wrote the rest of us something that that really stood out to me and I have thought about deeply since receiving it:

That quality of mercy you all show to sentient beings was not apparent in the material universe for 14 billion years.  Recently it began to emerge. Now in you all, it flows generously.  You give me hope and faith in Future.

This observation was in response to an experience of one person in our group who lives up in Washington where the recent cold snap put many good creatures “great and small” in danger. Many were unprepared for the sudden plunge from lovely sunny days to a sudden deep freeze. He related to us his desperately successful attempts to save the hummingbirds in his yard who had not migrated. We all found it so very moving.

He and his wife attempted to construct a bit of shelter, trying various alternatives from duct wrap, bubble wrap, and Xmas lights strung around the feeder with aluminum foil wrapped to preserve the heat.  So far, he reports the aluminum foil seems to be the most effective. While they were doing this act of mercy several of these amazing creatures landed on his shoulders–and even his wrists and fingers. He was awestruck at their desperation but was able to save most of them, though one he found dead on the ground the next morning. If you know little of hummingbirds—these most amazing of all creatures—the Wiki article “Hummingbird” will totally blow your mind.

So does “God” care for birds–as Jesus famously affirmed about the One he called his “Heavenly father” who knows even a single sparrow? If one has a classic view of theism–it seems not, given the violence of nature, “red in tooth and claw,” and the unspeakable suffering we humans have brought upon each other and the billions of creatures we cruelly “manage” for our purposes. We appear to be perfectly “free” to wreak whatever suffering we choose on others, limited only by our power. And that is not to mention our unimaginably violent and vast universe–which operates by what we call “physical laws,” that seem dead our values. Such a “God” seems either indifferent or unable to assure mire peaceful and harmonious outcomes. But if one holds more to what the philosophers call “Process theism,” as I do, in which the emergent qualities of compassion and love are expressing themselves consciously and willfully in sentient beings–then even such tiny acts of kindness, as my dear friend showed to these hummingbirds, are an undeniable reflection of such realities in our cosmos. Thus “God” is not so much “outside” our universe pulling puppet strings, as the core ground of our being. As the ancient Greek poet Epimenides expressed things,  we “live and move and have our being” within that Force of all Forces that the Hebrews called self-expressive “Being.” That great I AM. And those acts of kindness we show to one another, and to our fellow creatures “great and small” on the planet, are reflective of our better angels.

Painting by Angelika Wagar

References

References
1Kuhn has provided an incredible “Content Guide” for endless browsing here.

Can Human Brain Consciousness be Replicated?

Robert Kuhn, an old friend, colleague, and producer of the amazing PBS program “Closer to Truth,” (see my own contributions here) has a most provocative piece at LiveScience titled: “The Singularity, Virtual Immortality and the Trouble with Consciousness.” Will science replicate the human brain and thus produce the phenomenon we all experience our conscious “inner-self,”–what Plato and Freud called the “Ego”?

According to techno-futurists, the exponential development of technology in general and artificial intelligence (“AI”) in particular — including the complete digital replication of human brains — will radically transform humanity via two revolutions. The first is the “singularity,” when artificial intelligence will redesign itself recursively and progressively, such that AI will become vastly more powerful than human intelligence (“superstrong AI”). The second revolution will be “virtual immortality,” when the fullness of our mental selves can be uploaded perfectly to nonbiological media (such as silicon chips), and our mental selves will live on beyond the demise of our fleshy, physical bodies.

AI singularity and virtual immortality would mark a startling, transhuman world that techno-futurists envision as inevitable and perhaps just over the horizon. They do not question whether their vision can be actualized; they only debate when will it occur, with estimates ranging from 10 to 100 years. [Artificial Intelligence: Friendly or Frightening?]

Continue reading “Can Human Brain Consciousness be Replicated?”