To What Extent Are Physical Bodies, and the Material World the Most 'Real' Aspects of Reality?

Discuss any topics related to metaphysics (the philosophical study of the principles of reality) or epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge) in this forum.
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JackDaydream
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Re: To What Extent Are Physical Bodies, and the Material World the Most 'Real' Aspects of Reality?

Post by JackDaydream »

3017Metaphysician wrote: July 8th, 2022, 6:25 pm
JackDaydream wrote: July 8th, 2022, 10:46 am
SteveKlinko wrote: July 8th, 2022, 10:28 am
JackDaydream wrote: July 6th, 2022, 4:37 pm

Thanks for your detailed reply. The most interesting statement which I find in your post is about the conscious mind is not 'a Ghost in the Machine, but rather a Ghost connected to a Machine.'. The idea of the ghost in the machine was too problematic as involving a potential separation between mind and body, almost as a mind within a body as a container. The notion of a Ghost connected to a machine is more intricate as seeing the brain as the basis of wiring between brain and body.

It may well be that consciousness fizzles with the end of the brain's existence as the idea of disembodied consciousness. The nature of consciousness does seem to be imminent rather than separate, although my one query would be the possibility that the brain is a filtering down of consciousness. This was the view of Henri Bergson of and Aldous Huxley, with the idea of there being 'mind at large'. This concept would also relate to Jung's idea of the collective unconscious, which would be about a source for the existence of consciousness itself. But, the nature of this source is a little unclear because it does depend whether the unconscious is completely unconscious, or whether anything remains of a person's consciousness beyond the death of the brain. Is consciousness once it exists simply a product of the physical or does it develop into any independent form of existence which transcends matter?
I start with the assumption that Conscious Minds are a separate Phenomenon from Bodies/Brains and all the whole Physical Universe. Conscious Minds exist in a separate Conscious Space. Our Bodies are Incubators for the Conscious Mind that must eventually become the pure Consciousness that it always was. When the Body/Mind dies, the attached Conscious Mind continues and is born into a completely new form of existence as a pure Conscious Mind. We cannot imagine what this pure Conscious Existence will be like.
That makes you a dualist to a large extent. Very few people are dualists and, generally, the idea of the separation of the mind from the body, as described by Descartes is seen as a false dichotomy between mind and body. In the criticism of Descartes' dualist split the main emphasis is upon embodied consciousness as an imminent reality.

However, I do have times when I do wonder about dualism. That has been mainly on the basis of experiences of experimentation with hallucinogenics, and a few borderline sleep experiences. I really did have the sensations of flying around my bedroom and seeing my body lying on the bed. On one occasion, I saw a silver coil attached to the centre of my forehead which seemed to be the connection between mind and body. Strangely, Descartes spoke of this connection, as the pineal gland in the centre of the forehead. My experience of seeing the silver coil was before I read the writings of Descartes.

I do find it hard to know what my experiences represented because such experiences may not be what they appear to be at face value. In particular, those using hallucinogenics are chemically induced. However, I do seriously wonder about dimensions beyond the physical, and I think that I have speculated on these in a couple of my own previous threads, as dimensions or levels beyond 3D reality, with time itself being at this juncture as the 4th dimension.
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Jack, Jack, Jack! I love you buddy but resist the temptation of equivocation. Just like the 'qualifications' from the subject-object dynamic, Dualism on its face recognizes the relationships between mind and matter. From the hard problem of consciousness (the difficulty in physically describing things like the feeling of color, Love, the Will, time, music, and other ineffable, abstract or otherwise qualitative phenomena) to left-brain/right-brain cognition, feeling v logic, will v intellect, physical/metaphysical, and/or any axiom associated with the unity of opposites, dualist epistemology is existential. There is no escaping it. We can only integrate it.

As you may be aware, contradictions or opposite determinations follow necessarily from most cognition during the apperception of knowing. Or simply said, during everyday thinking. To this end, you may first want to ask yourself the questions: What do we know?", "What does it mean to say that we know something?", "What makes justified beliefs justified?", and most importantly and germane to dualism: "How do we know that we know?"

To say "very few people are dualists" needs qualified, pun intended :D
The relationship between mind and body may be one of the hardest questions because it is related to what human beings are ultimately. I first began reading about it when I was writing an essay on whether there is life after death. The tutor who I had a tutorial with thought that after death people would survive as immortal minds or souls. On the other hand, the tutor who had given the initial lecture thought that the accounts of those who had near death experiences were connected to the bodily chemistry rather than the mind and body being separate and was coming from a physicalist perspective. I have continued to wonder about this, partly in relation to the question of life after death.

So much of the literature which I have come across in libraries and bookshops has been in the direction of materialist understanding of the mind, especially the associated philosophy of realism. However, it is not that I have come to a creat conclusion and I do wish to read so many other perspectives. There are also different forms of dualism, including substance dualism. Do you think that Shopenhauer's outlook is based on that? I came across a book based on Deleuze's understanding of dualism in a charity shop, called' Imminence'. I didn't buy it at the time and when I went back it had gone, but it was gone. The first book that led me to think about imminence was one by the physicist, Fritjof Capra, called 'The Turning Point', which I don't have any longer. He critiqued the Newtonian-Cartesian model and spoke of systems..I am not sure that he was a complete materialist though because he was drawing upon the new physics which makes things far from simple.

About a year and a half ago, I got to the point of thinking about going beyond dualism, but, then I started to wonder to what extent is this based on materialism in some ways. Definitely, my own experience of taking acid twice felt like a confirmation of dualism. I felt able to walk through other bodies and no one seemed to complain about me bumping into them.I even worried that I wouldn't get back into my body ever again. I don't really plan to take acid again because it was so dramatic and I had to start hanging out in dance music events which I don't go to usually.

In some ways, duality and non duality may be an essential paradox. In particular, even though some claim that mind may be beyond the body, the condition of the body is so central to sentience and states of mind. For example, I find it hard to cope with extreme weather, the heat, freezing temperatures and the pouring rain. It makes me feel awful and there is talk of Britain having highest temperatures on record this coming week. I think wondering how I will cope because I have hayfever already and find it hard to think clearly, probably because the air quality in London is so poor. So, I would gladly try and climb out of my body in bad weather and sleep can be difficult in it, with sleep and dreaming being one of my main ways of losing direct experience of the body.
Gertie
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Re: To What Extent Are Physical Bodies, and the Material World the Most 'Real' Aspects of Reality?

Post by Gertie »

Philosophically this question is complicated and can be answered in chunks with inbuilt assumptions already in place in different ways. I'm going to have a go at a big picture answer and it's long, sorry.

I find it helpful to keep the distinction between what is real (exists), and what is known/knowable clear. Ontology and epistemology.

The only thing I know with certainty to exist is my own conscious experience, because it is directly known. The content of my experience (and experience only exists as its content) includes a Me which is embodied, has a first person perspective located in a specific place and time in larger world. My conscious field is unified and discrete, and manifests as a representation of my interaction with the not-me world 'out there' .

So we have this initial oddity of my knowledge of the world being encapsulated within my experience, while that knowledge tells me I am ontologically located within the world. But if we keep the epistemological and ontological distinction clear, it's not a real problem.

Now if I assume that my experience represents a real world (which we each have to in order to escape not Idealism or Phenomenalism, but Solipsism), then I can share notes on the content of my experience with other people, and we can inter-subjectively establish a model of the world we share. And categorise different types of knowledge about ourselves and the world. We can agree together physical objects which are inter-subjectively third-person observable and measurable are real, and deveop coherent and predictive theories about them to eventually create the Standard Model of Physics. We give that physicalist type of knowledge a lot of weight, because it is third party falsifiable, coherent to the tiniest detail, and predictive. It's a really, really useful model of the physical aspects of our shared world, what it's made of and how it works, which we have an inter-subjective methodology for falsifying. But it's still a model rooted in how Subjects with a specifically human experiential toolkit agree how the world seems to us.

