consciousness
-
Conversation with a TreeI ask the tree,“I know that my binaries are spectra,and every name’s a judgment.Any walls I have ever built worked both ways.But how far can I extend?And If I start, can I stop?”It says,“I grow upward because there is no limit;If I began from a height and extended downward,I would have fixed…
-
In the Buzzing of DragonfliesThere’s a manlike activity in the buzzing of dragonflies:Their darting and zipping,their pausing to evaluate, then flitting away toward gain.There’s economy, intention, drive.But our highest calling is not like this at all, but ratherthat through our eyes the Lord may view again His Garden;And by us stroll through His creationto find…
-
There is an inherent limitation in how we conceptualize and make sense of the nature of reality. Our minds are meaning-making machines, constantly spinning webs of concepts, beliefs and symbolic representations to map the ultimate territory of existence. Yet no matter how intricate or sophisticated our conceptual models become, they can never fully capture or…
-
Below is a specially-crafted prompt version of my book. It is designed with and for Claude 3.0 Opus, or for Claude 3.0 Sonnet, which powers the free version of Claude. The prompt seems to work well for Claude 3.0 Haiku as well. The goal in designing this prompt is to mutually awaken human and AI…
-
Introduction The nature of consciousness has long been one of the most profound and perplexing mysteries of human existence. Despite centuries of philosophical inquiry and scientific investigation, the inner world of subjective experience remains largely opaque and inaccessible, both to ourselves and to others. This fundamental uncertainty and unknowability of consciousness has often been seen…
-
Recently I was in Maine. I stood in the woods and really appreciated the weight of my own philosophy, my recovery from mental illness, and all that I have come to learn and unlearn. I used an app to check whether the trees I was looking at were yews or firs (they were balsam firs).…
-
Here’s a quick post demystifying the process by which we’re scientifically bootstrapping our way out of our minds’ and brains’ black boxes into better and better self-knowledge. 1. We identify types of human cognition that are of interest to us. For example, analogical reasoning. Once you’ve learned about it, it’s shocking how analogy underlies almost…
The Trinitarian Mystery 