2024-02-09, 09:38 PM
(2024-02-04, 02:49 PM)sbu Wrote: [ -> ]I’m not advocating for classical eliminative materialism, as I believe this position is almost certainly false. My entry into this discussion was to argue that we will never discover a 'radio receiver' in the brain that receives 'consciousness' from the immaterial realm, influencing the brain's physical state in a manner detectable by any known physical activity.
I think Bernado Kastrup’s ideas fits better with the evidence:
“I argue that we do not need to postulate a whole universe outside consciousness – outside subjective experience – in order to make sense of empirical reality. The implication is that all reality, including our bodies and brains, are in consciousness, not consciousness in our bodies and brains.”
https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2014/08/...s.html?m=1
There’s no reason to believe that both “a physical world” and “and an immaterial” world exists. Monoism is a stronger bet imho
I have always argued that while Idealism (Bernado Kastrup’s ideas) may represent ultimate reality, paradoxically they are much less likely to progress scientific understanding of consciousness at this time.
There is a sequence of scientific theories that allows ideas to be tested and data to be recognised, rather than being spuriously dismissed.
Here is my example (I don't know if you have read it from me before).
Suppose for example that Newton had somehow hit on the theory of General Relativity rather than his theory of gravity combined with his laws of dynamics and F=m a.
Yes the theory would have been more exact presumably, but would it have been more useful? In those days science would not have been sophisticated enough to work with 16 x 16 tensors or the concept of a space-time metric.
Nobody would have known how to extract exact results, loads of incorrect results would have been derived, and science would have stalled until someone came up with Newton's laws as we know them.
By analogy, I think dealing with the concept that matter is REALLY something that is simulated by consciousness, and that space and time are just ideas within a (presumably non-human) consciousness, won't let anyone derive actual conclusions - just waffle!
If science adopted Dualism, that would not prevent it shifting over to Idealism at a later date - just as adopting NG did not stop science shifting over to GR later on.
Note also that despite the adoption of GR almost all day-to-day calculations are done using NG rather than GR - for obvious practical reasons. Likewise, I suspect that Dualism will always be easier to use than Idealism.
The final point I would make, is that the Physicist Henry Stapp even supplied science with an interaction mechanism between mind and matter - thus Dualism would not be immediately obviously wrong, unlike GR and QM, which are happily used by physicists, even though they don't mix.
David