But that physicalist model itself tells us we are flawed and limited observers/knowers, that we evolved for utility rather than accuracy. That if there is a real world, our physical shared model is really a representation of how Subjects with our knowing toolkit interact with the world, rather than the world itself. So the ontological reality of the world remains uncertain, to the point that its properties might experiential in nature (Idealism), dualist, panpsychist, relational, a simulation, informational, mathematical and so on... or physicalism might be bang on with just a few bits yet to fill in. So far, nobody's come up with a way of checking which, if any, of these theories might be right. Epistemologically constrained as we are, as flawed and limited observers and thinkers.

So in a nutshell, epistemologically all that is certain is the existence of one's own experience. Our model of our shared world derives from sharing notes about the content of our own experience resulting from our interactions with the world rather than directly knowing the real nature of the world. This model tells us we are flawed and limited observers/thinkers/knowers of that world.

That epistemological problem should make philosophers humble about asserting any truths about reality, and caveat all theories of what is ontologically real. And remind us of the epistemological primacy of Subjects - knowing itself only exists as a manifestation of subjective experience. And what that experience of the world tells us, is that ontologically subjects might have emerged from a physical world.

Now to view an issue of identity in that context, we can talk about the physical features which are third person falsifiable, and in the case of Subjects we can talk about the first person ''what it is like'' to be that subject. If we treat the third person inter-subjective physical properties of a person as more real, that's an error, remember the issue is epistemological falsifiability within our model, not ontological reality. Experience is first person/subjective/private, but there is no doubting its reality for each subject, wgere-as physical stuff is third person/'objective'/public, and a type of framing of an inter-subjective model which is reliable enough to agree to treat as real.

So now - within the physicalist model we treat as day-to-day reality we can inter-subjectively agree we both have 10 fingers and toes, a penis or vagina, and agree to use this or that physical characteristic to create a category of biological sex. But I can never know what it is like to be you. I have to try to imagine, and as a sophisticated social species with theory of mind, we have a decent neurological toolkit for understanding and relating to others. Especially those similar to ourselves which naturally seems normal, even normative, to us unless we're told otherwise, and we have language and other types of communication to signal what it's like to be me.

If someone communicates to me the physical sex of their body feels all wrong to them, causes them to hate their own body, feel depressed and alienated from their own physical sense of self, I can get that to some extent, but not exactly. Nobody fully gets what it is like to be someone else, but we can imagine that must be bloody awful. To tell them that what it is like experience of being them isn't real, is obviously an error. It's as real as my experience of being me. So the important part is how we respond. With kindness , indifference or cruelty. And if your response is to rush to the dictionary or argue semantics to tell them their experience isn't real, you've lost the plot in terms of what's real and what's right.
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JackDaydream
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Re: To What Extent Are Physical Bodies, and the Material World the Most 'Real' Aspects of Reality?

Post by JackDaydream »

Sy Borg wrote: July 8th, 2022, 9:32 pm
JackDaydream wrote: July 8th, 2022, 10:13 am
Sy Borg wrote: July 8th, 2022, 12:47 am It seems to me that you can't have physicality without form and you cannot have form without physicality.

That is, physical things necessarily have a form, informational aspects. Even an amorphous form can be described informationally. In fact, randomised things are more complex because they cannot be reduced to patterns.

Likewise, without physical things, there are no forms, only potentials. Where do the potentials come from? From a physical substrate that researchers have not yet detected. Ground zero is complete randomisation, as per the virtual particles of energy that have bubble through a vacuum. By chance, patterns emerge from chaos, and some patterns persist longer than others.
It can be asked to what extent is information physical? In particular it is linked to the physical but not identical with it.For example, information is sent via Wifi but it is transmitted onto physical devices but it is not necessarily physical in all cases. However, I am not entirely sure about this, because emails or ebooks are physical in the sense they can be viewed. But the ebooks are on a different plane to paper ones, and are not 3D. I remember my first Kindle, a few years ago having surgery to change its battery and it lost its memory, so the information went missing. However, the man in the computer shop managed to resurrect all my books onto a new device, which was fantastic, so it shows that information can be dormant and be retrieved.
Wi-fi is entirely physical - electromagnetic energy (photons at lower frequencies than visible light).

All of the things you mentioned are physical. Is fairy floss more or less physical than a cannonball? There is less "stuff" in fairy floss, but it is also more complex, being relatively chaotic. Is active RAM more or less physical than unused chips? The active RAM is more informationally dense. Are you more or less physical than a star? I would say a star is far more firmly entrenched in reality than we are, but it's not more physical as such. There's just more of it and it will last much longer.

Relevant concepts here would be mass, density, information density, degree of organisation and levels of homogeneity or heterogeneity.

JackDaydream wrote: July 8th, 2022, 10:13 amI wonder how consciousness corresponds with this? The brain loses everyday consciousness, apart from REM dream sleep, when a person is asleep. However, it surfaces the next morning on waking. Mostly, when I first awake the events of the day before are the first which enter my mind, like an ongoing organisation of information. The brain is needed as a receiver but the information is not strictly physical even though aspects such of the nervous system are involved.
I see the situation as somewhat akin to a stream. When the rain (input) stops the stream dries and enters a state of relative dormancy. When rain returns, the water follows the path carved into the Earth, like consciousness following conditioned neuronal pathways, which are effectively "the self".

JackDaydream wrote: July 8th, 2022, 10:13 am Even though I am not certain of reincarnation, it does seem possible that rudimentary aspects of the core self of traits as information, though not individual memories usually, could fizzle with the death of the brain and physical body, and resurface in future lifeforms. That was one of the ways which I have heard it described in some Buddhist metaphysical descriptions. Certainly, I find that idea more feasible than that of consciousness being transferred onto machines, as artificial intelligence.
I think it would require additional dimensions, which are not off the table due to string theory. However, the results of recent LHC experiments thus far have not supported string theory's concept of superposition.

As for machine sentience, one question is whether normal hardware can support consciousness or whether wetware is needed? The complexities of fluid dynamics can be superficially recreated but the details of the chaotic paths of molecules in churning fluid cannot be exactly predicted. Today's computation can convincingly mimic fluid dynamics but cannot achieve the real thing in detail.

Electricity moves like water in some respects, so maybe it can replace water as a messenger and agent?

Also, there is an element of faith in some circles that more and better processing will at some point create the emergent property of sentience. But what if its doesn't? What if it just, for instance, makes ever more imposing - but non-sentient - chess grandmasters, doctors, or whatever? Maybe there are particular algorithms, or types of connections that are essential to "turn on the lights"?

Note: I have more questions than answers here.
I guess that Wifi is physical and I am not an electrician. I was just so amazed when someone gave me a Kindle as a present about 10 years ago and I was able to go to places where there was Wifi and download so many classics..It felt like magic and I had always seen the transmission of music onto records, tapes and CDs as being rather magical. One hundred years ago such possibilities would not have been imagined. Of course , photography and radio may have been the first stages.

I have more questions than answers myself. With consciousness, sentience seems extremely important and that is why it query artificial intelligence. The way everything, including ideas is mapped onto the physical seems extremely important, as well as the nature of the quantum universe. There is Heisenberg' idea of indeterminancy. It is hard to know how the physical aspects of life are bound up with laws of nature and what lies behind these laws. For me, it raises the question of is there consciousnes behind both the physical and mind, and what is the underlying source of everything. In some ways, the idea of the Tao may express some aspects of this, but, at the same time, I am wary of becoming too mystical, and trying to find words and explanations for what may be difficult to understand.
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Re: To What Extent Are Physical Bodies, and the Material World the Most 'Real' Aspects of Reality?

Post by Sy Borg »

JackDaydream wrote: July 9th, 2022, 4:36 pm
Sy Borg wrote: July 8th, 2022, 9:32 pm
JackDaydream wrote: July 8th, 2022, 10:13 am
Sy Borg wrote: July 8th, 2022, 12:47 am It seems to me that you can't have physicality without form and you cannot have form without physicality.

