1 hour ago, Easy Truth said:
Sounds like you’re lying to your self. You obviously have a preferred understanding/explanation of it and it is probably far more firm and developed than you wish to admit. The depth of your inquiry shows it.
My inquiry hardly has the ‘depth’ that you mention. I’m actually merely presenting ideas from famous philosophers. It’s not my understanding that’s developed, it’s the topic itself that has received a lot of development historically. If you read any material on this, you might change your mind about the ‘depth’ part.
My personal experience shows that as time passes, more and more insights develop from things I’ve studied or thought about in the past. I doubt this phenomenon will ever have an end. So I can almost guarantee that I am utterly unable to predict what will suddenly ‘click’ in my mind months from now, completely shaking off my previous assumptions.
This post I wrote a few months ago is the anthitesis of the ideas presented in this thread. There, I tried to give an O’ist rebuttal of idealism without using the cringe-worthy canned responses that O’ists like to repeat as if quoting from the Gospel.
1 hour ago, Easy Truth said:
What is the definition of intelligence that is being used here? As in conscious intelligence.
Your body will heal your finger if you cut it, and will switch to burning stored fat if you starve it. This is an unconscious form of intelligence, different from the kind involved in planning your weekend.
1 hour ago, Easy Truth said:
And why simply “appears to be” in the statement above? As in why not say “is alive”.
If consciousness is an active and dynamic process, then all of your perceptions are infused with life, whether you’re conscious of your own freedom, or of some dead object like the bed in your room. So if you postulate a self-sustaining, self-generated consciousness (which is not a by-product of something else), you can study its way of grasping things. For instance, to conceptualize your own freedom, you need a process of differentiation, i.e. a complementary grasp of what the alternative is (something completely unfree and subject to mechanism -> Nature).