What I would like to understand is how you got from the passage you quoted from me, about Husserl's criticism of naturalism, to God. Husserl's quote didn't say anything about God. It is essentially an argument about the nature of knowledge, i.e. it is an epistemological argument. I am using it to argue that mind cannot be 'objectified', which means it can't be dealt with naturalistically; it argues that to 'naturalise' mind is to misunderstand it.Greta wrote:I agree with your points but none provide the slightest justification for adopting the deity of ancient people to the question of the mind. One cannot assume "God". One can suspect the existence of "a fundamental mind", but not logically assume or believe it. If you can agree with me on this, we have no debate.
I completely agree - I don't generally argue that 'God exists', but neither am I atheist. Why that would be is out of scope for this thread but please do have a read of God does not exist.Greta wrote:The question "Does God exist?" may well be irrelevant and entirely miss the point of larger goings on, but we seem locked into a binary construction of diametrically opposed models where each conception is almost certainly wrong.
I disagree with Galen Strawson on the 'utterly obvious' nature of consciousness for what I think is the obvious reason that what we think we know of our own consciousness is only the tip of an iceberg (which is probably the most important thing that Freud discovered). The contents of discursive, rational thought is only a very small proportion of the totality of the mind, which includes all the subconscious, cutural, linguistic, archetypical and unconscious components.
Part of that point is 'mind over matter', i.e. I can say something that scares you, and the adrenal glands will jump into action. But that again is just the tip of the iceberg, there's the entire domain of 'mind-body medicine', which, according to materialism, ought not to exist.Greta wrote:Earlier you spoke of forum members exchanging information that results in physiological and psychological changes. As far as we know, information requires a physical component, even if at Planck scales.
But there's another argument, which is that information may be represented physically, but it is not in itself physical. How come? Because information can be represented in many different media, and in many different systems, without loosing or changing it's identity. Say I write an instruction or a formula - it might contain very exact information which will produce some result. I can write that in any number of languages, or even in completely different media - binary, morse code, engraved in granite. Every physical representation is different, but if it is encoded correctly, the meaning remains the same. And how could that be if the information is physical? Information exists on a different plane or level to the physical.
Physicalists have this idea that 'mind is what brain does', as if that explains the nature of thinking; 'the brain secretes thought like the liver sectretes bile'. At the back of this argument, there is the belief that there is a causal nexus, reaching back through evolution, and down through neurobiology, which will explain 'the nature of thought' as the product of evolution. That is why, when you ask them, their explanations always comprise accounts of how neuroscientists and evolutionary biologists understand the question.
But that assumes what it is setting out to prove, i.e. it assumes that the nature of mind is something that can be explained in principle in those terms. In other words, it begs the question. The attitude that 'mind is what brain does' is the essence of materialism, and the very question which the book that was discussed earlier in this thread, Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos, was about. The materialist will dismiss that book, on the basis that it is unscientific, and then carry on (as was done already). And one can perfectly well accept the biological effectiveness of evolutionary theory, without necessarily agreeing that it provides an in-principle explanation of the mind; because to say that it does, is to implicitly state the notion that the mind is a biological phenomenon, which, once again, is begging the question.
Actually there is nowadays widespread scientific recognition that information is not reducible to the physical. This realisation came through some of the work of Norbert Weiner (among others), who invented cybernetics, and who said
Computing Machines and the Nervous System. p. 132.The mechanical brain does not secrete thought "as the liver does bile," as the earlier materialists claimed, nor does it put it out in the form of energy, as the muscle puts out its activity. Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day[.
By the way, I've seen John Hagelin speak, he's an inspiring guy, but a bit 'new age' for my liking (he's after all an associate of the Maharishi Mahesh "University"). I've been to a few of the Science and Non-Duality (SAND) conferences, there are many speakers like that there. Overall I am much nearer to them, than to materialists, but one still has to take it all with a grain of salt.