Sounds like an interesting read, we also have no idea what further or less intelligence does to your perception and experience of emotion. What is an emotion? Is it arrogant to assume other animals have the same distaste to sadness, after all it is equally important to experience as happiness.

I agree that its no reason to stop doing anything good, but not actively doing bad being the same as doing good is something I'm unsure on. I would be inclined to disagree.

I don't think we can be as certain about the mental capacity of severely mentally disabled humans, which is why euthanasia is such a controversial topic. The research that would give us a better understanding is struck by a catch 22 of what experiments are ethical; were the results of research to find that mentally disabled individuals are, internally, still highly sentient. We are more confident of the limits of an animals intellect than we are about the disabled.

Also cannibalism is just a disturbing concept and scenery compared to our natural content with killing prey. I imagine we are, at a genetic level, less inclined to kill other humans regardless of the ethical rationale. Just like many things we do without questioning the logic.

If you feel killing animals is equally disturbing then that is respectable but it is not necessary you putting your instincts aside and rationally objecting to injustice. We can't really justify not sending all our money to the 3rd world or halting society until we all have equal privilege, but we do. Fairness is a fairy tale.

Fair points, I suppose the only way I can justify my meat consumption is that if an intelligence form with as much on me as I have on the chicken comes along it can slaughter me to suit its own agenda too.

a) Chickens do a lot to avoid death when confronted by a recognizable danger but I could easily stroll up to a domesticated chicken with a gun or perhaps even a knife and likely not cause alarm.
b) I am not entirely sure chickens posses the wide range of emotion humans do but I could also be sparing it any unpleasant experience such as being brutally murdered by its' natural predators
c) I didn't ask the question to apply it to real life, I am just trying to understand what you're trying to achieve with your veganism (which from a lot of perspectives I agree with - especially in terms of what we could be feeding the 3rd world but instead we fatten up our livestock).

Emphasis on the unattainable. Most people become very agitated in the search of peace. Thinking it can be found via routes such as ending suffering or a strong moral code. Look into the teachings of Zen if you want to see a culture that seems to have its head around peace. Modern western justice and ethics are probably some of the most chaotic ideals ever to be held.

What would you say if I let the chicken do as it pleased it whole life and then, without any sort of anticipation or a single other chicken around, instantly killed it. Personally I would allow this to happen to me but I believe it would harm those who know me. I am not sure a chicken or its fellow chickens holds such significant social ties. I think humans have developed a huge attachment to life that many animals only begin to feel when they sense immediate danger. A chicken can not imagine its own death and so likely doesn't fear it.

I'm not sure I would relate morality to docile nature. For starters morals are incredibly diverse among individuals and cultures. If it is empathy you speak of, then I can't see a reason (nor an example) for why feeling for the emotions of those around you would make you docile. I imagine many feel alarmingly driven by their empathy.

Docile nature to me, springs from mindfulness, the ability to exist in the present (in time and space). Not to worry about what you should be doing for people elsewhere or about what you should've done or what you should do. Something a bunny rabbit or deer has likely mastered. To be completely focused on the grass it wants to eat, and then the moment a predator is present, the deer/bunny takes flight.

Human's psychological traits do not reflect those of an apex predator and nor did we develop them in such a role. Sapiens (and a few other big brained apes) were very much centered in the food chain for the vast majority of our 2 million year presence on Earth. In this role we developed anxieties and cooperative traits that were vital for a weak but high calorie consuming animal t survive. Thus came empathy. We work better in groups so lets look after the group.

Dolphins and other primates also exercise empathy (what I assume you mean by morals; the general concept that you are not the only one with feelings and yours aren't more important). This is because the live in a similar role to early humans.

Upon inventing tools and cultivation methods we leaped, almost instantly, to the top of the food chain. Now we are left in environments with essentially no life threatening phenomena to exercise our anxious and empathetic minds on.

Medicine, safety regulations, law, veganism are all outlets for outdated evolutionary traits. Never before has there been such an explosive success outbreak from a mutation. Evolution has had no time to dull our mid-food chain instinct and thus we over populate, nurse those who might've been dead and meddle with the nature of predator and prey.

To clarify yes, I think different expressions of the universe's perspective is a nice way of putting it.

It may be the most complex structure on earth but is it as complex as the galaxy we live in? Is it as complex as the workings of a sub atomic particle resonating through time and space? The human brain certainly isn't as complicated as the whole ecosystem as a collective. Why can't these peculiar arrangements of matter also form an experience? Not one that falls into our silly parameters of "self awareness" or "problem solving ability." But still an experience nonetheless.

Yes, I don't mean a conventional reincarnation more that we will, have and currently may be experiencing other perspectives. Concepts like memory and ego may simply be a veil over other parts of a wider perspective. I'm inspired by the word reincarnation as I think it is more likely than we think we could one day (without realizing it) find ourselves looking out the eyes and living the life of someone else.

I see no reason to believe only the human mind should be capable of generating experience, it is no different or more complex to many systems in the universe. This is not me following my heart, this is me being careful not to make any assumptions upon the importance of my species.

