If qualia is real, why does it have to be paranormal

How does one see materialism or atheism as one single belief? Imagine theists pretending to agree with one another.

Likewise, How does one see materialism or scepticism as one single belief? Imagine a sceptic questioning everything except his/her own beliefs.

You're polite and pleasant (whoever you are) but that kind of elementary 'bait' doesn't interest me, so I'll leave it on the hook, cheers !

Up to you. The only serious question is, given we don't fully know what consciousness is, despite the fact we all experience it, is, "how do you know, it's not something a biological machine (brain with neurons, synapses, neurochemicals and whatever else".)

Plenty of evidence certainly points to the brain as the agent of thought.  If it's physical, we all know where it's happening.

Likewise, How does one see materialism or scepticism as one single belief? Imagine a sceptic questioning everything except his/her own beliefs.

We are in total agreement on that.


My political believes are certainly quite different from those of Michael Shermer for example.

As humans, we cannot operate without assumptions (axioms).

Further more, everybody, including myself has beliefs which are actually wrong but
which they may be unaware  of.  The world is a complicated place.

Up to you. The only serious question is, given we don't fully know what consciousness is, despite the fact we all experience it, is, "how do you know, it's not something a biological machine (brain with neurons, synapses, neurochemicals and whatever else".)

Plenty of evidence certainly points to the brain as the agent of thought.  If it's physical, we all know where it's happening.

Depends on what one means by these terms.

For example Alex Rosenberg, who wrote Atheist's Guide to Reality, believes in what you're saying and takes it the proper conclusion:

“A more general version of this question is this: How can one clump of stuff anywhere in the universe be about some other clump of stuff anywhere else in the universe—right next to it or 100 million light-years away?

…Let’s suppose that the Paris neurons are about Paris the same way red octagons are about stopping. This is the first step down a slippery slope, a regress into total confusion. If the Paris neurons are about Paris the same way a red octagon is about stopping, then there has to be something in the brain that interprets the Paris neurons as being about Paris. After all, that’s how the stop sign is about stopping. It gets interpreted by us in a certain way. The difference is that in the case of the Paris neurons, the interpreter can only be another part of the brain…

What we need to get off the regress is some set of neurons that is about some stuff outside the brain without being interpreted—by anyone or anything else (including any other part of the brain)—as being about that stuff outside the brain. What we need is a clump of matter, in this case the Paris neurons, that by the very arrangement of its synapses points at, indicates, singles out, picks out, identifies (and here we just start piling up more and more synonyms for “being about”) another clump of matter outside the brain. But there is no such physical stuff.

Physics has ruled out the existence of clumps of matter of the required sort…

…What you absolutely cannot be wrong about is that your conscious thought was about something. Even having a wildly wrong thought about something requires that the thought be about something.

It’s this last notion that introspection conveys that science has to deny. Thinking about things can’t happen at all…When consciousness convinces you that you, or your mind, or your brain has thoughts about things, it is wrong.”

To me this idea, that Cogito, ergo sum is false instead seems like a proof by absurdity that Physicalism/Materialism has to be false.

There is also the affirmative argument that aspects of thought are immaterial.

Depends on what one means by these terms.

For example Alex Rosenberg, who wrote Atheist's Guide to Reality, believes in what you're saying and takes it the proper conclusion:


To me this idea, that Cogito, ergo sum is false instead seems like a proof by absurdity that Physicalism/Materialism has to be false.

There is also the affirmative argument that aspects of thought are immaterial.

I didn't fully get his point? "How can one clump of matter be "about" another"?  For starters, it isn't. We perceive an aspect of the other matter only because we actually interact with it in some way. For example, if I perceive light from a star and record it. I've interacted with it because I saw the light involved or I saw the recording about the light involved or whatever.  I certainly am completely unaware about many aspects of that star. In truth, I actually only guessed that it's a star like our sun and that it's fueled by fusion because of some aspects of fusion I've studied producing similar effects. I have no way of knowing I'm right about it. We know more about our sun because it's closer to us but our interactions with it are still minimal. We have more observations from it than just the sun light. We see the reflections of our planets in the sky.


The idea that ideas are "immaterial" is a favorite of Dr Jason Lysle. I actually think that idea, that a material thing, like a human or a computer can't in some fashion contemplat an abstract model is absurd.

Don't get me wrong though. The fact we exist, we live and breath? It's totally amazing. We don't really understand some key details about how we got here. Evolution is a massive handwave. And well, the big bang seems totally absurd and counter intuitive.  No matter how you slice it, our existence is weird, whether or not something exists beyond what we think of as the physical.