That is, physical things necessarily have a form, informational aspects. Even an amorphous form can be described informationally. In fact, randomised things are more complex because they cannot be reduced to patterns.

Likewise, without physical things, there are no forms, only potentials. Where do the potentials come from? From a physical substrate that researchers have not yet detected. Ground zero is complete randomisation, as per the virtual particles of energy that have bubble through a vacuum. By chance, patterns emerge from chaos, and some patterns persist longer than others.
It can be asked to what extent is information physical? In particular it is linked to the physical but not identical with it.For example, information is sent via Wifi but it is transmitted onto physical devices but it is not necessarily physical in all cases. However, I am not entirely sure about this, because emails or ebooks are physical in the sense they can be viewed. But the ebooks are on a different plane to paper ones, and are not 3D. I remember my first Kindle, a few years ago having surgery to change its battery and it lost its memory, so the information went missing. However, the man in the computer shop managed to resurrect all my books onto a new device, which was fantastic, so it shows that information can be dormant and be retrieved.
Wi-fi is entirely physical - electromagnetic energy (photons at lower frequencies than visible light).

All of the things you mentioned are physical. Is fairy floss more or less physical than a cannonball? There is less "stuff" in fairy floss, but it is also more complex, being relatively chaotic. Is active RAM more or less physical than unused chips? The active RAM is more informationally dense. Are you more or less physical than a star? I would say a star is far more firmly entrenched in reality than we are, but it's not more physical as such. There's just more of it and it will last much longer.

Relevant concepts here would be mass, density, information density, degree of organisation and levels of homogeneity or heterogeneity.

JackDaydream wrote: July 8th, 2022, 10:13 amI wonder how consciousness corresponds with this? The brain loses everyday consciousness, apart from REM dream sleep, when a person is asleep. However, it surfaces the next morning on waking. Mostly, when I first awake the events of the day before are the first which enter my mind, like an ongoing organisation of information. The brain is needed as a receiver but the information is not strictly physical even though aspects such of the nervous system are involved.
I see the situation as somewhat akin to a stream. When the rain (input) stops the stream dries and enters a state of relative dormancy. When rain returns, the water follows the path carved into the Earth, like consciousness following conditioned neuronal pathways, which are effectively "the self".

JackDaydream wrote: July 8th, 2022, 10:13 am Even though I am not certain of reincarnation, it does seem possible that rudimentary aspects of the core self of traits as information, though not individual memories usually, could fizzle with the death of the brain and physical body, and resurface in future lifeforms. That was one of the ways which I have heard it described in some Buddhist metaphysical descriptions. Certainly, I find that idea more feasible than that of consciousness being transferred onto machines, as artificial intelligence.
I think it would require additional dimensions, which are not off the table due to string theory. However, the results of recent LHC experiments thus far have not supported string theory's concept of superposition.

As for machine sentience, one question is whether normal hardware can support consciousness or whether wetware is needed? The complexities of fluid dynamics can be superficially recreated but the details of the chaotic paths of molecules in churning fluid cannot be exactly predicted. Today's computation can convincingly mimic fluid dynamics but cannot achieve the real thing in detail.

Electricity moves like water in some respects, so maybe it can replace water as a messenger and agent?

Also, there is an element of faith in some circles that more and better processing will at some point create the emergent property of sentience. But what if its doesn't? What if it just, for instance, makes ever more imposing - but non-sentient - chess grandmasters, doctors, or whatever? Maybe there are particular algorithms, or types of connections that are essential to "turn on the lights"?

Note: I have more questions than answers here.
I guess that Wifi is physical and I am not an electrician. I was just so amazed when someone gave me a Kindle as a present about 10 years ago and I was able to go to places where there was Wifi and download so many classics..It felt like magic and I had always seen the transmission of music onto records, tapes and CDs as being rather magical. One hundred years ago such possibilities would not have been imagined. Of course , photography and radio may have been the first stages.

I have more questions than answers myself. With consciousness, sentience seems extremely important and that is why it query artificial intelligence. The way everything, including ideas is mapped onto the physical seems extremely important, as well as the nature of the quantum universe. There is Heisenberg' idea of indeterminancy. It is hard to know how the physical aspects of life are bound up with laws of nature and what lies behind these laws. For me, it raises the question of is there consciousnes behind both the physical and mind, and what is the underlying source of everything. In some ways, the idea of the Tao may express some aspects of this, but, at the same time, I am wary of becoming too mystical, and trying to find words and explanations for what may be difficult to understand.
Consider how very ancient people would have responded to a tribe member reviving after a near-death experience. He or she is going to tell the tribe that they have been to the afterlife and returned. I suspect that NDEs and peak experiences lie at the root of the various afterlife beliefs - be it God, multiple gods, the spirit of the place, the spirit of the people and so forth.

It seems to me that NDEs can potentially act as a ground zero boundary for consciousness studies in much the same way as black holes provide a ground zero boundary for physicists.
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Re: To What Extent Are Physical Bodies, and the Material World the Most 'Real' Aspects of Reality?

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Gertie wrote: July 9th, 2022, 1:34 pm Philosophically this question is complicated and can be answered in chunks with inbuilt assumptions already in place in different ways. I'm going to have a go at a big picture answer and it's long, sorry.

I find it helpful to keep the distinction between what is real (exists), and what is known/knowable clear. Ontology and epistemology.

The only thing I know with certainty to exist is my own conscious experience, because it is directly known. The content of my experience (and experience only exists as its content) includes a Me which is embodied, has a first person perspective located in a specific place and time in larger world. My conscious field is unified and discrete, and manifests as a representation of my interaction with the not-me world 'out there' .

So we have this initial oddity of my knowledge of the world being encapsulated within my experience, while that knowledge tells me I am ontologically located within the world. But if we keep the epistemological and ontological distinction clear, it's not a real problem.

Now if I assume that my experience represents a real world (which we each have to in order to escape not Idealism or Phenomenalism, but Solipsism), then I can share notes on the content of my experience with other people, and we can inter-subjectively establish a model of the world we share. And categorise different types of knowledge about ourselves and the world. We can agree together physical objects which are inter-subjectively third-person observable and measurable are real, and deveop coherent and predictive theories about them to eventually create the Standard Model of Physics. We give that physicalist type of knowledge a lot of weight, because it is third party falsifiable, coherent to the tiniest detail, and predictive. It's a really, really useful model of the physical aspects of our shared world, what it's made of and how it works, which we have an inter-subjective methodology for falsifying. But it's still a model rooted in how Subjects with a specifically human experiential toolkit agree how the world seems to us.

But that physicalist model itself tells us we are flawed and limited observers/knowers, that we evolved for utility rather than accuracy. That if there is a real world, our physical shared model is really a representation of how Subjects with our knowing toolkit interact with the world, rather than the world itself. So the ontological reality of the world remains uncertain, to the point that its properties might experiential in nature (Idealism), dualist, panpsychist, relational, a simulation, informational, mathematical and so on... or physicalism might be bang on with just a few bits yet to fill in. So far, nobody's come up with a way of checking which, if any, of these theories might be right. Epistemologically constrained as we are, as flawed and limited observers and thinkers.

So in a nutshell, epistemologically all that is certain is the existence of one's own experience. Our model of our shared world derives from sharing notes about the content of our own experience resulting from our interactions with the world rather than directly knowing the real nature of the world. This model tells us we are flawed and limited observers/thinkers/knowers of that world.

That epistemological problem should make philosophers humble about asserting any truths about reality, and caveat all theories of what is ontologically real. And remind us of the epistemological primacy of Subjects - knowing itself only exists as a manifestation of subjective experience. And what that experience of the world tells us, is that ontologically subjects might have emerged from a physical world.