A scary thought we might simply be the construction of others perceptions and knowledge of us or our actions, but what of secrets and deep unshared thoughts? I think who we are extends into our deeds, society and environment but is not limited to that.

I think it is incredibly arrogant to say everything is purely physical as 'I think therefore I am.'
My problem with a lot of spiritual ideas is that they tend to view humanity as separate from other life and tend to view life as separate from the rest of the cosmos.
There is lots of evidence to support that abstract and spiritual thought aid the survival of the human race in a similar way to many other evolutionary traits formed from the chaos of natural selection. The thought that these spiritual laws existed before we manifested from physical material seems like a reverse engineer of a more likely possibility.
Spirituality could very well be more important than I believe but if it is an instinct of humans to generate these concepts then surely it is that possibility that we must open our minds to. It feels easy to shut off possibilities that shatter the importance of our egos yet I think, the further we read between the lines, the more beautiful a truth we may discover.
We are no more than atoms in the physical realm and yet, like characters in a book, the formations of our atoms represent meaning, experience to some sort of cosmic reader. Perhaps this reader is the universe itself?

I hope we are all connected to something (the universe) like branches from a tree or an ice cube tray filled with the same water. Joined by some kind of greater conscious we simply can't detect and we feel separate from it. I hope when we die we may become one with the trunk of the tree and experience all the other branches (and the trunk) simultaneously and yet also, one by one.

PS I haven't looked into Bhuddism in itself a great deal, but I love Alan Watts and Zen ideas.

I carefully replaced every use of the word conscious with experience in my article before posting it to avoid this exact debate. Free-will is a concept I very much struggle with and, if it does exist it is likely in a vastly different form to how we simplistically imagine it. I am not saying the rock chooses or does not chose to move, simply that some peculiar form of experience may form with the transfer of kinetic energy from one to another. This experience may be more like a movie than a video-game. Like many things this cannot be proven or disproved yet my heart tells me not to rule it out as a possibility that isn't as far-fetched as it might seem on a surface level.

exactly, that's why the notion we could all be the very same experience thrills me, maybe one day (excuse the implication we haven't already been) I or we could experience all kinds of impossibly alien perspectives. Why rule it out?

In the grand scheme of the universe I don't see a great purpose or relevance to human life I completely agree. But in order to make decisions and function in life I felt a serious need to have some sort of moral, ethical drive to take certain actions over.
I simply have concluded that I am in someway real as a mind not a brain. But perhaps I need to look further into my justification for this.

Thanks for the feedback, I will be at university next year and am considering a philosophy minor perhaps.

possibly my entire surrounding is generated by my mind I suppose there would be no knowing but I don't believe that to be the case. If it were then I would be simulating the entire universe and then the universe exists independently to whether my mind is generating it anyhow.

By more I do not mean physically more, or of more importance. I do simply mean there is a difference in my experience of being me. To the experience of what makes me. This perspective is real in some way. I am really a theoretical output of a more complex system yet and I think you'll agree with me I certainly feel real enough not to be a theory. Or I should say I feel real enough to prove that theoretical outputs are very real in the world and thus contradictory to the word not a theory. I then conclude that I am a contextual existence.

Thanks very much for the link that's very informative :)
But I don't believe the being should transcend the concept because by all means where the physical matter of the brain is unified into a being can only be considered a concept, like the labeling of a system in which we interact only with the inputs and outputs of.
I can't believe that a "being" could be something other than the concept of the collective results of the transmissions within my brain.
If it were anymore than could a being exist without the context of physical matter to accommodate it? I often think of calculating the resistance of two parallel resistors. You can calculate the total resistance of two individual parallel resistors and redraw it as a single resistor on one of the total resistance.
They are entirely equivocal and though physically there are two resistors but in the context of the circuit the two possible designs are equivalent. Without gazing on the circuit there would be no way of knowing.

By a similar logic There is no way of distinguishing the individual chain of reactions causing problem solving and cognition within my brain and a single being. The concept does not transcend the being the concept is equivalent to the being.

I don't think it was created by a god. I don't know how the universe came to be but I think when approaching the matter it's worth considering that many of the fundamental concepts we use to think should be ignored.
There's every possibility that the universe was not created at all it just was. One thing is for sure throughout history the universe certainly hasn't complied with our rational conclusions. It does not have to have a creator. The universe frankly doesn't give a damn what the Mind thinks it has to have.
I do not believe evolution is an all powerful god but perhaps in the same way our brain of neurons and synapses somehow conforms into the single being all of us call our selves that evolution may have a mind of its own?

Maybe I've miscommunication my belief but I do not claim too know the true nature of the universe. The only thing I can know is that I exist and I believe I exist as some kind of contextual existence because I am inarguable more than the matter that makes me. I do not believe in a God (I agree we can make Gods in our mind but those Gods will never alter the world around us all we can do is "pray" to them for a piece of mind, personally I have no use for a God only in my own mind).

