Thoughts on Buddhism

[Abracadabra]

I would definately define what you deem as spirit as
consciousness[kon-shuhs-nis]   Origin con·scious·ness   /ˈkɒnʃəsnɪs/ Show Spelled[kon-shuhs-nis] Show IPA
noun
1. the state of being conscious; awareness of one's own existence, sensations, thoughts, surroundings, etc.
2. the thoughts and feelings, collectively, of an individual or of an aggregate of people: the moral consciousness of a nation.
3. full activity of the mind and senses, as in waking life: to regain consciousness after fainting.
4. awareness of something for what it is; internal knowledge: consciousness of wrongdoing.
5. concern, interest, or acute awareness: class consciousness.

Unless you take a step further and insist that the spirit is seperate from consciousness and a being in and of itself. Then we're really speaking to 2 people at once.. and that's called something else.... .

No not at all.

You're making the grave mistake of thinking that just because you can look a word up in a dictionary that means that you have absolute positive proof of the true nature of something.

That's utterly silly. If that's all we needed to do to demonstrate the true nature and true answer of any philosophical question then all philosophy and science would already be finished and done. All we would need to do is turn to our dictionaries to discover the deepest truths of reality.

You can't use a dictionary definition to settle a philosophical question like this.

Let's exam some of these definitions:

1. the state of being conscious; awareness of one's own existence, sensations, thoughts, surroundings, etc.

Awareness of one's own existence? And what is it that is aware of this existence? That's the REAL question. The atoms of the physical brain? The physical brain as an entire complex organ? Or is it some sort of abstract notion of a hypothetical emergent property of this biological computer that is having this awareness?

This definition doesn't say what it is that is actually experiencing "awareness". And THAT is the philosophical question that is being addressed. So this definition is utterly useless to resolve this philosophical question. It just assumes that a physical body or brain is the thing that is aware. But a mere dictionary definition most certainly doesn't prove that this is the truth of reality.

Like I say, if we could just turn to our dictionaries to resolve these types of questions all of science and philosophy would be finished. All we would need to do to answer any question is turn to our dictionaries.

2. the thoughts and feelings, collectively, of an individual or of an aggregate of people: the moral consciousness of a nation.

Again, what is it that is experiencing these thoughts and feelings? This doesn't answer that mystery. In fact this definition suggests that an entire aggregate of people can share a "consciousness". So that really get's murky there. Apparently whoever wrote this definition is quite happy to label agreement as "collective consciousness".

3. full activity of the mind and senses, as in waking life: to regain consciousness after fainting.

That's a strict technical definition there that really doesn't address the issue of what it is that is experiencing consciousness. In fact, according to this definition when we are unconscious we are basically dead then. Whatever it was that was "experiencing consciousness" no longer exists when there is no consciousness to experience. That's food for thought for deep philosophical inquiry as well.

4. awareness of something for what it is; internal knowledge: consciousness of wrongdoing.

Again what is it that is having this awareness? This definition doesn't even remotely address this philosophical question.

5. concern, interest, or acute awareness: class consciousness.

They're just babbling by this point. Basically offering a brief thesaurus in #5.

You can't resolve deep philosophical and scientific questions by just looking up a word in a dictionary. That's ridiculous. If you could do that then all of science and philosophy would already be complete. Any time you want to know the true nature of something just look it up in the dictionary.

That's silly.

Moreover, these definitions didn't even remotely address the issue of exactly what it is that is "aware" of this consciousness? That is a mystery as yet unknown by both scientists and philosophers. I'm sure that the authors of dictionaries don't have a clue either.

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Unless you take a step further and insist that the spirit is seperate from consciousness and a being in and of itself. Then we're really speaking to 2 people at once.. and that's called something else.... .

I see things totally different from the way that you see them.

Spirit is the entity that is experiencing the consciousness. Consciousness itself has no 'experience'. What would consciousness be to have an 'experience"? You're right back at square one again, giving a totally abstract concept the ability to experience something.

What is it that is having the experiences of consciousnesses?

That is the heart of the question that I'm concerned with.

As I've stated, thus far we have two proposed ideas.

Secularists propose that it is an abstract idea of an "emergent property" of a complex biological computer that is actually experiencing this consciousness.

I ask, "How can an abstract notion of an "emergent property" experience anything?

Spiritualist suggest that there is some deeper explanation.

I personally find the spiritualist's view to be more compelling, and at least just as plausible, if not more so.

I just have deeply serious problems imagining an abstract notion of an "emergent property" having an "experience".

So what's experiencing this conscious awareness? The atoms that the brain is made of? No that make no sense. So we need to imagine that some property emerges from the complexity of the brain and it is this emergent property that is having this experience.

But how could an emergent property experience anything any more than an atom could experience something????

These are DEEP philosophical questions that cannot be resolved by throwing a dictionary in someone's face.

That's absurd.