Are There Things Not Material? | Episode 811 | Closer To Truth
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- čas přidán 15. 05. 2024
- Is the natural, physical world all-there-is? Or is there something more-a supernatural, nonphysical existence? I was trained in science, so I should be a naturalist. I'm not so sure. Featuring interviews with Colin McGinn, J.P. Moreland, Ananda Guruge, Marvin Minsky, and David Chalmers.
Season 8, Episode 11 - #CloserToTruth
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Closer To Truth host Robert Lawrence Kuhn takes viewers on an intriguing global journey into cutting-edge labs, magnificent libraries, hidden gardens, and revered sanctuaries in order to discover state-of-the-art ideas and make them real and relevant.
▶Free access to Closer to Truth's library of 5,000 videos: bit.ly/376lkKN
Closer to Truth presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.
#Ontology #Philosophy
When Robert says, "I wonder about these things ALL the time." I KNOW he is telling the truth, because I wonder about these things ALL the time too. I used to think everyone must think like this. Now, I'm just glad people like Robert are out there, even if I have met only 1 or 2, personally, in my entire lifetime.
Hello Matt 👋👽
Me too
Hi 😊
This channel is the greatest nonphysical gift ever..
Good one! 👍🏻
@@jasongeyer2111 Y ' ALL GOT THAT RIGHT
Ur phone is phisical u dummy
100% correct 😊
It's amazing this kind of content exists, and that it's available so easily.
What do you mean by, “exists”?
Well, that somehow we are able to experience the video and we even managed to make comments on it, that's great and works for me.
American ryt?
I was just thinking why is so much crap and bs on TV and streaming services like Netflix and not intriguing content like this.
@@Traderhood In America it's the 4th quarter and the score is Airheads 31 Thoughtfultypes 13.
This series is like a warm shower for the mind.
Every time I took a warm shower for my mind, I’ve always felt dirty afterwards.
Yeah but after a few videos my mind is pruney😅
I love listening to it, it's so satisfying
Also good to listen to while in a warm shower
And yet refreshing and rousing like a cold shower!
Ah good old Closer to Truth. I wish I knew people showcased in these videos in real life. When I talk about all these topics I mostly end up talking to myself.
Yeah, me too. Not many people around me who like to talk about anything except sports, food or TV shows.
This is back when David Chalmers looked like was auditioning to be a member of Iron Maiden.
rofl
@@ReverendDr.Thomas You're just making grandiose assertions. You can say something like "There is a Universal Consciousness 🙏" but in the absence of compelling evidence it's just noise.
As for the brain being just a conduit for consciousness, this is gibberish, but even if it were true, your personal consciousness would still end when you die (i.e. no 'conduit', no personal conscious experience).
You don't believe the brain is a mere conduit for consciousness because there's any good evidence for it, you want to believe it because you're thinking if this was true your personal consciousness might be able to survive death.
Lol right
@@-_a-a_- You're making a straw man argument here. I'm not arguing that consciousness is a material thing; you've read this into my earlier comment above.
I've often said in the comments section of CTT videos and will repeat again that I don't think materialism is a meaningful ontological framework because we don't know what matter actually i
It is however a very robust epistemological framework because pretty much anything we do experimentally or otherwise within the framework of scientific methodology is going to be essentially indistinguishable from the things we would do under the assumptions of materialism.
In any event, the point I was making, which you clearly did not understand, is that whether or not materialism is true or not, it's still clear that our personal conscious experience is dependent upon brain activity.
Whether our brains really are just matter in motion or everything, including brains, is made of some mysterious mental 'stuff' that merely appears 'material', the brain activity our personal conscious experience is dependent upon us the same.
A lot of the incentive for rejecting materialism comes from the idea that if materialism is false, it's much more likely that our personal conscious experience can survive death and the permanent cessation of the brain activity is dependent upon. But in fact it's dependent on certain brain activity regardless of whether materialism is true or false.
My position regarding materialism is that it's "not even wrong"; it's a useful and indeed necessary epistemological framework that is navely interpreted as an ontological framework.
As for the idea that consciousness has no physical properties, I haven't argued that it has physical properties. But this isn't something we can simply declare one way or another by fiat.
There are those that would argue that consciousness itself _is_ a physical property; that certain physical processes feel like.something.
Some, such as the neo-paganist philosopher Philip Goth, argue that perhaps matter and consciousness are different aspects of the same thing. I'm not arguing for this but you should be aware that we can't simply declare "consciousness isn't a physical thing". I personally don't think it's meaningful to say consciousness is or isn't a physical thing; I think all we can say for sure is that it exists.
Since we really don't know what matter is or what the physical is in an ontological sense, we really have no basis for assuming that consciousness isn't a physical thing
At 72, I have had 2 profound experiences in my life. The first was a glimpse into my future that happened at 40 that lasted a micro second, was in black and white, was was exactly like the movie The Ring, when he looked into the well and saw a black and white image. This happened to me but 20 years before the movie was made. The second was a feeling of how death feels. The answer I was given was a peace devoid of any emotion both positive or negative. The elimination of any emotion was a load lifted from my psyche or consciousness. Devoid of any emotion, like a straight white line on the scope that they show in movies. I was everywhere and nowhere at the same time with no hurt, memory, or self awareness, I just existed in an other worldly state. I look forward to it.
You just experienced your “True Self”, which is the ONE Universal Consciousness. When you die you don’t go anywhere, you go everywhere and every time (no time). You just simply “expand” out from your confined container(body) back to the formless, eternal ONE Universal Consciousness (God). You didn’t have any emotions, memories or self awareness because when you died so did your ego and your conscious mind (self-awareness). You were no longer trapped in space and time, you became Infinite which has no time or space. Congrats on the brief glimpse, that’s what awaits all of us. 🙂
Thanks for sharing, Lord-Jesus-Christ com
@@pedromanuel9581: I truly hope you're correct, as this has been the crux of my personal ideology for decades, and is my sincere wish. The only issue I have is that I can't prove it and thus there are many questions which arise, making its reality questionable to me, and requiring a "leap of faith" and faith is not something at which I'm very skilled. So my hope fluctuates but I'm attempting to "stay the course".
I thought you were going to say, "...and the other was discovering Closer to Truth!"
Can you tell us of your experiences
while in a deep and dreamless slumber?
