What is your problem with "matter" ?

What is your problem with "matter" ? Why can't you agree when it is said, for example, that it is the brain which gives birth to consciousness ? Why do you think that matter is so unsacred, so impure, so lowly and vile?

I have no problem to acknowledge, for example, that "love" and other emotions are given birth by chemical and electrical events in the brain, because I clearly understand that trying to explain the mechanisms which give birth to those emotions are not an attempt to explain the emotional content or even to diminish the importance that those emotions have for us. There are two separate things : the thing, and the mechanisms which give birth to the thing.

Because I don't see matter like a vile thing, I can say that consciousness is born in the brain, and that doesn't diminish the importance or the complexity or the deepness of consciousness. You have to keep in mind that we still don't really know what matter is. And if you believe that consciousness can be separated from the brain, all I can say is "I don't know", because it could be true. I can easily imagine that brains are some kind of incubators for consciousness, and once the brain dies, the consciousness continues a "life" of his own. But this is speculation.

There is a clear separation in human knowledge between what is of matter and what is of the domain of the mind, and this is a mistake. Here is what I wrote somewhere else on the subject :
"Since the dawn of times, man has found himself different from other species, he found that he was capable of doing things that no other species was capable of, that he was the only bearer of the gift of creative intelligence and language, and it then became easy for him to believe that he has been chosen amongst all of the species of planet Earth, to the point that even until today, some humans believe that all other species exist only to serve the chosen one. This vision has been perpetuated until today by various religions and philosophies. This belief has a side effect : it creates a false dichotomy between mind and body : the mind is the gift, it's of celestial and pure origin, while the body is what humans have in common with other mammals, thus it represents what is lowly terrestrial, basely material and common ; the belief implies that the gift is perfect as it is and that consequently it would be pointless to try to improve it, or that it is blasphemous to even try. The belief also implies the opposite conclusion concerning the body : since it is not sacred, humans have no scruple improving it. The mind is immanent, divine and perfect, and the body is vile, measurable and transformable. While in reality the mind and the body are interconnected and couldn't function without each other, they can be symbolically separated within thought and language, thus leading to outcomes that are not adapted to the reality of what exists. Exact science is the measurement of the terrestrial, and social sciences is the expression of the divine mind : “what I want is what I want”, “my opinion has importance”. We can see the outcomes today : a clear separation between exact sciences and social sciences, a compartmentalization between disciplines leading to a lack of communication between them, and also a clear difference in the results achieved.. I like to think sometimes that the humans living today are not really different from humans who have lived thousands of years ago, and in fact there is little difference, because culture keeps conveying the same symbols and concepts."

So, it is clear that we consider matter to be a vile thing, and we shouldn't. Either everything is sacred, or nothing is sacred. And it is also important to note that when everything is sacred nothing is sacred, because the "sacred" quality is used to separate things, to consider that some things are noble and some other things are not, so if you think that everything is sacred, it means that nothing is sacred because the "sacred" quality loses its purpose and sense.. The truth is that things just exist, they are here, and because they exist they all have the same quality, independently of what you may think.

I want you to start considering, as a temporary medicine, that matter is something noble, something deep and complex that can give birth to everything else and to you.

What's a matta wich you?

What is you problem with "matter" ? Why can't you agree when it is said, for example, that it is the brain which gives birth to consciousness ? Why do you think that matter is so unsacred, so impure, so lowly and vile?

Maybe its because even Neuroscience can not explain human Consciousness, or free will.

Or how two sections of the brain can activate near simultaneous, despite the impossibility of the signal traveling faster than Light to cause the activation.

Seems entanglement maybe at play, something that even Physicist still have a hard time reconciling.

The shear amount that we know, is nothing compared to all that we don't.

reply to post by gosseyn


Many posit (& I agree) that consciousness exists at a more fundamental level than matter, at the quantum level or perhaps even more fundamental (places we have hardly touched upon, even theoretically).

Matter itself only exists upon the substrate of these deeper levels of reality.

The collective unconscious and the extremely rapid recovery to trans-cranial magnetic stimulation (among other hints) would argue for a consciousness not entirely tied to matter.

reply to post by gosseyn


Sounds like mind over matter to me.

You say this :

Originally posted by benrl
Maybe its because even Neuroscience can not explain human Consciousness, or free will.

And then you say this :

The shear amount that we know, is nothing compared to all that we don't.