Now to view an issue of identity in that context, we can talk about the physical features which are third person falsifiable, and in the case of Subjects we can talk about the first person ''what it is like'' to be that subject. If we treat the third person inter-subjective physical properties of a person as more real, that's an error, remember the issue is epistemological falsifiability within our model, not ontological reality. Experience is first person/subjective/private, but there is no doubting its reality for each subject, wgere-as physical stuff is third person/'objective'/public, and a type of framing of an inter-subjective model which is reliable enough to agree to treat as real.

So now - within the physicalist model we treat as day-to-day reality we can inter-subjectively agree we both have 10 fingers and toes, a penis or vagina, and agree to use this or that physical characteristic to create a category of biological sex. But I can never know what it is like to be you. I have to try to imagine, and as a sophisticated social species with theory of mind, we have a decent neurological toolkit for understanding and relating to others. Especially those similar to ourselves which naturally seems normal, even normative, to us unless we're told otherwise, and we have language and other types of communication to signal what it's like to be me.

If someone communicates to me the physical sex of their body feels all wrong to them, causes them to hate their own body, feel depressed and alienated from their own physical sense of self, I can get that to some extent, but not exactly. Nobody fully gets what it is like to be someone else, but we can imagine that must be bloody awful. To tell them that what it is like experience of being them isn't real, is obviously an error. It's as real as my experience of being me. So the important part is how we respond. With kindness , indifference or cruelty. And if your response is to rush to the dictionary or argue semantics to tell them their experience isn't real, you've lost the plot in terms of what's real and what's right.
Thank you for your great response and I hope that others on the forum read it too. The distinction between epistemology and ontology is extremely important. It may be hard to be humble, even within philosophy and pretend to be able to see, 'The Whole of the Moon,' as in The Waterboys' song. Each person has a limited perspective and the intersubjective experience of what is 'real' is complicated because no one can get inside another person's mind to appreciate another person's experiences, which may be the basis for any empathetic understanding.

A lot of shared meanings are negotiated and depend on the communication of shared meanings, and how these can be compared and contrasted. Even if the intersubjective gives a certain degree of objectivity it is formed on interpretative deductions of various insubjectivities. Even consensus, while being a market for the 'real' it may come under scrutiny by a new way of seeing and thinking. For example, the new physics of Einstein ushered in a whole new paradigm for understanding the basic structure of reality, and there may be potential new ones in the future.
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Re: To What Extent Are Physical Bodies, and the Material World the Most 'Real' Aspects of Reality?

Post by JackDaydream »

SteveKlinko wrote: July 8th, 2022, 10:28 am
JackDaydream wrote: July 6th, 2022, 4:37 pm
SteveKlinko wrote: July 6th, 2022, 1:43 pm
JackDaydream wrote: July 6th, 2022, 8:59 am This has always been for me one of the biggest philosophy questions. It is at the core of the debate between materialism and idealism. The way in which consiousness is seen is dependent on it, with Dennett's idea of consciousness being an illusion being bound up with a physicalist approach. B F Skinner's model of psychology, which was central to the behaviourist approach to psychology was based on the philosophy of materialism.

Assumptions about whether the material reality is the most 'real' reality are at the basis of the various psychological models. The cognitive school of psychology seems to embrace both, through incorporating the objective findings of neuroscience with the meanings of human beings, in the way in which the beliefs and interpretative meanings of a person are central to psychological awareness and to human behaviour. Social psychology and other social sciences, especially sociology and anthropology also focus upon the meanings and values of individuals and cultures.

Some of the ideas of biological essentialism, including seeing gender as being simply about the physical categorisation of the body into the sexes rest upon physicalist assumptions. To what extent is a person equatable with the body alone? What about the inner world of consciousness as an important aspect of reality. My own metaphysical viewpoint is that mind and matter are both essential and it is not possible to say that one is more real than the other. The philosophy of realism focuses on the outer world as the 'real'. However, it is a difficult area to think about and it does involve what was asked in postmodernism: what is the difference between the real and the imaginary? This also relates to the nature of symbolic structures, as well as reason and ideas itself. So, what is the most 'real' reality?
The Inter Mind sections on Volition, Knowledge, Understanding, Creativity, Humor, and Emotions have shown that these aspects of the Human Mind are firmly based in the Conscious Mind (CM). I believe it can be said that these are some of the main activities of Thinking. But the Physical Mind (PM) has no Volition, Knowledge, Understanding, Creativity, Humor, or Emotions. In other words, the Physical Mind is unable to Think. Thinking involves a CM as the place where these things happen. Also, we have previously realized that all Sensory Experience happens in the CM. Consider Redness, the Standard A Tone, the Taste of Salt, the Smell of Bleach, and the Touch of a Rough Surface.

Taking this one step further, it is Logical to Speculate that everything we are, everything we thought we were, and Everything Else, is some kind of Conscious Experience. We might actually only Exist as CMs in Conscious Space, and are merely Connected to our PMs in Physical Space. There might be no Conscious or Thinking aspect in the PM that is part of what we are. The PM would be an Unconscious, Electrochemical, Mechanistic, Tool that the CM uses. In terms of a Ghost in the Machine concept, I think we can say that the CM is not a Ghost in the Machine, but rather a Ghost Connected to the Machine. The Human Body/Brain Machine is the Phantom that does not Consciously Exist and eventually dies and goes away. The CM Ghost is the only Real thing that we Are and have Known.

When the PM goes away, the CM will probably just say: ... Hmmm ... What was that? ... and then go about the business it was doing for eons prior to that Physical Life Connection. Or maybe it will Think and Remember, and Realize it has learned from the Experience.
Thanks for your detailed reply. The most interesting statement which I find in your post is about the conscious mind is not 'a Ghost in the Machine, but rather a Ghost connected to a Machine.'. The idea of the ghost in the machine was too problematic as involving a potential separation between mind and body, almost as a mind within a body as a container. The notion of a Ghost connected to a machine is more intricate as seeing the brain as the basis of wiring between brain and body.

It may well be that consciousness fizzles with the end of the brain's existence as the idea of disembodied consciousness. The nature of consciousness does seem to be imminent rather than separate, although my one query would be the possibility that the brain is a filtering down of consciousness. This was the view of Henri Bergson of and Aldous Huxley, with the idea of there being 'mind at large'. This concept would also relate to Jung's idea of the collective unconscious, which would be about a source for the existence of consciousness itself. But, the nature of this source is a little unclear because it does depend whether the unconscious is completely unconscious, or whether anything remains of a person's consciousness beyond the death of the brain. Is consciousness once it exists simply a product of the physical or does it develop into any independent form of existence which transcends matter?
I start with the assumption that Conscious Minds are a separate Phenomenon from Bodies/Brains and all the whole Physical Universe. Conscious Minds exist in a separate Conscious Space. Our Bodies are Incubators for the Conscious Mind that must eventually become the pure Consciousness that it always was. When the Body/Mind dies, the attached Conscious Mind continues and is born into a completely new form of existence as a pure Conscious Mind. We cannot imagine what this pure Conscious Existence will be like.
I am impressed by the intermind model, my only query being about where sentience fits into the picture. I know that you are coming from an engineering background and this means that you have a very good understanding of systems. Human beings are systems and even parts of larger systems. The only trouble which I have with your particular idea of the conscious mind is that in being machine based it may rule out the sentience which the basis for emotional experiences. If consciousness does not have sentience at all can it have emotions. What would consciousness be and would it have subjectivity without sentience? Or, would it have become a spirit?
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Re: To What Extent Are Physical Bodies, and the Material World the Most 'Real' Aspects of Reality?