I have to say this is one of the best CTT episodes...I actually could agreee with Colin McGinn, J.P. Moreland on most of what they said, which is unusual for me...Congrats Robert!
i love this show!!
This is some of the best material I have ever seen in my life. Thank you for producing these amazing works. To answer your question, decisively, and correctly, you will get an answer in a format that is totally unexpected and you will not be able to embrace at first glance.
You only need to consider whether probabilistic potentials are tangibly real or not. This example will literally solve everything.
First you need an Axiom that says that The Discrete Set {0,1} and the Continuous Open Interval (0,1) are Equivalent. You can now devise parallel logics, one which applies to a hard deterministic universe, and the other is consistent with hard stochastic universe. To make a long story short, both of these logics yield the same quantitative answers. And so it is profoundly ambiguous, or profoundly indeterminate whether the universe is deterministic or stochastic. And you need to get to the point where you accept that there is a Duality happening here ... due to a more fundamental Equivalence.
Once you have done this, then many things like the Wave-Particle Duality will appear to make perfect sense, through the lens of this paradigm. It actually does make sense.
Lastly ... we come to probabilistic potentials which was our original subject which we were looking at. Clearly probabilistic potentials cannot exist in a hard deterministic universe. And clearly probabilistic potentials MUST be tangibly real in a genuinely hard stochastic universe. Now since we have constructed a dualistic logic which could be used to model a universe which is inherently both, simultaneously, then it is easy to see that there is a way to say that probabilistic potentials are physically existent, and also are not. That both are valid simultaneously. IMPORTANT NOTE that we have NOT violated the Law of Non-Contradiction because of the way that we set up our Axiom of Equivalence. and arranged this "dualistic logic" which is really two totally independent logics which are not merged into a single logic, they are separate - and Equivalent.
And now I'll shut up. That's the solution - it's right there.
Explain it to me like I'm five.
nice word salad
Huh???
I love how none of these series actually ever answer any question )))). So the most honest answer is: I don't know. Funny how this makes a man trying to know a mere clown in the exercise of knowing. And this makes me laugh and despair at the same time.
if these questions had an answer, they wouldnt be worth making a video about
@@fredriksvard2603 the theory of everything is still a long way to go and no science will break down that door.
@@fredriksvard2603 I have an inkling it's written in our DNA. We are here to remember what we already know. All cognition is a kin to recognition.
@@fredriksvard2603 We have delegated our responsibility to awaken to wonder to scientists. Wittgenstein spoke disparagingly of the ‘irritation of intellect’, the ‘tickling of intellect’, which he opposed to the religious impulse (he said he could not help ‘seeing every problem from a religious point of view’). He saw the business of philosophy as opposing the anaesthetic of self-complacent reason: ‘Man has to awaken to wonder - and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.
For something to exist it must have matter. Thoughts exist so thoughts consist of matter, not cells, molecules, atoms or quarks but particles that present day microscopes cannot perceive. If one continues looking at matter, the particles get smaller and smaller a million times and the smaller the particle, the greater the energy that it contains...................falun dafa
Regarding McGinn's remarks:
"As we will see later, fields have energy. They therefore are a form of matter; they can be regarded as the fifth state of matter (solid, liquid, gas, and plasma are the other four states of matter)." (Marc Lange - An Introduction to the Philosophy of Physics)
Just as the list of elements slowly built up, maybe so too with the list containing metaphysics
Elements didn’t build up. We discovered them. Elements are produced in stars but their origin isn’t stars. That’s a chicken and egg problem.
Brilliant interview thanks.
Minski is always amazing...thanks Robert.
As a 75 yo, and struggling to maintain my waining intelligence, I believe through the struggles of an extremely difficult life; is that there is more dimensions than physics presents allows humanity to realize. I say this because, I have been brought back to life, when I was six years old. Throughout my life visualizations of a “simulation of realities” were communicated.
Killer thumbnail! Thanks for opening minds.
I like two categories... (1) Consciousness and (2) everything else.
Consciousness is found in the soul, the part of you that is reading this comment right now.
@@jeffforsythe9514 Are both eternal
@@hephaestusfortarier249 The soul is immortal, what both are you talking about?
Now we are getting somewhere mr. Kuhn ....great episode
You know, Robert Kuhn is a great human being. These videos have filled my world with joy. My three categories are Spirit, Love and Matter as reflected in our language structure of Subject (spirit), verb or predicate (love) and object (matter). Just a hunch.
You might find 'psycholinguistics' interesting.
Science is always about something .. mind is full of things 😊
Big ups for the microtonal piano music in the score!
thank you Robert for this amazing video
Robert is great .. I love his searching probing nature ...
He asks excellent questions to which there cannot be a one size fits all answer, even though that's what he seeking.
“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.” - Max Planck, father of Quantum Physics
I love the phrase: “We cannot get behind consciousness.”
So true! It’s a really good way of getting across one of the weird things about conscious experience; You can’t get behind it, or see it from a third-person perspective, or predict it from the brain’s physical structure. It is utterly mysterious, and completely unlike any other mystery in science.
We don’t have so much as the first inkling of a clue about how to even frame the question, “what is consciousness?”!
The only other question that I think is somewhat similar is: “What is time?” And maybe, “Why is there something rather than nothing?”
But I think consciousness takes the cake.
That is the claim not an argument!
Ameer Hamza - What’s a claim but not an argument? That we can’t see conscious experiences from a third-person perspective? Is this claim even debatable?
Well then, what does the experience of the taste of chocolate look like from a third-person perspective?
What is the mathematical description of the experienced redness of red-or just the redness of red?
Does it even make sense to talk about something like the redness of red (or the pain of being burnt) separate from the experience of it?
What is the physical explanation for the undeniable* existence of these pure qualities of experience, these “qualia”?
*Amazingly, many materialists do in fact claim that qualia don’t exist, that we’ve never _really_ experienced any of these things, it just really, really _seems_ to us like we have! 🤯
But isn’t the “seeming” exactly what an experience is? And who’s being fooled by this “seeming”? The supposedly illusory subject who doesn’t actually even exist according to them?
A mind is a terrible thing to waste.
Absolutely
Maybe the real question is, "Are there things material?"
Fascinating series.