Don't you see that you are contradicting yourself ? First, you base your judgement on what science has achieved so far, to say that "see, science itself cannot explain that to us". And just after that, you acknowledge the fact that we don't know much ? You use science when it goes along your thinking, and you reject it when it contradicts what you believe.

I believe all is made of matter - even thought itself - By thought I do not mean the electrical signals but that which is the cause of such signals.
Everything is made of something so as such is matter though I prefer to call it substance
I think the problem that such ideas as the soul or feelings are thought of as separate from substance.
Yet as I said - I believe all is made of substance or combinations of substances.

Substance is in varying states of refinement - Even the consumption of vegetable matter can be said to refine that substance.

For many years I have believed the solar system itself is like a machine for refining substance.
I believe this is the nature of the Cosmos

Refined substance is able to penetrate or blend or pass through less refined substance like flame through wood

reply to post by gosseyn


I am saying that the reason people cling to immaterial causes is because Science is still in the dark about a great many things.

What is Dark Mater and Dark Energy if not immaterial causes in a material world, it is science grasping at the answers it can not explain by material means.

Originally posted by chr0naut

Many posit (& I agree) that consciousness exists at a more fundamental level than matter, at the quantum level or perhaps even more fundamental (places we have hardly touched upon, even theoretically).

How can you say that when we don't even know what matter really is ? How can you compare something that is unknown ? Again, I see in what you say the will to consider consciousness as something more noble than matter. It is an old bias that comes from thousands of years ago.

reply to post by gosseyn


It's strange how those who are labelled materialist are also stigmatized to appear wicked—usually by the religious, idealists or those who hold their ideas and mind as more important than matter. It's hilariously ironic however, because without the physical world, there would be none of their spirit world either.

I do think 'matter' is insufficient as a description however.

Dang... We are thinking DEEP tonight! It has been a pleasure to hear the thoughts so far.

I wish I had the time to add something of value presently but Im cooking supper and have four hungry mouths to feed, however I can come back in the morning to add more. :-)

Very thought provoking and im up for the challenge.

Sometimes Ive wondered if every thing matters, however there are some things that just cant be measured to matter. What can you call such? Does it matter is whats important?

The brain is a massive computer with a lifetime of experiences. Due to the mix of experiences every single brain on the planet is unique in how it "thinks". However, "thought" is merely the conclusion of input from the senses and the lifetime experience interpreting them. Given the sheer volume of experiences and uniqueness this gives the impression of free-will or "soul". Since I have already made it quite clear that all experiences are unique there is logically no difference between a unique set of pre-conditioned reactions and apparent free-will (which is a unique set of reactions to situations). No difference

Eureka moments are not necessarily free-will. Ever noticed how solutions to problems occur when you don't think about them? Well that is the subconcious making sense of things. The higher the intelligence of a person the greater the number of life experiences brought bear on a subject some of which may be very obscure.

It is just possible, given the small size of neurons, that an occasional neuron will "fire" from some random quantum event. This could lead to non experience driven conclusions.

This is why the thinking robot will be one that learns and is not pre-programmed.

Originally posted by LesMisanthrope
reply to post by gosseyn

 

It's strange how those who are labelled materialist are also stigmatized to appear wicked—usually by the religious, idealists or those who hold their ideas and mind as more important than matter. It's hilariously ironic however, because without the physical world, there would be none of their spirit world either.

I do think 'matter' is insufficient as a description however.

Yes Sir - We live in a material world - Though it is transitory we should care for all material things
The soul itself is material yet refined material that can pass through what the physical body can not

reply to post by gosseyn


ETA: ...meh, doesn't matter.

Matter is a concept. All matter contains energy though, it's simply slower vibrating energy. But I'd like to delve into consciousness for a moment.

I say consciousness permeates everything, because you don't have an emergence of consciousness from a complete lack of consciousness. Everything that happens in the cosmos is not without reason, so I can't say it's completely unconscious just because it lacks eyes and ears etc. When I look at space and events within space, I think, "All of this is alive." because it's doing something so brilliantly, even though it's a collection of dust, gas, rocks, liquid, and so on. But, the most primitive microbes grew from rocks or the seas or what have you, things we consider completely unconscious, dead, and yet from those building blocks eventually came the human body.

In order for consciousness to evolve in an organism, it's building blocks must have been conscious themselves. Very primitive of course, but conscious nonetheless. Consciousness is not contained in the brain when you consider that, as there are things without brains that are clearly conscious but in very primitive ways. Soil, which is simply dirt to us containing water, nitrogen, and so on, made plants. But how did the earth know to evolve "life"? Including us, which are made completely of elements from the earth, it's atmosphere, and the oceans. Just elements that happened to bounce into each other at the perfect time and in the perfect amount, which eventually became the first single celled organisms? I don't buy it! The perfect dance of the cosmos to me screams it's alive, and we, with mouths, are capable of doing that screaming in a more obvious way.