Post by JackDaydream »

Sy Borg wrote: July 9th, 2022, 4:56 pm
JackDaydream wrote: July 9th, 2022, 4:36 pm
Sy Borg wrote: July 8th, 2022, 9:32 pm
JackDaydream wrote: July 8th, 2022, 10:13 am

It can be asked to what extent is information physical? In particular it is linked to the physical but not identical with it.For example, information is sent via Wifi but it is transmitted onto physical devices but it is not necessarily physical in all cases. However, I am not entirely sure about this, because emails or ebooks are physical in the sense they can be viewed. But the ebooks are on a different plane to paper ones, and are not 3D. I remember my first Kindle, a few years ago having surgery to change its battery and it lost its memory, so the information went missing. However, the man in the computer shop managed to resurrect all my books onto a new device, which was fantastic, so it shows that information can be dormant and be retrieved.
Wi-fi is entirely physical - electromagnetic energy (photons at lower frequencies than visible light).

All of the things you mentioned are physical. Is fairy floss more or less physical than a cannonball? There is less "stuff" in fairy floss, but it is also more complex, being relatively chaotic. Is active RAM more or less physical than unused chips? The active RAM is more informationally dense. Are you more or less physical than a star? I would say a star is far more firmly entrenched in reality than we are, but it's not more physical as such. There's just more of it and it will last much longer.

Relevant concepts here would be mass, density, information density, degree of organisation and levels of homogeneity or heterogeneity.

JackDaydream wrote: July 8th, 2022, 10:13 amI wonder how consciousness corresponds with this? The brain loses everyday consciousness, apart from REM dream sleep, when a person is asleep. However, it surfaces the next morning on waking. Mostly, when I first awake the events of the day before are the first which enter my mind, like an ongoing organisation of information. The brain is needed as a receiver but the information is not strictly physical even though aspects such of the nervous system are involved.
I see the situation as somewhat akin to a stream. When the rain (input) stops the stream dries and enters a state of relative dormancy. When rain returns, the water follows the path carved into the Earth, like consciousness following conditioned neuronal pathways, which are effectively "the self".

JackDaydream wrote: July 8th, 2022, 10:13 am Even though I am not certain of reincarnation, it does seem possible that rudimentary aspects of the core self of traits as information, though not individual memories usually, could fizzle with the death of the brain and physical body, and resurface in future lifeforms. That was one of the ways which I have heard it described in some Buddhist metaphysical descriptions. Certainly, I find that idea more feasible than that of consciousness being transferred onto machines, as artificial intelligence.
I think it would require additional dimensions, which are not off the table due to string theory. However, the results of recent LHC experiments thus far have not supported string theory's concept of superposition.

As for machine sentience, one question is whether normal hardware can support consciousness or whether wetware is needed? The complexities of fluid dynamics can be superficially recreated but the details of the chaotic paths of molecules in churning fluid cannot be exactly predicted. Today's computation can convincingly mimic fluid dynamics but cannot achieve the real thing in detail.

Electricity moves like water in some respects, so maybe it can replace water as a messenger and agent?

Also, there is an element of faith in some circles that more and better processing will at some point create the emergent property of sentience. But what if its doesn't? What if it just, for instance, makes ever more imposing - but non-sentient - chess grandmasters, doctors, or whatever? Maybe there are particular algorithms, or types of connections that are essential to "turn on the lights"?

Note: I have more questions than answers here.
I guess that Wifi is physical and I am not an electrician. I was just so amazed when someone gave me a Kindle as a present about 10 years ago and I was able to go to places where there was Wifi and download so many classics..It felt like magic and I had always seen the transmission of music onto records, tapes and CDs as being rather magical. One hundred years ago such possibilities would not have been imagined. Of course , photography and radio may have been the first stages.

I have more questions than answers myself. With consciousness, sentience seems extremely important and that is why it query artificial intelligence. The way everything, including ideas is mapped onto the physical seems extremely important, as well as the nature of the quantum universe. There is Heisenberg' idea of indeterminancy. It is hard to know how the physical aspects of life are bound up with laws of nature and what lies behind these laws. For me, it raises the question of is there consciousnes behind both the physical and mind, and what is the underlying source of everything. In some ways, the idea of the Tao may express some aspects of this, but, at the same time, I am wary of becoming too mystical, and trying to find words and explanations for what may be difficult to understand.
Consider how very ancient people would have responded to a tribe member reviving after a near-death experience. He or she is going to tell the tribe that they have been to the afterlife and returned. I suspect that NDEs and peak experiences lie at the root of the various afterlife beliefs - be it God, multiple gods, the spirit of the place, the spirit of the people and so forth.

It seems to me that NDEs can potentially act as a ground zero boundary for consciousness studies in much the same way as black holes provide a ground zero boundary for physicists.
It does seem likely that most ancient people would have interpreted near death experiences literally. It does take philosophy to begin to question what something appears to be. I have known a few people who have never be seen as having any psychotic experiences who see angels and auras on a regular basis and don't question the basis of them at all, seeing these as 'reality'. I haven't seen these people in the last couple of years and I do wonder how I would discuss it with them after all the discussions on the nature of reality which I have engaged in during the last couple of years. I actually feel that they may object to my philosophical scrutiny because their experiences are so 'real' from their point of view. This may be where it gets difficult because whether an materialist, an idealist or a spiritualist, each person may see their own as the most 'real' one.
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Re: To What Extent Are Physical Bodies, and the Material World the Most 'Real' Aspects of Reality?

Post by Pattern-chaser »

Gertie wrote: July 9th, 2022, 1:34 pm Now if I assume that my experience represents a real world (which we each have to in order to escape not Idealism or Phenomenalism, but Solipsism)
I don't disagree with the body of what you have written in the above post. But this does attract my attention. Why would we consider a certain possibility — and "Solipsism" is possible, or we would've rejected it long ago — as needing to be "escaped"? There are other possibilities, but you don't recommend that they too must be escaped.

This apparently irrational rejection of an option — a possibility — seems to be based on nothing more than distaste or dislike. We all know that Solipsism is only one possibility, and that there are other possibilities too, but that's the one so many philosophers tend to shy away from. I just find this strange, that's all. 🤔
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Re: To What Extent Are Physical Bodies, and the Material World the Most 'Real' Aspects of Reality?

Post by SteveKlinko »

JackDaydream wrote: July 10th, 2022, 2:58 pm
SteveKlinko wrote: July 8th, 2022, 10:28 am
JackDaydream wrote: July 6th, 2022, 4:37 pm
SteveKlinko wrote: July 6th, 2022, 1:43 pm
The Inter Mind sections on Volition, Knowledge, Understanding, Creativity, Humor, and Emotions have shown that these aspects of the Human Mind are firmly based in the Conscious Mind (CM). I believe it can be said that these are some of the main activities of Thinking. But the Physical Mind (PM) has no Volition, Knowledge, Understanding, Creativity, Humor, or Emotions. In other words, the Physical Mind is unable to Think. Thinking involves a CM as the place where these things happen. Also, we have previously realized that all Sensory Experience happens in the CM. Consider Redness, the Standard A Tone, the Taste of Salt, the Smell of Bleach, and the Touch of a Rough Surface.

Taking this one step further, it is Logical to Speculate that everything we are, everything we thought we were, and Everything Else, is some kind of Conscious Experience. We might actually only Exist as CMs in Conscious Space, and are merely Connected to our PMs in Physical Space. There might be no Conscious or Thinking aspect in the PM that is part of what we are. The PM would be an Unconscious, Electrochemical, Mechanistic, Tool that the CM uses. In terms of a Ghost in the Machine concept, I think we can say that the CM is not a Ghost in the Machine, but rather a Ghost Connected to the Machine. The Human Body/Brain Machine is the Phantom that does not Consciously Exist and eventually dies and goes away. The CM Ghost is the only Real thing that we Are and have Known.

When the PM goes away, the CM will probably just say: ... Hmmm ... What was that? ... and then go about the business it was doing for eons prior to that Physical Life Connection. Or maybe it will Think and Remember, and Realize it has learned from the Experience.
Thanks for your detailed reply. The most interesting statement which I find in your post is about the conscious mind is not 'a Ghost in the Machine, but rather a Ghost connected to a Machine.'. The idea of the ghost in the machine was too problematic as involving a potential separation between mind and body, almost as a mind within a body as a container. The notion of a Ghost connected to a machine is more intricate as seeing the brain as the basis of wiring between brain and body.