Robert, you ask many great questions. You might try putting this one to Christof Koch (who I imagine you know). He and Colin McGinn had a heated debate about this in a panel discussion, where Koch said there were two domains - the physical and the mental - and McGinn claimed him of being a dualist, to which Koch said he didn't care :)
I'm inclined to agree with Christof. We cannot deny the existence of mentality; our conscious existence is said to be the one thing of which we can be certain. Yet the physical reality of stars and planets is also indisputable, at least without significant sophistry and, arguably, over-complication.
The question, then, is whether any other domains exist. Weirdly, I tend to agree with Plato that forms are fundamental. Forms are shapes and dynamics that either peter out after a while or keep on repeating and complexifying over time. The universe, galaxies, stars and planets each go through their own particular life cycles. Ditto organisms.
In some cases we may truly say "we will never see the like of them again" and in other cases, their likes will keep on re-appearing, often in a more complex form. Generally we can be sure of seeing at least aspects of "the like of them" in the future, just not all of them within the same body.
I have had four or five extraordinary experiences in my life, which opened up in me an understanding that there are realms that we do not yet understand. For example, in one of my experiences, my nephew who was about 15 at the time was asleep.
He began to talk in his sleep and he was speaking in a language that sounded very much like old or middle English. He seemed to be having a conversation and this went on for about one or two minutes. He said several sentences. I could not understand what he was saying but could clearly identify it as a language.
When he awoke, I asked him if he had any dreams to which he could recall. He said, no, and when I told him about what I heard, he had no idea or connection to it.
Any ideas on what it could be that I witnessed would be appreciated. Thank you.
I had a experience where i dreamt my cousin got stabbed and we were in different countries at the time. After about an hour later we got a call that he has got stabbed and he is recovering. I was bemused and confused at the same time. So i can totally understand and believe in realms
Lingual warfare builds estime. Without estime you can't get ahead in life.
@@gregalexander8189 what is lingual warfare?
@@gregalexander8189 A what?
One definition I've seen of existence is if a thing has a measurable influence it exists. By this definition the past and the future both exist, as do many other non-physical 'things' like justice, love, mercy, freedom, various gods etc.
The past certainly exists on this definition, but I don't see how the future exists unless you believe causation can somehow go backwards in time.
Things like justice, love, mercy and the like are abstract and therefore can't have any measurable effect on anything. Certainly people's conception of these things effect how those people behave, but no one is arguing that people don't have a concept of justice, for instance. Under this definition, such concepts don't exist separately from peoples minds.
@@-_a-a_-
The plans are the things which have an effect. The plans were made in the past and are affecting decisions in the present.
It's quite easy to see this if you consider what it would look like if the future were different: if Moore's law suddenly stopped being true, every decision made up to that point (under the assumption that it would continue to be true) wouldn't change. Therefore, what _actually_ happens in the future doesn't have any effect on the present, only our ideas about the future which exist currently.
Very nice journey, which led to an amazing video. Thank you so much for sharing. That said, and with all respect, I must note that there is an approach that goes beyond the whole debate as put. It is the idea that the starting point for this quest should be information. Information is not just a concept about message (Shannon) and order (modern physics), but a concept about what manifests itself and for that reason computes. You should check, no wonder it has become mainstream.
What a wonderful episode!
ive always felt like "the universe is alive"
Does it seem like it may have the munchies?
Of course it is alive that's why it is active.
I have always felt it was a cold, non-caring, inanimate expanse.
With the exception of earth, of course.
For there to be a "thing" in our reality it must be able to be defined with some form of information system even if it is not physically perceptible to an animate being. Like various sub-atomic particles being mathematically defined although being imperceptible to a pigeon or chimpanzee. Or a dream being portayed in a painting using pigments. Or in poetry words used to create a known physical structure ... rivers, moons fields of flowers etc.
In our mythical stories strange creatures may exist using a description with a concoction of known objects - a horn and a horse = unicorn.
in a similar way, "gods' exist in the Hindu religion with constructs using known bodily structures like elephants and snakes. In Buddhist philosophy disfigured humanoid creatures called "hungry ghosts". In Christiany, human formed "angels" with attached wings.
The Sufi mystic Hazrat Inayat Khan - "There is nothing in this world which is devoid of form except God who is formless, although the form of some things is visible, and that of other things invisible." In mystical sects there is a concept of "god" which is left to the disciple to imagine in a form most suitable and approachable to him.
"Consciousness" is really just a term to describe our ability to be aware of ourselves in space and time. But according to the believers, "God" is even beyond quantum superposition.
Hazrat Inayat Khan again ...
"The God-ideal was taught to man gradually. There was a time when a certain rock was recognized as God. People at one period considered certain plants as sacred. At another time, certain animals and birds were considered sacred. For instance, the cow and the eagle were considered as sacred creatures. Many worshipped the primal elements in nature, such as earth, water, fire, and air. People worshipped the spirits of mountains, hills, trees, plants, birds, and animals, until the God-ideal was raised to the Absolute.
The planets and their gods were worshipped, and prayer was offered to the moon and sun. This lasted until God was realized in man. The light of the soul of man was recognized as higher than the light of the sun. Then came hero worship.
Warriors, speakers, physicians, musicians, poets, prophets, and teachers were idealized and worshipped by Hindus as incarnations of God, until from the Semitic race came Abraham, the father of religions, who taught the ideal of the formless God, which was explained gradually by different prophets who came after him. It was openly proclaimed by Moses and spiritually taught by Christ. This same truth was disclosed in plain words by Muhammad, who bore the final message: 'None exists save God.' This final message expands the ideal of worship to the invisible as well as to the visible being, in other words to the Absolute."
So ... there cannot be "things" which are not material but there are "beliefs" which are unable to be verbalised or contextualised because they only exist and can only exist in the mind of the believer.
God speaking, and thousands hearing, is only documented by Moses, not declared by Moses.
Muhammad was a warrior, caravan raider, convert or die, plagerizer, with declarations of connection to Abraham, to feign the air of legitimacy.
A thought consists of two parts.
One part is the process that physically encodes/maintains it and
the other is what the code represents, i.e. what the thought is about.
During one's beginning thoughts originate in the sense organs.
A thought process entails encoding (obviously(?)) and
its the code that does the representing.
But one thought can be about another thought and
multiple thoughts can participate in the creation of a new one and
so on to amazing depth and complexity.
