Consciousness is the "fifth dimension".

[Bob Blaylock]

If we take up/down, forward/backward, right/left and time as the four classic dimensions, consciousness can be considered as another. Without it, the others are meaningless, even arguably non-existent. Even reducing things to 'time/space', without awareness, the universe wouldn't matter. There would be nothing to notice that anything existed. To our manner of reasoning, it is almost as if consciousness exists in order to validate the universe.
This could be philosophical, it could be religious, but does not have necessarily to be either. It could be regarded as simply fundamental to reality.

This is your brain on drugs.

Any questions?

 

[ding]

Certainly, consciousness is the unique 'thing' the existence of which we cannot doubt.

Yes, but does it exist without material beings is the question.

Respectfully, it is suggested to be a 'wrong' question. Yes, the words can be constructed in such a way as to pose the question, but the resolution is impossible.

I argue that we can, but putting that aside, what do you believe. I’m not asking you to prove it. I am asking you for your belief. Do you believe that consciousness can exist without material beings.

"Belief" would be impossible to state. The closest I might come would be to say that any perceptual center, any 'sentient being', effectively imposes a state of "this/not this" on a universe that is a whole, an entirety that cannot be broken up. Yet, that is exactly what happens when perception comes along and has itself for a center and the rest of the universe for "being out there". The universe becomes pieces that the 'perceiver' identifies.
Even if or when the perceptual center takes itself for an element of the universe, only complete fusion with 'the all and everything' would collapse this 'superposition', and that would mean the consciousness was no longer aware of itself.

In trying to avoid too many personal pronouns, the 'my' was left off before "belief". Of course people can have beliefs; that I took for obvious.
Also obvious is that there are certainly 'wrong' questions. They lead nowhere. They increase no knowledge. They frustrate and detour. They have no answer or, worse, infer false conclusions. Perhaps incorrect avoids the moral sense of 'wrong', but they are counter productive questions.

Counter productive to who? Certainly not me. That’s why I asked the question. Don’t try to Trojan horse people. Be honest with your beliefs.

We clearly live in a universe whose laws are such that intelligence would eventually arise given enough time and the right conditions.

Why wouldn’t people assume that rather than intelligence emerging as a later stage of the evolution of space and time that it always existed as the matrix for existence?

So my question is getting to the heart of that matter which is what you are trying to say under a cover of cloak. Do I need to explain my logic for that?

 

[there4eyeM]

We live in a universe where consciousness has arisen, it appears. At least mine has. All sorts of conclusions and assumptions are open to me. Imagination runs wild. How much of all that is true, and how much of it may be true because it is how I see it, is open to proof.
It may be maintained that nothing can be or happen except that some pattern, some potentiality for it already exists. That could be the case. One can try functioning with that as his/her premise. Stating it that way does not mean it 'really' is that way. Science is not certain what the deepest causations are.
That is what fascinates about the possibility that consciousness affects 'reality', and may even effect it.

 

[ding]

We live in a universe where consciousness has arisen, it appears. At least mine has. All sorts of conclusions and assumptions are open to me. Imagination runs wild. How much of all that is true, and how much of it may be true because it is how I see it, is open to proof.
It may be maintained that nothing can be or happen except that some pattern, some potentiality for it already exists. That could be the case. One can try functioning with that as his/her premise. Stating it that way does not mean it 'really' is that way. Science is not certain what the deepest causations are.
That is what fascinates about the possibility that consciousness affects 'reality', and may even effect it.

We live in a universe where consciousness was predestined. Why do you think that is?

 

[there4eyeM]

"Why do you think that is?"
Just a question. An innocent question. Or, the question of an innocent.
Given that the present explanation of the universe is inseparable from, is equivalent to, saying that it is the way it is because that is how we perceive it, why do you think that is?.

 

[night_son]

If we take up/down, forward/backward, right/left and time as the four classic dimensions, consciousness can be considered as another. Without it, the others are meaningless, even arguably non-existent. Even reducing things to 'time/space', without awareness, the universe wouldn't matter. There would be nothing to notice that anything existed. To our manner of reasoning, it is almost as if consciousness exists in order to validate the universe.
This could be philosophical, it could be religious, but does not have necessarily to be either. It could be regarded as simply fundamental to reality.

“I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.”
~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

While the physiology of consciousness has been illustrated, its substance and capability remain as unknown perhaps as the soil of planets orbiting distant stars.

Say the home you built and inhabit lies on a remote tract of earth hidden from the view of any road and distant from any settlement. While at home you upon waking daily see and materially experience four walls, a roof; doors and windows. Inside them cut off from the out of doors is an enclosed, environmentally regulated space. After you've left for work, reached the main road and are out of sight of your home, does it cease to exist either in the form you awoke to or in any tangible form at all? Did your consciousness, which not only create the home but envisioned its final form, keep it standing as built until out of your sensory perception?

Let's say you never return home there again. No human ever sees it again. Does it still exist without the power of human consciousness to hold it up with their senses? What about the consciousness of the many animal species who will inhabit your former home after you've forever vacated it? What if no living, conscious being ever beholds sight of your former home again? Does it cease to exist?

Must your former home, in order to exist, exist in the mind of some living consciousness who at least remembered what it looked like when last seen? The answer is no--your former home will remain standing independent of any consciousness at least until the roof collapses or lightning strikes or some other natural event wears it down over ages.

However, what is a truism is that in order for the house to exist in the first place--in an organized, structural assembly of lesser material components--some consciousness had first to envision it in a mind, plan its final form and build it as a previously non-existent structure unable to exist without conscious will or design.

So, what was the Universe before some consciousness existed? Was the entire Universe an abandoned home on some remote tract of interstellar, remote "land" waiting to be re-occupied or beheld again by consciousness, or was the Universe without substance or design given substance and design by consciousness?

If consciousness is a fifth dimension, can the other four not remain in existence without it, but rather exist in the first place until conscious comes along to organize and structure them in something tangible?

 

[there4eyeM]

The universe could be and might have been all and everything, every possible permutation, before consciousness, and is only fixed to how it is now by consciousness.

 

[ABikerSailor]

You know, one of the things scientists are going to do when they finally get quantum computers working and functional, is to see where consciousness comes from.

Are We All Quantum Computers? Scientists Are Conducting Tests to Find Out

Some are scared that if we program a quantum computer with AI, it may become conscious.

 

[there4eyeM]

What's to be scared of?

 

[ABikerSailor]

What's to be scared of?

Skynet and the terminators.

 

[there4eyeM]

What's to be scared of?

Skynet and the terminators.

...ahhh...yes.