Perhaps in a similar way that the context of the human brain is me, evolution was a designing god. It would be contradictory to my initial thoughts to disagree, however it is a god in the sense that it was our creator. Evolution is a very slow thinking god, soon to be vastly outpaced by the self correcting pace of A.I. which curiously enough. In the same way evolution was our slow thinking creator, we are the relatively slow thinking creator of AI.

You are right, I have heard of the behaviors of a vacuum which if I recall is the cause of Hawking radiation? This may have caused the beginning of our universe but what dictated the behaviors of a vacuum?

I think it is very egotistical to assume that the cause is anything similar to the human mind. The vast majority of the universe is hardly inspired by a humanoid model. And it seems evolution is what created us.

Are the resonating components of energy that project subatomic particles into existence (somewhere in a general area at a general time) minds? Perhaps but far from a human one. The contextual existence of anything seems probable based simply on our own existence. But minds are not created from nothing, they are a context of the physical world and how was the nature of the cosmos generated? There cannot be an answer.

fundamental in what way the transformation of energy, the conservation of information and mathematics entirely rely fundamentally on the absence of creation or destruction. Creation is simply a relative word when dealing with concepts. We are observers and explorers, and perhaps engineers and reconfigurators of the physical world but we are also simply physical existences made of atoms and in turn waves of energy resonating into matter and perhaps further detail is yet to be discovered. Those two existences to not contradict which is precisely what I was suggesting.

Sorry if you misinterpreted my use of the word design. I simply meant the results of evolution and our physical anatomy and the behavioral results of it.

Even these contextual existences i refer to are not created by nothing the form out of what already exists physically. Give me one example of something that has been created from nothing since "the beginning of time" and if you can't try justify to me why I would ever think that a time where things could appear from nothing could ever be.

I agree I think logic is a helpful tool for decision making and discovery but it cannot govern the universe as it is useless without some degree of assumption. You should read a book called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, there's a quote in it which says "the number of hypothesis for any given phenomenon is infinite" which is true. Assuming absolutely nothing, you can give any explanation for any observed behavior. There is no possibly way to eliminate every other possible correlation to rainfall and you can never completely confirm that rain only falls when there are clouds in the sky.

Logic and science has been experimentally proven to be correct but I see no reason that it wouldn't be out dated like every religious ideology of its time. Logic is a very helpful tool for accurately predicting the universe from the limited perspective of a human, but to truly understand the universe would be to completely simulate the universe and be the universe. The only fundamental of the universe is that it is what it is.

I essentially believe that though outside of my own perspective and from a truly rational view of the universe my personal desires have no real value and natural selection has simply resulted in those with a fabricated drive to survive surviving and those who do not have that fabricated desire to live not surviving. Obviously I don't know for sure if there ever were species without a will to survive but I am just saying from a rational stand point. Being alive or not shouldn't really matter nor should anything in the universe. It just is what it is.
However the notion that my desire to live is actually real because if it wasn't I wouldn't be experiencing it is what gets me out of trouble. It just frustrated me that the only real reason I could think of, without the implication of a god and afterlife, to live was "why not?"
I won't claim to have heard of all different ideas of different gods but I was raised as a catholic and cannot accept the idea of an all knowing all powerful being who defines flawed concepts like "right" and "wrong." So there really seemed to be know answer to my question of what the point to living is.
In accepting that even if my existence was of no real value (positive or negative) to the rest of the universe, I am still of value in the context of my own self, I finally thought of a valid justification to my existence despite having the knowledge that I was driven by many predetermined instincts and brain functions.

How this relates to the universe's creation of the multiverses creation or whatever I'm not entirely sure. But I imagine it could be that the fundamentals of our understandings of the world such as creation could be entirely wrong. Attempting to justify why things have to be created would be a very difficult discussion though I suppose it would be just as difficult to ask how things could have always been. I agree either notion would be equally as miraculous.
I think the end of my article may have gone onto a tangent that I don't completely back up. I plan to pursue physics and to discover a deeper understanding of the physical universe. What I really meant to bring to light is that despite not believing in a god. I most certainly think it is hard to argue against existences that are not physically apparent but are most definitely impactful on the physical world. They cannot simply 'float round' like a ghost or spirit, so I figure they must some kind of contextual existence.

I think the idea of creation is an inherently flawed concept. It just coming back to what created what created what. I can only logically conclude that creation is simply a concept that seems fundamental to the human mind but is in fact a stupid notion. You call it a magnificent miracle but the idea that there was once nothing and then there was something would be the true miracle. It would make more sense to say there had always been something.

I am confused if you disagree with the fact that we are all bouncy particles, that yes were discovered recently and so what, what do you think we are?

As for why we eat big macs despite the repercussions is very simple. Our design is not perfect and though our instincts evolved to better our survival the conditions of good health have changed faster than our biological drives and thus we release dopamine when consuming the tasty, cheap big mac and instead of instinctively bettering our health, we instinctively want a big mac.

what we think does not dictate the physical universe. If anything the physical universe strongly dictates what we are capable of thinking.