As time passes and thoughts begin to deepen,
sometimes a thinker cannot tell whether a thought
originated via sensum or was derived from an abstraction.
The concept of 'time' is a good example.
Many believe that they can sense it but
there is no time sensing organ in the human body.
Think I'll pause here and welcome any comments.
Actually there is a "time sense organ" in the brain which reacts to our circadian rhythm of about 24 hrs. And one can have thoughts with the sense organs being physically active - dreams. @@REDPUMPERNICKEL
I like this channel and how they tackle these big questions and I like the goal of getting closer to truth.
If I had to answer the question in the title for myself I would phrase it as following:
how can only there be physical/material stuff without beginning? As far as I know, there is no evidence of energy/material popping out of nothing and staying for good. Therefore there must be more than just the physical/material stuff to make it work in order for the material universe to exist.
Is there a flaw in this thinking?
Sounds reasonable to me.
Something had no beginning and will have no end.
That seems far more likely than nothing decided to became something.
Although, and this is a little tricky,
If and when there was nothing then the situation was mighty boring,
you might say infinitely boring so that after a while in no time at all
the situation became intolerable so,
with no material to work with,
nothing split into positive and negative somethings.
The sum total is still nothing but the boring is over.
lol
@@REDPUMPERNICKEL the eternal Trinity adresses and solves the initial boredom problem.
@@rasmusmller625 To which eternal Trinity are you referring?
The guy with Lawrence it's perfect for political parties
Any thoughts are non-material.
Words and description is formed from thoughts.
Communication is just thoughts.
The mind is material but thoughts are not material. So is consciousness just thoughts?
Thought is the process to make it possible to become material, through action?.
a thought is a certain state of the brain. in that sense though can be considered material.
How the heck is it you've never been on the Joe Rogan podcast ?
Keep up the great work!
I don’t think Joe Rogan has mental capacity to carry conversation with Robert.
Finally you get to interview someone I can relate to JP Morgan around 7.57
Audio 2x louder than the last CTT episode. A fun surprise.
Numbers are human constructs. They don't exist outside of human minds. Inside human minds they exist as concepts
Actually platonic concepts and numbers exists outside the human mind..
And off course logic....
Can you prove it? I wonder...
It’s questionable. Reality exists, numbers as every concept is just a model for reality. And model does not have to exist without the mind it produced.
@@tomashull9805 no one can rule out the Anthropic principle at the moment, even consciousness may deep seated in non biological forms???
This would've been better if an ad didn't exist every 2 minutes
Closer to Monetization
@@Tazy50 nice😁👍
Subscribe to Premium. Works for me.
Watch at least one ad to support the channel and then skip the vid to the end and watch it again. Ads won't reappear.
The universe absolutely has a mind of its own. Its us. Rather you are materialistic or spiritual, the way I see it, there is no getting around the fact that we are the universe that has become aware of itself.
"We are made of starstuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." - Carl Sagan
Is material collecting together on large scales of universe, galaxies, space, time and any others important for this question?
I challenge all those that think that matter is all there is:
Define matter without consciousness in its definition.
We are matter that gain consciousness over billions of years 🧐
And yes there is Only matter!! !
us
you and me😘
@@panosvrionis8548 That's not a definition, that's a hypothesis of a process of how consciousness occurs that has no evidence. But I like your enthusiasm.
@@Pietrosavr hypothesis????come on now!!!
Dont play that card....you sound like texas baptism church!!!!pray the lord...a
its like the chicken and the egg argument 😊
You know what i mean.
We need consciousness to define matter.
And matter to have consciousness.
But matter is there and doesn't care if we can define it or not.
Dont tell me you are the religious type......🧐
And im wasting my time.....😱😱
@@panosvrionis8548 We need consciousness to define matter correct, because consciousness is a fundamental category and matter is an unfalsifiable hypothesis, since all we can ever know is through consciousness, and have no access to the so called matter. Why would we need matter to have consciousness? Consciousness is the only thing we can ever be certain of. If you look at an apple, and eat it all you have access to is the colour, shape and taste of the apple, to claim that there is something beyond those experiences makes no sense, and to say that consciousness comes from that something makes even less sense.
Matter needs consciousness in its definition because it's not its own category, its derived from consciousness, and consciousness needs no explanation, it is what it is, a fundamental axiomatic concept, "I think therefore I am".
@@Pietrosavr you confuse me🙄
Wait i will read twice because English is not my primary language 😥
Curiosity and Imagination are two of Mind’s mental abilities.
Consciousness is nothing but an integration of mental abilities, no mystery about it.
Thus, understand the Mind is the first (fundamental) thing to do for exploring all of the mental abilities, such as Observation, Comprehension and etc.
Since e=mc^2, anything with energy is material. Mental processes trigger MRI detectors because thinking consumes energy, so mental process ultimately are material. The only think I know that is very powerful, universal, time-independent, always true and pure wisdom is mathematics.
Who does the observation though? And which one is greater, the observer or the one being observed? In this case the mind being the one observed.
Mind and matter are one thing.
The matter is the existent part.
The mind is what it's doing.
@@REDPUMPERNICKEL For matter and mind to exist something must be here already to observe it.
Consciousness(awareness) is the observer which is FORMLESS watching what is form(matter, mind, body, feelings, sensations etc)
@@sihlenyuswa9951 "For matter and mind to exist something must be here already to observe it."
No.
Great episode.
I agree with mr marvin.
Furthermore, i'd like to add, for objects that has some sort of sentience or character or personality in the games, from the point of view of each character, they are real. To us, it's like we live in higher planes of existence compared to said characters, but between themselves, they are as real as we are toward each other. This is why those religious or spiritual point of view cannot be dismissed that lightly.
“Christian philosopher”: it is important not to live in fantasy.
Also: angels and demons are real persons who can affect the world of space and time.
Just to recall Ezekiel's vision
Don't forget Father Christmas.
they are real persons in that they are archetypes that do indeed affect the world of space and time. not specific people. at least that's what i've gathered listening to Christian philosophers. its a bit dubious the mental gymnastics that are required to remain Christian as a philosopher
If you're a materialist, then seeing someone holding to both propositions will naturally seem absurd to you. That's just how it is.
