(2018-01-04, 08:02 PM)Kamarling Wrote: [ -> ]Malf, when you limit the scope of your investigation to naturalistic causes then you can only expect to discover naturalistic evidence. It is a self-confirming argument. Science confines itself to the objective and the naturalistic. It is taboo to suggest that biology, to use your example, might show evidence of mind at work. That is dismissed at the outset (as we can see in the long-running Darwin thread here on this forum).
If you really don't want to underestimate the wonder, then don't restrict your thinking. Open your mind (if you can first accept that your mind exists).
And yet parapsychologists and their kin use science to find proof. Should they find it does it constitute immaterial knowledge or does it extend the definition of what is material?
(2018-01-04, 06:01 PM)Typoz Wrote: [ -> ]I've heard such claims. But I never saw any explanation or evidence to substantiate such claims.
Perhaps this echoes the title of this thread?
How many years centuries millennia have people felt the same as you? How much does faith account for persistence of an immaterial world? Your position like so many other expressed suggests a self imposed ignorance or outright disdain maybe both for all science has discovered. Someone wise once said, nature does not reveal it's secrets easily. For example, it's been nearly 100 years since the formalization of quantum mechanics and scientists still do not know what it is telling us about the fundamental nature of reality. Should we point our collective fingers and accuse quantum mechanics can't? I say no. So why do you seem so willing to through the baby out with the bathwater?
(2018-01-04, 08:02 PM)Kamarling Wrote: [ -> ]Malf, when you limit the scope of your investigation to naturalistic causes then you can only expect to discover naturalistic evidence. It is a self-confirming argument. Science confines itself to the objective and the naturalistic. It is taboo to suggest that biology, to use your example, might show evidence of mind at work. That is dismissed at the outset (as we can see in the long-running Darwin thread here on this forum).
If you really don't want to underestimate the wonder, then don't restrict your thinking. Open your mind (if you can first accept that your mind exists).
I’m not limiting anything which is why we should keep on looking, and ponder the mystery of chemistry.
In the meantime we know the chemical breakdown of a human:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composit...human_bodygd
I’m not strongly averse to these elements being little ‘bits (projections?) of mind’ rather than ‘little bits of matter’ in line with your idealistic view. I’m not sure whether that really explains those ‘big questions’ more satisfactorily though... I guess individuals can decide on their preferred pragmatic worldview to get things done/get them through the day etc.
(2018-01-04, 09:24 PM)malf Wrote: [ -> ]I’m not limiting anything which is why we should keep on looking, and ponder the mystery of chemistry.
In the meantime we know the chemical breakdown of a human:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composit...human_bodygd
I’m not strongly averse to these elements being little ‘bits (projections?) of mind’ rather than ‘little bits of matter’ in line with your idealistic view. I’m not sure whether that really explains those ‘big questions’ more satisfactorily though... I guess individuals can decide on their preferred pragmatic worldview to get things done/get them through the day etc.
Funny how threads intertwine. We both contributed to that thread about Shakespeare in the Conspiracy forum and that got me thinking about chemistry and its roots in alchemy. There is a popular view of alchemy which involves "primitive and superstitious" old men trying to convert base metals into gold. Of course, as usual, the popular view is not the whole story and those who are interested will know all too well that many of the founding fathers of modern science (including Newton) were indeed alchemists and that their calling was every bit as spiritual as it was empirical.
Again, a little synchronicity pops up here. The man giving the talk in the video I posted above is the science historian and chemist, Lawrence Principe, and the same Lawrence Principe appears in this
article on Alchemy from the Smithsonian web site. Still, that article refers to the transformation of base metal to gold but fails to mention the parallel spiritual endeavour which is the transformation of the "base" self to the enlightened spiritual being.
It seems to me that the alchemists were aware of something that their heirs either forgot or wilfully ignored: that science without spirituality is like an aeroplane with a wing missing (or maybe a wing with the aeroplane missing?).
(2018-01-04, 06:29 PM)Chris Wrote: [ -> ]I'm always a bit bemused by these discussions. Admittedly there's no satisfying explanation of how consciousness can arise in a materialistic world. But is there a satisfying non-materialistic explanation of how consciousness arises? Or is it just essentially a matter of saying that there's a non-material entity which is somehow intrinsically conscious?
I guess it depends on what will satisfy you. We have at least two competing assumptions at large: one that assumes that the material universe came into being ex nihilo and that all phenomena - including mind or consciousness - arise and evolve from that material. Another assumption is that mind is all there is and that what our individual minds perceive as external and separate material objects are nothing more than mind manifested into form. That the form appears to be solid (material) is an illusion. How the mind came about in the first place remains beyond our understanding but it might be that it is a moot question because it assumes the same constraints that the material world is subject to: time and space. If time is also an illusion then the question of a beginning (or "before" the beginning) doesn't arise.
I think my problem is that I find it as unsatisfying to say consciousness is an intrinsic attribute of a non-material entity, which either we can't understand or is beyond our understanding in principle, as it is to say that consciousness arises from the material world in a way we don't understand.
And if the non-material entity is beyond our understanding, I'm not sure how we can be sure that it would have a greater degree of free will than a purely material entity, or that its life would necessarily be more "meaningful".
(2018-01-04, 11:55 PM)Chris Wrote: [ -> ]I think my problem is that I find it as unsatisfying to say consciousness is an intrinsic attribute of a non-material entity, which either we can't understand or is beyond our understanding in principle, as it is to say that consciousness arises from the material world in a way we don't understand.
Chris, you’ve clearly missed the memo. Not only is an immaterial ‘reality’ more satisfying, but so self-evident that it requires an organised, systematic, religious-style conspiracy to deny it (for some vague notion of patch protection apparently). Hence this thread.
(2018-01-04, 11:55 PM)Chris Wrote: [ -> ]I think my problem is that I find it as unsatisfying to say consciousness is an intrinsic attribute of a non-material entity, which either we can't understand or is beyond our understanding in principle, as it is to say that consciousness arises from the material world in a way we don't understand.
And if the non-material entity is beyond our understanding, I'm not sure how we can be sure that it would have a greater degree of free will than a purely material entity, or that its life would necessarily be more "meaningful".
It might be that we can't explain it all empirically - that we can't reduce consciousness to particles or some kind of energy - but we possibly can have a subjective understanding. I think that was Jung's approach.
Quote:This whole creation is essentially subjective, and the dream is the theater where the dreamer is at once scene, actor, prompter, stage manager, author, audience, and critic.
Carl Jung: General Aspects of Dream Psychology (1928)
From my point of view, I find it incredibly unsatisfying to rely on strict materialism as being the only path to the "truth". That's what we are told by the resident materialists here and also by the orthodoxy in science and academia. I really can't imagine how a collection of atoms, organised by arbitrary chemical laws into molecules and then, by some unbelievably freakish accident into living matter can somehow contrive to produce a single thought or subjective experience, not to mention ponder on the nature of God or the universe.
(2018-01-05, 01:38 AM)Kamarling Wrote: [ -> ]It might be that we can't explain it all empirically - that we can't reduce consciousness to particles or some kind of energy - but we possibly can have a subjective understanding. I think that was Jung's approach.
From my point of view, I find it incredibly unsatisfying to rely on strict materialism as being the only path to the "truth". That's what we are told by the resident materialists here and also by the orthodoxy in science and academia. I really can't imagine how a collection of atoms, organised by arbitrary chemical laws into molecules and then, by some unbelievably freakish accident into living matter can somehow contrive to produce a single thought or subjective experience, not to mention ponder on the nature of God or the universe.
"I can't imagine how" What's right with this line of logic?