Up to you. The only serious question is, given we don't fully know what consciousness is, despite the fact we all experience it, is, "how do you know, it's not something a biological machine (brain with neurons, synapses, neurochemicals and whatever else".)

Plenty of evidence certainly points to the brain as the agent of thought.  If it's physical, we all know where it's happening.

That's something I am prepared to deal with. All of the above is arguably true except when the brain is switched off. Then there shouldn't be any conscious experience at all, but there is. 

The case of Mr A in Parnia's Aware study is a good example, for instance. A case recorded during a clinical trial (not an anecdote) looking for that effect. He heard the automated machine advising the medics to shock him (the patient) twice. This is impossible because he must have been in ventricular fibrillation (heart stoppage) for at least two minutes. (It takes that amount of time for the machine to analyse the heart rhythm). The brain shuts down completely after 10-20 seconds (no electrical activity) including the brain stem which is responsible for hearing. 

The machine can't make a mistake--the man was dead (in cardiac arrest the first stage of death) and yet he heard the automated instructions clearly and remembered them, too, despite cardiac arrest being a massive insult to the brain which usually eradicates the patient's memories (according to experts).

NB. If he had been conscious in a normal way, he would have felt the excruciating physical pain of the electrical shocks and reported that, along with the intense pummelling/compression of his chest, but he never mentioned any pain at all. 
 
In addition, he accurately described the appearance and position of a man he couldn't have seen (the consultant who was pushing a wire up his leg from the other side of a curtain--raised at upper chest height on the patient to protect him from seeing what the consultant was doing to his groin) 

Now, you must know about this, I'm sure, and I'm going to predict that you will now reel off the standard list of sceptical
objections, of which I know every single one, ad nauseum and have no wish to waste any more time over. 

The fact is there are now hundreds of these cases (well attested and verified) and it's not possible that every single one can be attributed to information leakage and retrospective confabulation etc etc. Not possible. 

But you'll say it is, though, so there we have it. And that's me done.

Further more, everybody, including myself has beliefs which are actually wrong but
which they may be unaware  of.  The world is a complicated place.

I wonder, as I look at your chosen user-name, whether you have considered how Schrödinger himself saw the world? By all accounts he was anything but a materialist:

Consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else. - Erwin Schrödinger

I didn't fully get his point? "How can one clump of matter be "about" another"?  For starters, it isn't. We perceive an aspect of the other matter only because we actually interact with it in some way.

Then how does the brain have a thought about Paris?

The idea that ideas are "immaterial" is a favorite of Dr Jason Lysle. I actually think that idea, that a material thing, like a human or a computer can't in some fashion contemplat an abstract model is absurd.

What's wrong with the argument I linked to? No computer - if by which you mean a Turing Machine - can contemplate anything, abstract or not.

That humans can contemplate abstractions is part of the argument given for why thought is immaterial.

Don't get me wrong though. The fact we exist, we live and breath? It's totally amazing. We don't really understand some key details about how we got here. Evolution is a massive handwave. And well, the big bang seems totally absurd and counter intuitive.  No matter how you slice it, our existence is weird, whether or not something exists beyond what we think of as the physical.

But what does "physical" mean here?

I wonder, as I look at your chosen user-name, whether you have considered how Schrödinger himself saw the world? By all accounts he was anything but a materialist:

Well, I considered the fact, Quantum entanglement is an example of an effect that defies all of our logic and reasoning.  Likewise with the probability driven paradox that his cat alludes to. He
is both dead and alive until you check.

Further, the Cheshire Cat, his personality is self explanatory.

Lastly, my grandfather was a physicist just after the time
when we discovered how bizarre the physical world actually is

All of these things certainly could have caused him to question materialistic 
assumptions. Most ppl who are into @PSI are quite inspired by modern 
physics.

All of these things certainly could have caused him to question materialistic 
assumptions. Most ppl who are into @PSI are quite inspired by modern 
physics.

In my own case, I picked up a book about relativity in my school library (explained with cartoons for 12 year olds) and suddenly realised that my science class was teaching all the wrong stuff. My science teacher didn't have a clue what I was asking him about. Then I moved on to reading about quantum mechanics and was blown away. I am still blown away with the implications of it all but at that stage I had few, if any, thoughts about PSI or metaphysics and I was hopeless at mathematics at school so no chance of me going into higher education. 

So if that's what you mean by modern physics, then yes - I was inspired. Much later in life, when I read more about the likes of Bohr, Schrödinger, Heisenberg, etc., I was already into a more idealistic view of the world and was encouraged to find that their worldviews were not at odds with mine in many ways.