G K. A materialist, as opposed to what? I think more along the lines of Searle’s biological naturalism, with consciousness as an emergent property of neurobiology. Nothing supernatural though.
Maybe the real question is, "Are there things material?"
Idealism Gang!!
Yes, we will go to idealism, it lets the divine back in, and we need it...a connection to the mother of all nature, source energy...god etc
“Things” by definition are materials, up down quark plus electron. They manifest themselves by way of existence.
Of course there are other “stuff” out there such as love/hate, but I won’t call them things, they should be called phenomena. Phenomena don’t “exist”, they “happen“.
How about light or heat? They are phenomena also. But they don’t happen, it’s more like “occur”. There’s a subtle difference.
Everything has a reason, so does every phenomenon. Things exist, phenomena emerge, simple as that, there’s nothing to be confused.
Time is not material. Space is not material. Your thoughts and feelings are not material.
Very interesting .. when you think about all living creatures and things in this world such as trees living growing ants , worms and so on .. are these creatures here just for us to see or use ? Or do they have a soul . will they die and go to heaven and what is everyone to do in heaven or even hell if that’s what they prefer what’s the purpose and the point ? what we see in touch and feel now Should not be taken for granted because this may be all we may have. Everything around us has a life but it’s so easy for us to take that such as plants and animals. Does God put these creatures before us to sacrifice to benefit our own needs and why ? .. why are they the unlucky ones
Something special about us, which is not possible in a material world. Something special is consciousness into things not material putting us into believing in GOD. However, can computers be compared with humans? Can computers become conscious? Can computers outstrip human capabilities? How about insects and animals where they have brains and consciousness? Humans have brains and consciousness that isn't something scientists like to talk about much. You can't see it, you can't touch it, and despite the best efforts of certain researchers, you can't quantify it. And in science, if you can't measure something, you're going to have a tough time explaining it. So difficult to understand and not working at all, so the simple and dummy answer is a fallacy.
@@romliahmadabdulnadzir1607 Imagine you awake up one day and realize your just a bunch of cheap electronics, soldered by some amateur in a sweat shop and programed by some drunk student working for rent money. I would never loose sight of my battery, it's not if but when something will go wrong, perhaps a drop of water, little bit to cold or to worm, somebody can use wrong charger and you are gone in an instant. I would never trust those solder joints and can't trust capacitors, they're even worst than a battery. It would be a horrible experience, i don't want any computer to became alive ever.
The world that we live in is saturated in genetic code that is essentially a calculation to determine which traits provide benefits that help an organism to make more of itself. When I say that DNA is a calculation, I mean only in the sense that collections of traits that perpetuate life will continue while the ones that are detrimental become unlikely to grip onto the organism's genes and exist in the future. I don't mean that it was created by something with the intent of that result. An accidental computer program might be the best way of thinking about life.
With the parameters embedded in DNA, the way life usually continues is by destroying or consuming other life. Life can't expand indefinitely on the same planet unless some life disappears to make room. That is at the very core of what we are as animals and there doesn't seem to be a way for us to exist in which we do not crush or consume other life. The most altruistic and compassionate human being that has ever lived has killed life on some scale.
The best we can do, being gifted with the ability for self-reflection and considering what could be, is to try to have the least "negative" effect possible on the world. We have the choice to either kill conscious animals or plants that barely move and have no brain. We call a certain kind of experience that can happen within a brain "suffering" and try to avoid it. If we compare plants to our own experience and biology, it seems like the most compassionate thing we can do is to eat the thing without a brain.
The point is that it is literally impossible not to do harm with the code that was placed on planet earth. The best we can do is not eat things with brains because we only really understand organisms that have brains like us. If this "life" thing was deliberate, then the fault of creating a world where things have to be eaten and destroyed lies with "god."
@@xspotbox4400 , imagine the wild imagination and fake is easy. Imaging and relate to reality "truth" ain't easy. We are immersed and awash in our ego mind’s perceptions, utterly filled to overflowing with assumptions, prejudices, beliefs and judgments. Wrong imaginations. We don't know, the only thing we know, nobody imagination even at "99.9% certain" that was correct. But the computer did not to became alive. Nor did anybody wake up as a computer? Nightmares, isn't it? Further to imagination is prediction. Predicting the future ain't easy. That's why astrologers and fortune tellers tend to keep their forecasts as vague as possible. But in the high-stakes world of high technology, the future belongs to those who see it coming well in advance. Of course, even the most successful tech prognosticators make their share of foolish predictions. Nobody is right of the past already gone and forgotten especially at a scale of billion of years and also the future yet to come. What we know what's right is NOW.
@zempath, when you know something, it’s familiar to you, and when something is familiar, it can feel mundane. One of the definitions of mundane is: lacking interest or excitement; dull. We believe we are separate from everything else, alone and vulnerable. And we get stuck in low consciousness because we are convinced that we are alone, separate, and disconnected. But are we? What we see above the surface of the water is the conscious mind. And what lies below the surface is the unconscious mind. These are also know as the Id, Ego, and Super Ego. Therefore, there is absolutely nothing special about us. We don't know, and what we know, just say it anyway.People generally don’t remember what has been said in any given conversation, just that an interaction has taken place. Don’t get hung up on impressing them, just be yourself.
Category is a human construct, existing only in discourse (and mind by extension). Derrida and the post-structuralists blew category out of the water decades ago. "The center is not the center": platonic structure is self-contradictory and invalid. The world is wide open, there is no "category."
I'll take the superposition and say yes and no.
What are categories constructed out of?
Would you say that Category simply describes shared states or commonalities among trait expressions from sensory data? The very fact that we come to realize the pattern of commonalities which we then transcribe as "Category" is because we wish to represent something which is real outside of our "human" self. Our brain desires structural thinking. This then begs the question: "our brain is invented by that which it wishes to understand".
In thinking about this, is it not the case that that which is derived externally and organized internally, must, to some degree, truthfully represent reality. The world/universe itself is not Categories, rather, Categories are a way of describing states of the world, groupings based on attributes of the world/universe and organizing them into useful groupings for thought. For us to be able to tackle complexity, we must reduce it to subsets of simplicity.
This resulting subdivision of complexity into simplicity, is, in this circumstance, "Categories". If something follows a set of rules, it is organized in a structural way which can result in repeatability, attribute similarities, and so on. This then allows the process of Categorization to be possible. It would be impossible for us humans to be able to Categorize without the pre-existing structure already enabling us to do so.