It may well be that consciousness fizzles with the end of the brain's existence as the idea of disembodied consciousness. The nature of consciousness does seem to be imminent rather than separate, although my one query would be the possibility that the brain is a filtering down of consciousness. This was the view of Henri Bergson of and Aldous Huxley, with the idea of there being 'mind at large'. This concept would also relate to Jung's idea of the collective unconscious, which would be about a source for the existence of consciousness itself. But, the nature of this source is a little unclear because it does depend whether the unconscious is completely unconscious, or whether anything remains of a person's consciousness beyond the death of the brain. Is consciousness once it exists simply a product of the physical or does it develop into any independent form of existence which transcends matter?
I start with the assumption that Conscious Minds are a separate Phenomenon from Bodies/Brains and all the whole Physical Universe. Conscious Minds exist in a separate Conscious Space. Our Bodies are Incubators for the Conscious Mind that must eventually become the pure Consciousness that it always was. When the Body/Mind dies, the attached Conscious Mind continues and is born into a completely new form of existence as a pure Conscious Mind. We cannot imagine what this pure Conscious Existence will be like.
I am impressed by the intermind model, my only query being about where sentience fits into the picture. I know that you are coming from an engineering background and this means that you have a very good understanding of systems. Human beings are systems and even parts of larger systems. The only trouble which I have with your particular idea of the conscious mind is that in being machine based it may rule out the sentience which the basis for emotional experiences. If consciousness does not have sentience at all can it have emotions. What would consciousness be and would it have subjectivity without sentience? Or, would it have become a spirit?
I understand your use of the word Sentience to mean, all the Sensory Experiences like Redness, the Standard A Tone, the Salty Taste, and etc. These are all Conscious Experiences in the Conscious Mind. Each of these Experiences is Correlated with specific Neural Activity in a particular Area of the Cortex. So from the Connectist point of view the Conscious Mind must be Connected, through the Inter Mind, to those Areas of the Cortex in order to convert the Neural Activity into the Conscious Experience for the Conscious Mind. In other words there is no Sentience without a Connected Consciousness.

With an Artificial Life Form the equivalent of the Cortex, an Artificial Cortex, for Sensory inputs must be designed into the Machine. The design must allow an Inter Mind to Connect with this Artificial Cortex. Then the Artificial Life Form would have Sentience because it is Connected with an Inter Mind to a Conscious Mind in Conscious Space. The Conscious Mind might not care if it was Connected to a Bio Life Form or an Artificial Life Form.

I have not studied the Cortical locations for Emotions very much. But I would imagine that there will be Cortical Areas that Correlate with each Emotion. The Inter Mind must Connect with these Areas and know that when various Areas activate that they mean particular Emotions. The Inter Mind will convert the Neural Activity into the actual Feeling of the Emotion. An Artificial Life Form could also have Emotions if the Artificial Cortex can be designed with Emotional Areas.

Also remember that according to Connectism, everything you are or think you are is some sort of Conscious Experience. You are nothing without Conscious Experience. You are only Conscious Experience. Your Brain/Body is just an unconscious electrochemical Machine without a Connection to Consciousness. I actually don't know what a Spirit is. But I do know what Conscious Experiences are. If a Spirit is Conscious Experience then I might understand what a Spirit is. But it seems to me that the word Spirit has too much historic and ancient Baggage to be very useful in modern speculations about Consciousness.
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Re: To What Extent Are Physical Bodies, and the Material World the Most 'Real' Aspects of Reality?

Post by SteveKlinko »

JackDaydream wrote: July 10th, 2022, 2:58 pm
Thinking about this a little more, I am not so sure that the Emotional Areas are going to be Cortical but rather the Emotions might be more rooted in the lower Brainstem regions. So the Inter Mind will need to Connect to these regions in order to convert the Neural Activity to Emotions.
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Re: To What Extent Are Physical Bodies, and the Material World the Most 'Real' Aspects of Reality?

Post by 3017Metaphysician »

JackDaydream wrote: July 9th, 2022, 12:49 pm
3017Metaphysician wrote: July 8th, 2022, 6:25 pm
JackDaydream wrote: July 8th, 2022, 10:46 am
SteveKlinko wrote: July 8th, 2022, 10:28 am
I start with the assumption that Conscious Minds are a separate Phenomenon from Bodies/Brains and all the whole Physical Universe. Conscious Minds exist in a separate Conscious Space. Our Bodies are Incubators for the Conscious Mind that must eventually become the pure Consciousness that it always was. When the Body/Mind dies, the attached Conscious Mind continues and is born into a completely new form of existence as a pure Conscious Mind. We cannot imagine what this pure Conscious Existence will be like.
That makes you a dualist to a large extent. Very few people are dualists and, generally, the idea of the separation of the mind from the body, as described by Descartes is seen as a false dichotomy between mind and body. In the criticism of Descartes' dualist split the main emphasis is upon embodied consciousness as an imminent reality.

However, I do have times when I do wonder about dualism. That has been mainly on the basis of experiences of experimentation with hallucinogenics, and a few borderline sleep experiences. I really did have the sensations of flying around my bedroom and seeing my body lying on the bed. On one occasion, I saw a silver coil attached to the centre of my forehead which seemed to be the connection between mind and body. Strangely, Descartes spoke of this connection, as the pineal gland in the centre of the forehead. My experience of seeing the silver coil was before I read the writings of Descartes.

I do find it hard to know what my experiences represented because such experiences may not be what they appear to be at face value. In particular, those using hallucinogenics are chemically induced. However, I do seriously wonder about dimensions beyond the physical, and I think that I have speculated on these in a couple of my own previous threads, as dimensions or levels beyond 3D reality, with time itself being at this juncture as the 4th dimension.
.
Jack, Jack, Jack! I love you buddy but resist the temptation of equivocation. Just like the 'qualifications' from the subject-object dynamic, Dualism on its face recognizes the relationships between mind and matter. From the hard problem of consciousness (the difficulty in physically describing things like the feeling of color, Love, the Will, time, music, and other ineffable, abstract or otherwise qualitative phenomena) to left-brain/right-brain cognition, feeling v logic, will v intellect, physical/metaphysical, and/or any axiom associated with the unity of opposites, dualist epistemology is existential. There is no escaping it. We can only integrate it.

As you may be aware, contradictions or opposite determinations follow necessarily from most cognition during the apperception of knowing. Or simply said, during everyday thinking. To this end, you may first want to ask yourself the questions: What do we know?", "What does it mean to say that we know something?", "What makes justified beliefs justified?", and most importantly and germane to dualism: "How do we know that we know?"

To say "very few people are dualists" needs qualified, pun intended :D
The relationship between mind and body may be one of the hardest questions because it is related to what human beings are ultimately. I first began reading about it when I was writing an essay on whether there is life after death. The tutor who I had a tutorial with thought that after death people would survive as immortal minds or souls. On the other hand, the tutor who had given the initial lecture thought that the accounts of those who had near death experiences were connected to the bodily chemistry rather than the mind and body being separate and was coming from a physicalist perspective. I have continued to wonder about this, partly in relation to the question of life after death.

So much of the literature which I have come across in libraries and bookshops has been in the direction of materialist understanding of the mind, especially the associated philosophy of realism. However, it is not that I have come to a creat conclusion and I do wish to read so many other perspectives. There are also different forms of dualism, including substance dualism. Do you think that Shopenhauer's outlook is based on that? I came across a book based on Deleuze's understanding of dualism in a charity shop, called' Imminence'. I didn't buy it at the time and when I went back it had gone, but it was gone. The first book that led me to think about imminence was one by the physicist, Fritjof Capra, called 'The Turning Point', which I don't have any longer. He critiqued the Newtonian-Cartesian model and spoke of systems..I am not sure that he was a complete materialist though because he was drawing upon the new physics which makes things far from simple.

