Some key concepts from http://cosmistmanifesto.blogspot.com/2009/04/some-cosmist-principles.html

  • Panpsychism: There is a meaningful sense in which everything that exists has a form of "awareness"
  • The Universal Mind: As a result, there is quite likely some meaningful sense in which the "universe as a whole" (an unclear concept in itself) has a form of awareness, though we humans likely cannot appreciate the nature of this awareness very thoroughly, any more than a bacterium can fully appreciate the nature of human awareness even as it resides in the human body
  • Patternism: One often-useful way to model the universe is as a collection of patterns, wherein each entity that exists is recognized by some agent as a pattern in some other entity (or set of entities)
  • Polyphonic reality: The notion of an "objective reality" is sometimes useful, but very often a more useful model of the universe is as a collection of overlapping, interpenetrating and intercreating subjective realities
  • Tendency to Take Habits: The universe appears to possess the property that, when patterns exist, they tend to continue ... much more than would be expected in a hypothetical random universe
  • Compassion is a critical principle of the universe, and is fundamentally an aspect of the Tendency to Take Habits. Caring for other sentient beings (and if panpsychism is accepted, everything has a little bit of sentience!) is a critical aspect of evolving to the next levels beyond current human awareness and reality
  • Feeling and displaying compassion is important to the inner health and balance of a mind, as well as to the health and balance of the portion of the universe that mind is embedded in
  • Causation is not a fundamental aspect of the universe, but rather a tool used by minds to model portions of the universe
  • Deliberative, reflective consciousness is the specific form of "universal awareness" that arises in certain complex systems capable of advanced cognition
  • The human "self" is a cognitive construct lacking the sort of fundamental reality that it habitually ascribes to itself

 


An AI-centric, philosophic manifesto by Ben Goertzel: http://cosmistmanifesto.blogspot.com/

Quotes:
Cosmism: a practical philosophy focused on exploring, understanding and enjoying the cosmos, in its inner, outer and social aspects

Cosmism advocates
•    pursuing joy, growth and freedom for oneself and all beings
•    ongoingly, actively seeking to better understand the universe in its multiple aspects, from a variety of perspectives
•    taking nothing as axiomatic and accepting all ideas, beliefs and habits as open to revision based on thought, dialogue and experience


it's alive! [again]

Published 6/30/2009 by devilDroid in dev
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Finally got an ASP.NET blog setup on my domain.  Thanks, blogEngine!


devilDroid

mechatronic mayhem