I'll give an example: The very fact that wavelengths can express themselves in intelligible ways. Peaks, amplitudes, lengths, and so on. The arrangement of atoms into higher complexity structures such as glass or how vortexes can form and can be experimented on and predicted using sets of rules. This is only possible because the external, observable data we call the universe, is already structured in a way which enables us to reflect upon it and reconstruct it using representations such as linguistics; visually, written, audibly, and so on. So the very fact that we have reached a point where we discuss the Categorization of the world/universe is, to some degree, a truthful reflection of it's state. I'd strongly argue it is not complete in it's representation.
However, I don't believe I can personally deny Categorization of it, since the Categorization of it is simply describing similar attributes of it, not attempting to define it directly. Observational truths as it were. Or at least, that's how I see it. I'd love to hear your opinion on these thoughts!
@@joshheter1517 Human thought
rick landers
What are thoughts made of?
Chalmers hair is something else.
In the past months experience incredible moments of my own reality. It had nothing to do with deities or short influence of philosophical guides. It was just trough my own existence. I believe complex thinking is the primary reason of our limitations!
I believe quite the opposite. I believe that complex thinking is the beginning of infinity of optimism, progress, and an anthropacy of continuous progress in philosophy and science.
@@patmoran5339 Sorry I sounded determinant that was my fault. Personally I realize awareness easy out my own distractions which had abolish obstacles of my identity to who I am and not the one who has to be. I Feel my perspectives are much fresh of judgements!
I always go back to, "it depends how we define X." So if things are immaterial it depends on the criteria of our definitions.
I agree. Same applies to evolution...
But then who defines us? Can we be independent of our own definitions?
@@tomashull9805 probably true. You bring up an interesting point. 'Where are the limits of the claim that agreed upon axioms are a necessity of truth." Can we say the basic axioms of mathematics like 1+1+=2 must be agreed upon? We must be careful not to delve into hard relativism, because that can get silly, like all this is a dream and nothing can be objective, that may be true but it's not a very useful assumption. In other words we must be pragmatic, and to be pragmatic we must be somewhat objective. What do you think?
@@Human_Evolution- All I was trying to say that depending on the definition our whole prospective can change. If we define evolution as change overtime, then everything is evolving due to entropy, for example... But if we define evolution as change of a 5 pound land walking mammal into 50 ton whale, then we don't have evolution...Get it?
@@tomashull9805 no need to start at a 5 pound mammal. We can say a microbe evolving into a blue whale. That's even more dramatic.
I would say "Does anything Physical" actually exist. Or... We don't exist in a Physical World we exist in a construct we call Physical using the same mechanism as we do in dreaming states.
I saw the video....i read the first comment yours btw....😊
I need my weed now🤯🤯
@NotACapitalist You are confusing the perceived world with the physical world. The perceived world is a world of phenomenal qualities. It has color, sound, smell, etc. Physical things have no qualities, they are exhaustively described by quantities. The existence of a physical world is an inference, as it can’t be empirically shown to exist. It’s an inference meant to explain the cause of our shared perceptions.
GuyFieri - And it’s logically impossible to derive the pure qualities of conscious experience (qualia) from the pure quantities of the physical universe that is described by physics.
This is why many materialists make the extraordinary claim the qualia don’t exist, that our experiences consist of nothing that anyone would consider experiential.
Encountering these kinds of desperate, absurd arguments played a big role in my giving up on materialism once and for all.
Bottom line: Unless you believe materialist assertion that you’ve never actually experienced anything-you just think you have(!!!)-materialism (as we currently define it) is logically untenable. Period.
Yes and even even Science says when you get down to it but nothing is physical is solid
NotACapitalist - Did you even get my actual point? The impossibility of deriving the redness of red from a physics equation isn’t just because of a lack of imagination. It is literally (and obviously) impossible. And yet, the redness of red exists in my direct perception!
So tell me, how do you derive red, or pain, or love, or hate, or the sound of a symphony, or the taste of chocolate, or the smell of incense from the purely quantitative laws of physics?
Do you understand why this is impossible, and therefore a serious problem for materialism/physicalism? Or do you deny the very existence of these experiences as so many materialists like philosophers Dan Dennett & Keith Frankish, and several prominent scientists do?
Ask yourself: If consciousness is not a serious problem for materialism, why would so many materialists deny the most undeniable thing in all of existence-our conscious experiences? Do you have an answer for that?
Well what is energy? This is the first thing I think of. And obviously consciousness
In terms of categories, where would you put things like eletromagnetic waves and other field like quantities and interactions which are certainly imaterial but seem to exist only in the physical world?
Is consciousness not enough for you?!
Consciousness isn’t supernatural
Greg Gauthier no it isn’t
@@bazstrutt8247 well, if you got a solution for the Hard Problem, we would like to hear it. Hmmm, I guess you don't.
@@bazstrutt8247 I would say that something that can be observed but not quantified or defined is pretty supernatural to me.
Amino's Truth 3 Yet “consciousness” doesn’t emanate from something immaterial, anymore than say, sight, strength, smell does et al does.
Yes. Delusions are not material.
Conflating what's logically true with what's real.
Excellent.... thanks 🙏.
“Brain can’t produce consciousness, there must be a soul” sounds to me like “super heavy aircraft made of iron can’t fly in the sky, there must be a magical power in it”.
Each part of the plane can’t fly by itself but the whole thing can. There are so called emergent properties in complex systems, which are impossible to derive from system’s structure. Similarly, consciousness is a complex of emergent properties of brain.
Air is material, correct? Yes. So, magic doesn’t support the weight of this heavy iron craft. There is much scientific data and evidence to support this fact. In addition there has been an equal amount of experimental data to support the existence of consciousness as a material object. The work of Winifred Otto Schumann in regards to his discovery of the Schumann-Resonance in 1954. I shall leave a link; in hopes that it may entice you to conduct further research on this topic. commissionersforconsciousness.com/2020/03/05/the-schumann-resonance/
Thanks, I’ve read it. Well, human brain’s alpha wave is close to the main frequency of the Schumann resonance waves. For me this looks like a result of evolutionary process, as far as humans formed in this environment. But how do you conclude that consciousness is a frequency? To me consciousness being formed by material brain is a set of different sensations it’s a mental state. I think brain is sufficient to create conscious. But I really can’t see why you pay so much attention to alpha waves, and equal them to the whole phenomenon of consciousness.