About a year and a half ago, I got to the point of thinking about going beyond dualism, but, then I started to wonder to what extent is this based on materialism in some ways. Definitely, my own experience of taking acid twice felt like a confirmation of dualism. I felt able to walk through other bodies and no one seemed to complain about me bumping into them.I even worried that I wouldn't get back into my body ever again. I don't really plan to take acid again because it was so dramatic and I had to start hanging out in dance music events which I don't go to usually.

In some ways, duality and non duality may be an essential paradox. In particular, even though some claim that mind may be beyond the body, the condition of the body is so central to sentience and states of mind. For example, I find it hard to cope with extreme weather, the heat, freezing temperatures and the pouring rain. It makes me feel awful and there is talk of Britain having highest temperatures on record this coming week. I think wondering how I will cope because I have hayfever already and find it hard to think clearly, probably because the air quality in London is so poor. So, I would gladly try and climb out of my body in bad weather and sleep can be difficult in it, with sleep and dreaming being one of my main ways of losing direct experience of the body.
Jack!

Yes, My interpretation would be that it is...particular as it relates to the cosmological Will (the world as Will). But, even existentially, the mind features qualities of cognition (Qualia) like his (Schop) metaphysical Will that exists a priori; that is to say, some thing that is fixed, innate and intrinsic to Being. As discussed earlier, it is that which causes humans to behave (wanting, urging, needing, feeling, etc.). Intellectually, another way to parse that sense of metaphysical dualism is to first start with the basic 'think therefore I am' interpretation:

If I attempt to doubt my own existence, then I am thinking.

Thinking things exist.

Therefore, I exist, at the very least as a thinking thing.


Now let's take that a step further and ask the question, what is an existing, thinking, thing (things-in-themselves). Meaning, as sentient human Beings, by what method can we fully appreciate, describe and explain our thinking existence as an exclusive physical thing-in-itself (beyond neurons).

Think about looking at a rock, then touching it, breaking it in half, and observing its existence (through a microscope or whatever). There is little doubt that through that process, it appears to be an an object. You can quantify it as such very easily. But can you qualify it? Meaning, what kind of qualities does it have? It's dense, inert, a naturally occurring solid mass, an aggregate, and so on... .

Now look at the Will. Is it an object of the senses? Let's assume that it is. What kind of object is it? Well, we can quantify it by way of the cognitive process of neurological activity, but does it have the quality of a rock in-itself? We can't really touch it like you could a rock, but even of you could, what would that mean (touching neurons)? If it means that by touching it and examining it that we would understand it like the rock, would that mean that a persons Will to be, is the same quality of the thing known as a rock?

Alternatively, think about thought itself. I want to move my arm and it moves. What causes this? Well, my Will to move my arm causes the arm to move first, then physically the process begins. What about the need to have purpose and meaning, or to love and not love, or the urge to feel happy (or the actual feelings of happiness/sadness themselves)? The Will then, in many ways, can be said to take on some level of primacy in Being. It can cause us the physically act to pursue or effect a some-thing. In other words, relative to me wanting to move my arm, the metaphysical moves the physical. In Being, the physical becomes subordinated as simply a means to and end. One's own metaphysical Will has a cause and effect.

Lastly, let's go back to the rock scenario. Someone say's that they saw a rock, yet I didn't see it. I believe that they saw the rock because they told me they saw it. What is this object known as a belief in and of itself? Is it a belief about a thing? Yes of course. But the belief itself is that a thought? What is a thought? That thought then, becomes the object of the belief. Is the object known as a belief (a rock) is that physical? In itself, that thing-in-itself called belief, and thoughts associated with a belief, is now just a mental representation. I did not see the rock. These representations themselves, can't be fully described materially. Or, can they?

I hope that helps some. Other examples include sentient/feelings of Love or music (subject-object phenomena), but I'll leave it at that for now.
“Concerning matter, we have been all wrong. What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter.” "Spooky Action at a Distance"
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Re: To What Extent Are Physical Bodies, and the Material World the Most 'Real' Aspects of Reality?

Post by JackDaydream »

3017Metaphysician wrote: July 11th, 2022, 9:20 am
JackDaydream wrote: July 9th, 2022, 12:49 pm
3017Metaphysician wrote: July 8th, 2022, 6:25 pm
JackDaydream wrote: July 8th, 2022, 10:46 am

That makes you a dualist to a large extent. Very few people are dualists and, generally, the idea of the separation of the mind from the body, as described by Descartes is seen as a false dichotomy between mind and body. In the criticism of Descartes' dualist split the main emphasis is upon embodied consciousness as an imminent reality.

However, I do have times when I do wonder about dualism. That has been mainly on the basis of experiences of experimentation with hallucinogenics, and a few borderline sleep experiences. I really did have the sensations of flying around my bedroom and seeing my body lying on the bed. On one occasion, I saw a silver coil attached to the centre of my forehead which seemed to be the connection between mind and body. Strangely, Descartes spoke of this connection, as the pineal gland in the centre of the forehead. My experience of seeing the silver coil was before I read the writings of Descartes.

I do find it hard to know what my experiences represented because such experiences may not be what they appear to be at face value. In particular, those using hallucinogenics are chemically induced. However, I do seriously wonder about dimensions beyond the physical, and I think that I have speculated on these in a couple of my own previous threads, as dimensions or levels beyond 3D reality, with time itself being at this juncture as the 4th dimension.
.
Jack, Jack, Jack! I love you buddy but resist the temptation of equivocation. Just like the 'qualifications' from the subject-object dynamic, Dualism on its face recognizes the relationships between mind and matter. From the hard problem of consciousness (the difficulty in physically describing things like the feeling of color, Love, the Will, time, music, and other ineffable, abstract or otherwise qualitative phenomena) to left-brain/right-brain cognition, feeling v logic, will v intellect, physical/metaphysical, and/or any axiom associated with the unity of opposites, dualist epistemology is existential. There is no escaping it. We can only integrate it.

As you may be aware, contradictions or opposite determinations follow necessarily from most cognition during the apperception of knowing. Or simply said, during everyday thinking. To this end, you may first want to ask yourself the questions: What do we know?", "What does it mean to say that we know something?", "What makes justified beliefs justified?", and most importantly and germane to dualism: "How do we know that we know?"

To say "very few people are dualists" needs qualified, pun intended :D
The relationship between mind and body may be one of the hardest questions because it is related to what human beings are ultimately. I first began reading about it when I was writing an essay on whether there is life after death. The tutor who I had a tutorial with thought that after death people would survive as immortal minds or souls. On the other hand, the tutor who had given the initial lecture thought that the accounts of those who had near death experiences were connected to the bodily chemistry rather than the mind and body being separate and was coming from a physicalist perspective. I have continued to wonder about this, partly in relation to the question of life after death.

So much of the literature which I have come across in libraries and bookshops has been in the direction of materialist understanding of the mind, especially the associated philosophy of realism. However, it is not that I have come to a creat conclusion and I do wish to read so many other perspectives. There are also different forms of dualism, including substance dualism. Do you think that Shopenhauer's outlook is based on that? I came across a book based on Deleuze's understanding of dualism in a charity shop, called' Imminence'. I didn't buy it at the time and when I went back it had gone, but it was gone. The first book that led me to think about imminence was one by the physicist, Fritjof Capra, called 'The Turning Point', which I don't have any longer. He critiqued the Newtonian-Cartesian model and spoke of systems..I am not sure that he was a complete materialist though because he was drawing upon the new physics which makes things far from simple.

About a year and a half ago, I got to the point of thinking about going beyond dualism, but, then I started to wonder to what extent is this based on materialism in some ways. Definitely, my own experience of taking acid twice felt like a confirmation of dualism. I felt able to walk through other bodies and no one seemed to complain about me bumping into them.I even worried that I wouldn't get back into my body ever again. I don't really plan to take acid again because it was so dramatic and I had to start hanging out in dance music events which I don't go to usually.