So, I don't have a problem with matter. Matter is simply what we call the lower order of things, the visible world. On that note, we consider Spirit to be on the higher order of things, the invisible world. They are all energy though. We simply broke it down to view it as duality as we tend to do. There isn't a major difference between them though. They are, after all, our concepts of things. It's simply a matter of perspective though, that is, we are unable to perceive with our eyes infrared or gamma rays and so on, and if it weren't for technology, we'd probably never knew they existed. Same with our ears: the human ear cannot hear things below 12hz or above 20khz. So all those things that are beyond our perception, we label "spiritual" and other terms relating to that, and all things within our perception we label matter. They all exist together though.

Originally posted by benrl
reply to post by gosseyn

 

I am saying that the reason people cling to immaterial causes is because Science is still in the dark about a great many things.

What is Dark Mater and Dark Energy if not immaterial causes in a material world, it is science grasping at the answers it can not explain by material means.

Yes, but science is an ongoing process. Today we don't know, tomorrow we may know, and the day after tomorrow we may disprove what tomorrow we thought we knew. Science today cannot explain everything that is material, and yet you use that lack to prove something else which would be immaterial ? Don't you see the problem ? Why do you assume that there is an "immaterial realm" when you obviously know that science is still in its young days, that science is still unable to explain the material world ? You do the same mistake as our ancestors when they thought that thunder was the manifestation of an angry god. I think this is called "argument of ignorance", using something we don't yet understand, a "dark spot" in our understanding, in our knowledge, to put in that place something that you would like to be true. You know, I am like you, an immaterial realm would be all beautiful, it would give us some kind of purpose, a deeper meaning, but I am also attached to the truth, and I can't just invent something that I would feel comfortable with.

reply to post by gosseyn


All though so far it has been proven that the fundamental laws of the universe can be understood and observed by conscious beings such as ourselves (funny that), there is the possibility that we could hit a cap in what is "knowable".

Until we figure out what is and what isn't, are things only to be explored at the current level of scientific understanding?

Are all immaterial causes for the universe off the table? What of extra-dimensions?

If anything history has proven scientific consensus and understanding has often been rather limited, it is only with in the past 1-2 centuries of human history that we have even begun to have a clue.

Even the very "material" you expound could all be the result of a holographic universe, where one finds material causes others find immaterial.

And that's with out even getting into philosophy, or into Theism.

it is, for me, the "bootstrapping" problem.

if we could find even ONE legitimate example of a material system crossing the self-referential barrier, I would be willing to accept the primacy of matter.

however, one would be keen to note that there are many great examples of a "mind" which is not localized to a point source.


so it seems plain to me that the subject is something else entirely from the object.


one of my favorite quotes: "because the things you think you think appear as images before your eyes, you refuse to accept them as nothing." (emphasis on NO-THING)

Originally posted by benrl
Are all immaterial causes for the universe off the table? What of extra-dimensions?

Why do you consider that those hypothetical "extra dimensions" would be out of the material realm ? The whole purpose of why I started this thread is to say that matter is more noble than you think, and that perhaps everything is matter, and that we shouldn't make an artificial separation between the material world and something else that we would consider "immaterial". Again, and this is fundamental, we don't know what matter really is. I said in the OP what I believe is the reason why we make this separation, and it is a very old idea still very alive today.

Originally posted by gosseyn

Originally posted by chr0naut

Many posit (& I agree) that consciousness exists at a more fundamental level than matter, at the quantum level or perhaps even more fundamental (places we have hardly touched upon, even theoretically).

How can you say that when we don't even know what matter really is ? How can you compare something that is unknown ? Again, I see in what you say the will to consider consciousness as something more noble than matter. It is an old bias that comes from thousands of years ago.

Because of a number of things which I can observe, I believe that consciousness is not bounded by our skulls, i.e: it is not just the matter within our head that it arises from.

This can be demonstrated by disruption of the operation of our neurons, via trans cranial magnetic stimulation, after which we don't have to go through a restart/reboot process. Everything just comes up working very quickly just as it was before with no changes to person-hood or mental functionality. So it wouldn't be a stretch to assume that perhaps the conscious person is not located within the disruptable neural matter.