"Things" are material. Matter is real within reality. From a cluster of galaxies all the way down to the subparticals of atoms. All this material originates from energy. No matter how high a number can be counted to, you can always add one more forever and ever. Infinity, eternity, universality and immortality will find their way to their first source and centre origin. I call it Paradise. The never beginning, never ending reality where time stands still and space vanishes.
david jay halabecki Hmm....You mean Unlimited....Where Flat is the Majesty Of The Universe.....when you can conceive that...peace prevails! Regards
In the ultimate analysis non-physical is literally all there is.
I agree with McGinn. I have always considered the category of the divine to be mental.
10:47 seemingly smart guy believes in angels and demons.
Not so smart obviously.
Didn't see it coming.
Yet, most people do not find people dumb (or not smart) who think we could be living in a simulation. Yet, if we do, there can very well be angels and demons and aliens and all the rest. Those in control (or with the ability to take advantage of it from the inside) could actually invoke these beings. Maybe to study how people react, maybe to have fun seeing their reactions, maybe for some other obscure reason we cannot hope to learn etc. But if we do live in a simulation then basically anything is possible. Maybe not for those bound by the rules but for those who have control over it. Those at the controls can do anything they want. And that includes everything that belongs to the realm of "supernatural" or "paranormal" as well.
I don’t agree with his conclusion. The human mind could be completely material and the non material could still exist. Most Christian physicalists hold this view.
I love your channel and your perseverance in your search. About this video is another question that I wonder myself, I wanted to say that if you think about Spiritual been they sure are some kind of material, like us; I mean everything that once was in this Universe is material. And after watching so many of your videos I think the answer to the question Why There Is Something Rather Than Anything is that nothing is the initial stage, but then consciousness emerge, so I don't know, maybe there is a God. Another way to view this, is that, if nothing is the beginning so the only thing that could 'move' something would be some conscious. I think your talks are very interesting and sorry my English, I`m not American. Edit: I should add about that hairy guy in the interview, that that everything is Stuff, I mean material.
Have you thought about the immaterial nature of process?
If You had to choose between a material bucket of Extra Crispy and a immaterial bucket of the Colonel's Original Recipe, which would you choose and why?
How does he knows angel and demons are real ... has he ever seen one or talked to them..He is just making it up as he goes along.
The hilarious thing is he begins my saying it's important to talk about things that are known to be real. Then literally minutes later he's saying there's good evidence for angels and demons.
There's no nice way of putting this; that's just fucking stupid.
@@b.g.5869 Angels exist.
@@EmperorHero1 Prove it.
People have seen angels and demons
@@c.l.888 Did they prove it?
All non-physical things are still physical...
...because physical things can change states...
..like matter into energy into space-time!
Best ever. I agree with and disagree with all your experts. Here's my take - is consciousness a product of the physical world, or is the physical world just in the imagination of my consciousness, even to the point that my brain and psyche are things imagined in my conscious existance! Which is real , my consciousness or what it perceives?
I know much less than I did when I knew much more. Time unravels my strict thoughts.
I would suggest: "Thinking and Destiny" by Harold W. Percival
Good topic!
This is a lovely channel! Nice people!
The vast majority of All that is is immaterial. Most of the things we use in the world are also immaterial. Things like maths, logic, joy, pain, reason, love, feelings, instincts, doubt, curiosity, care, trepidation, desire etc. And if you take matter down to its most fundamental level, then matter isn't even material either. It is just little balls of energy known as quarks and electrons.
My mind thinks all the same things! ❤️
We could see minimal amount of the light spectrum and hear to a certain hertz. So most probably there are things we couldn't see & hear
Our consciousness and mind don’t aged, it’s only affected with disease etc, so this tells me it’s either the mind physically don’t aged or it’s possessed with some spiritual being that we cannot understand..if I were to venture to answer this burning question of us having a spirit I would say this spirit hovers over our head in a dimension we don’t understand in our lifetime until we die..just a hypothesis..
All is consciousness, subjective and objective. Life is a play of ideas on substance, both being consciousness.
Only one thing exists. If there are two things that exist, they would be halves of the one thing. Likewise with three or more. And yet I see that there is only one of every thing that exists. Happy day, fellow monads. Have a good one.
Robert starts out with "Is the natural physical world, all there is?" Then immediately follows it up with "Nothing more important for giving it meaning and ultimate purpose." Question asked and answered right off the bat. (Meaning and purpose being non-material things... 🤣)
Engaging and mentally stimulating; reminiscent of a book that was both engaging and insightful. "The Joy of Less: A Minimalist Living Guide" by Matthew Cove
I agree I believe the universe does have a mental apparatus. I'd be willing to take it one step further and say that it makes every living thing in the universe.
@@realitycheck1231 Buddhist alert! Pure pessimism on display!
@@realitycheck1231 Does the truth hurt? By the way in the first post it should read "emanating." Spell check might help.
I think the material scientific perspective is a bit more nuanced than it’s represented here. Materialists such as myself don't simply believe that matter/energy is the only thing that exists, there is also information. Yes actually matter/energy are the same, they can be converted from one to the other and share a fundamental nature. Information is real, ideas, numbers, algorithms all exist through encoding in the arrangement of matter and energy. So both the material domain and the information domain are two sides of the same material coin. I think that's really all we need. All these other 'realms' or 'categories' are simply some combination of material and/or informational content, and I think that includes consciousness.
By material I understand anything that is part of the physical universe:space, time, forces, particles, light, gravity and anything that makes the universe work or what would make other universes work if there are other dimension. I don’t know any real (not hypothetical) example of something immaterial. I can’t imagine something immaterial either.
What about consciousness? Consciousness doesn’t exist without a brain imo. It can’t be that the brain just evolved and now has access to a consciousness, it must be the direct cause of it. Then the brain is clearly material so consciousness is derived from brain activity. I also think consciousness is a mystery that I don’t think we will be able to solve, I mean how it really works
Yes. Energy, forces, fields....