In some ways, duality and non duality may be an essential paradox. In particular, even though some claim that mind may be beyond the body, the condition of the body is so central to sentience and states of mind. For example, I find it hard to cope with extreme weather, the heat, freezing temperatures and the pouring rain. It makes me feel awful and there is talk of Britain having highest temperatures on record this coming week. I think wondering how I will cope because I have hayfever already and find it hard to think clearly, probably because the air quality in London is so poor. So, I would gladly try and climb out of my body in bad weather and sleep can be difficult in it, with sleep and dreaming being one of my main ways of losing direct experience of the body.
Jack!

Yes, My interpretation would be that it is...particular as it relates to the cosmological Will (the world as Will). But, even existentially, the mind features qualities of cognition (Qualia) like his (Schop) metaphysical Will that exists a priori; that is to say, some thing that is fixed, innate and intrinsic to Being. As discussed earlier, it is that which causes humans to behave (wanting, urging, needing, feeling, etc.). Intellectually, another way to parse that sense of metaphysical dualism is to first start with the basic 'think therefore I am' interpretation:

If I attempt to doubt my own existence, then I am thinking.

Thinking things exist.

Therefore, I exist, at the very least as a thinking thing.


Now let's take that a step further and ask the question, what is an existing, thinking, thing (things-in-themselves). Meaning, as sentient human Beings, by what method can we fully appreciate, describe and explain our thinking existence as an exclusive physical thing-in-itself (beyond neurons).

Think about looking at a rock, then touching it, breaking it in half, and observing its existence (through a microscope or whatever). There is little doubt that through that process, it appears to be an an object. You can quantify it as such very easily. But can you qualify it? Meaning, what kind of qualities does it have? It's dense, inert, a naturally occurring solid mass, an aggregate, and so on... .

Now look at the Will. Is it an object of the senses? Let's assume that it is. What kind of object is it? Well, we can quantify it by way of the cognitive process of neurological activity, but does it have the quality of a rock in-itself? We can't really touch it like you could a rock, but even of you could, what would that mean (touching neurons)? If it means that by touching it and examining it that we would understand it like the rock, would that mean that a persons Will to be, is the same quality of the thing known as a rock?

Alternatively, think about thought itself. I want to move my arm and it moves. What causes this? Well, my Will to move my arm causes the arm to move first, then physically the process begins. What about the need to have purpose and meaning, or to love and not love, or the urge to feel happy (or the actual feelings of happiness/sadness themselves)? The Will then, in many ways, can be said to take on some level of primacy in Being. It can cause us the physically act to pursue or effect a some-thing. In other words, relative to me wanting to move my arm, the metaphysical moves the physical. In Being, the physical becomes subordinated as simply a means to and end. One's own metaphysical Will has a cause and effect.

Lastly, let's go back to the rock scenario. Someone say's that they saw a rock, yet I didn't see it. I believe that they saw the rock because they told me they saw it. What is this object known as a belief in and of itself? Is it a belief about a thing? Yes of course. But the belief itself is that a thought? What is a thought? That thought then, becomes the object of the belief. Is the object known as a belief (a rock) is that physical? In itself, that thing-in-itself called belief, and thoughts associated with a belief, is now just a mental representation. I did not see the rock. These representations themselves, can't be fully described materially. Or, can they?

I hope that helps some. Other examples include sentient/feelings of Love or music (subject-object phenomena), but I'll leave it at that for now.
The question of what a thought is and to what extent is it material or not, is an essential one which I have wondered about for a couple of years. This is where the issue of information and to what extent it is physical comes in. However, the questions themselves, prior to the gathering of information itself make the dichotomy of matter and mind more apparent and it does seem that this is an area of conundrum which those who identify as materialists or dualists need to think about. As for my own position, I see them as as being of equal importance, just like looking inside or outside of a box, which may mean that, ultimately, I lean towards the perspective of non-dualism, with its inevitable paradoxes. It does seem to me that the whole realm of paradoxes is useful in thinking and trying to understand what appear to be opposites, which are poles but also dependent on the duality itself in order to make any sense conceptually. It may be about the equation of opposites in the outer world with those within the mind, and in both respects it is a split but at the same time dependent on complementary relationships between opposites, possibly inner and outer. The actual idea of the inner and outer may be an essential aspect of metaphysics, whether the inner and outer is purely about physical containing, or about body and mind.
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Re: To What Extent Are Physical Bodies, and the Material World the Most 'Real' Aspects of Reality?

Post by Sy Borg »

value wrote: July 8th, 2022, 3:35 am
Sy Borg wrote: July 8th, 2022, 12:47 am It seems to me that you can't have physicality without form and you cannot have form without physicality.

That is, physical things necessarily have a form, informational aspects. Even an amorphous form can be described informationally. In fact, randomised things are more complex because they cannot be reduced to patterns.

Likewise, without physical things, there are no forms, only potentials. Where do the potentials come from? From a physical substrate that researchers have not yet detected. Ground zero is complete randomisation, as per the virtual particles of energy that have bubble through a vacuum. By chance, patterns emerge from chaos, and some patterns persist longer than others.
How could complete randomization be possible in your opinion? Wouldn't complete randomization equal 'devoid of meaning'? The idea of a virtual particle does not seem to correspond with the idea of complete randomization.

"Randomness cannot exist, with as an example result that computer encryption is always able to be broken with sufficient computing power. ... This is evidence that a factor is involved that prevents actual randomness to be possible, which is meaning. This is evidence that meaning is fundamental to reality.

Researchers identified a problem that holds the key to whether all encryption can be broken -- as well as a surprising connection to a mathematical concept that aims to define and measure randomness."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 194721.htm

When it is evident that all of reality involves meaning, can it be maintained that patterns emerge by chance from chaos?
Sorry, I missed this reply. I suspect that "complete chaos" would be more correct that "complete randomisation".

Patterns certainly do emerge from chaos.


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Re: To What Extent Are Physical Bodies, and the Material World the Most 'Real' Aspects of Reality?

Post by value »

Why would the idea of complete chaos be different than the idea of complete random?

What is fundamentally chaotic of a state that has a potential?
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Re: To What Extent Are Physical Bodies, and the Material World the Most 'Real' Aspects of Reality?

Post by Pattern-chaser »

value wrote: July 8th, 2022, 3:35 am How could complete randomization be possible in your opinion? Wouldn't complete randomization equal 'devoid of meaning'? The idea of a virtual particle does not seem to correspond with the idea of complete randomization.

"Randomness cannot exist, with as an example result that computer encryption is always able to be broken with sufficient computing power. ... This is evidence that a factor is involved that prevents actual randomness to be possible, which is meaning. This is evidence that meaning is fundamental to reality.

Researchers identified a problem that holds the key to whether all encryption can be broken -- as well as a surprising connection to a mathematical concept that aims to define and measure randomness."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 194721.htm
Why would "complete randomization equal 'devoid of meaning'"? After all, the world/universe has no meaning, except that which we assign to it, so why should randomisation affect that?

Your quote is strange, inasmuch as the 1st paragraph you quote doesn't come from the article you linked. Only the second paragraph comes from the linked article. I think perhaps randomness can and does exist, it's human attempts to create randomness that encounter problems. Thus this is not "evidence that a factor is involved that prevents actual randomness to be possible", and therefore it does not support the derived result that "meaning is fundamental to reality", as your 'quote' says. On the contrary, meaning is often fundamental to human understandings of reality, but not to reality itself.

The second paragraph of your quote is misleading. It seems to imply that we have a discovered a problem with encryption, but it actually says that the problem, when solved, may or may not confirm that there is a weakness with our encryption. That isn't the same thing at all.


value wrote: July 8th, 2022, 3:35 am When it is evident that all of reality involves meaning, can it be maintained that patterns emerge by chance from chaos?
It isn't "evident"; you simply assert that it is. Sometimes we recognise patterns; they may or may not "emerge" from chaos.
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