What I find interesting is the difference between the objective and the subjective. Objective reality is everything out there that we can measure and agree exists, materialism if you will. We know subjective reality exists as we spend 100% of our time there, yet we can not prove its existence. It makes no sense to subscribe to materialistic science as you are denying your own very experience! Science has yet to explain our own subjective world but nobody can deny there are two parts to reality or maybe we can narrow it down to one...information!
"information", Yes! In the form of analogies that matter can instantiate, what brains are doing.
Makes one think beyond daily lives
Awesome
Belief is transient condition. It is like a train station along the way to an unknown destination, accompanied by the acknowledgment that each station carries just that very disclaimer, "Destination Unknown." Hubris is a corrupted belief that one can divine the ultimate with one's physical brain, or that he has already done so. That is, to wander and explore each station, reading all the signs except the one that says, "Destination Unknown", and fashioning a dogma (i.e., religion) from a fundamental error: the denial of the limitations of the physical brain. More specifically, it is to deny oneself, and worse, other humans, the enjoyment and appreciation of each stop along the way, its beauty, the very gifts of life, by being excessively absorbed with signs posted by other fools. By all means, read, seek, but don't forget to live and to wonder.
The questions that need to be asked
According to Chat gpt; Quantum physics does indeed suggest the possibility of a separate reality. According to the Copenhagen interpretation, which is one of the widely accepted interpretations of quantum mechanics, the act of observation or measurement can affect the outcome of a quantum system. This implies that until observed, quantum particles exist in a superposition of multiple states simultaneously.
The concept of superposition and the existence of multiple states for quantum particles suggest the potential for parallel or separate realities.
What if at the BigBang time started in two directions forward and backwards ? So if you want to look back past the big bang you could do it and it would look like a past. It doesn’t mean it appeared from nothing because you would need an empty space and time for that to precede the BB but this hypothesis doesn’t allow it. Now if you go forward in time it never stops it’s what we call infinite but basically no matter how far we go it will always be a finite number of years passed.
We have a strong intuition for a universal time that goes regardless of anything that happened or will happen but it’s strongly rejected by scientific evidence and I’m not sure if it works even philosophically when you think of the beginning of the universe. It’s so strong I personally can’t reject it as a possible alternative
Have you played with the idea that time is a concept only?
I liked the conclusion from Dyson. We are material bodies, no arguing about that. But universe is also collection of material objects. So those two principles must be connected somehow, like purpose is inbuilt into energetic substance we call matter. Than we have two categories, but not in dualistic relation to one another. There's stuff in general and things only certain stuff can do, because it belong to higher scheme of things, in a sense it's part of ongoing physical process, different from general chaos.
"purpose is inbuilt into energetic substance we call matter"
Nature or capabilities or behavior or reactivity might be more accurate than 'purpose'.
@@REDPUMPERNICKEL Yes, one process is physical and another is living, but share the same physics.
Why can living physics do things ordinary physics never does?
@@xspotbox4400 Seems to me "living physics" and "ordinary physics" are the same physics and living things are the direct consequence of the nature of what physics is concerned with.
Seems to me chemistry, bio-chemistry, biology, genetics, etc. can easily be considered to be specializations within the realm of physics.
Seems to me exploration of these special realms is more likely to deliver a better understanding of the difference between life and non-life.
The category of life currently has fuzzy boundaries.
For instance, some scientists hold viruses to be living things while others take them to be inert molecules that exhibit unusually complex chemical behaviors.
@@REDPUMPERNICKEL But this wasn't what Dyson was talking about.
Imagine you could observe the birth of our star, would you ever think this stuff can produce you some day?
Life is not like general physics, it's made from the same physics, but behave completely different. We grow from a single cell, every atom of our body gets replaced many times over the course of our lives. Meaning, we're not a ting, just like our thoughts are not electricity but patterns in the electric field. Patterns emerge from electricity, are made from electrons, but they are shapes electrons make, not individual particles. The same goes for life, it's atoms, but no individual atom has any permanent place in our body.
Virus is not alive, but they are included in the chain of life. Ordinary matter can't influence the inner working of human cells. Virus can act as a part of cellular structure, it can't exist on its own, can only reproduce inside a living physical process.
@@xspotbox4400 "But this wasn't what Dyson was talking about."
The universe behaves the way the universe behaves based on the laws of physics. Physics is the name of the scientific inquiry into the nature of the physical. In the clip of Dyson, he was waxing romantically, poetically, speculatively science fictional. I'm sure he did not intend those thoughts to be taken literally as reflective of his overall beliefs. IMHO of course.
"Life is not like general physics, it's made from the same physics, but behave completely different."
What I know forces me to disagree.
The components do not "behave completely different"! Whether it's alive or not, the physical behaves according to the laws of physics.
Life demonstrates the physical's innate capacity for making extraordinarily complex structures and extraordinarily complex dynamics when circumstances are permitting.
"replaced many times over the course of our lives. Meaning, we're not a ting"
Yes, I agree, we are not a thing, at least, our conscious minds, our 'selfs', do not come into being directly from the raw fact of physical existents.
In broadest terms, our 'selfs' come into being as dynamic patterns that evolution has devised by enlisting the physical's innate combinatorial capacities.
But look at all these words. They are my thoughts stripped down and compressed and looking like aperiodic crystals on your screen. On your screen they are completely meaningless but when you read them you unconsciously automatically compare them to your memories which results in your recognition of them and so they influence the thought processes going on in your brain and these eventually culminate, hopefully, in your understanding.
Frankly, I think your thoughts and mine are not very or importantly different.
I don’t completely understand the necessity for more categories unless the principles within originals are limited.
I do agree however there may be a relationship of dependency and independency of categories. For example in physics cannot prove a mathematical assumption but mathematics can prove physical ones. Math is meta. It is beyond and math is independent of physical. If our awareness( the knowing in of itself) is beyond the material and independent of you cannot prove it through material means however it can be proven within itself. Which seems somewhat solipsistic.
However the known is dependant on the knowing. What is known is entirely different from the knowing of things.
What is known is dependant of the physical. Localises the known dependant on knowing and the space time circumstance
If there is a evolution of the known then there is an ignorance that allows for the space that describes the relative progression for motion. What is the geometry of this ignorance? How does it describe our relative motion and path?
We are aware of our ignorance and can only evolve knowing we are ignorant. Is this a constant?
We are aware our ignorance. Fundamentally there is no ignorance