We understand that the objects that seem so solid to us, including our own bodies, are mostly empty spaces, sparsely filled with atoms and molecules if viewed on a finer level of magnification.
Hello. You talk about holding 'beliefs uncritically', and then proceed to share your beliefs about consciousness being emergent. Materialism is based on this belief - that consciousness emerges from matter, despite the famous 'hard problem'.
There is no evidence, even in theory, as to how consciousness could emerge from matter. This is a fact. As is the recognition that no one could ever experience anything outside consciousness/awareness (including matter, which is always an appearance within consciousness). Yet to suggest that consciousness is primary, which is everyone's direct experience, is portrayed as being a 'spiritual handhold'.
I enjoy your writing, but I'm going to go with legendary physicist Max Planck, who says, "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"
This isn't wishful thinking, but more in line with our experience and recent scientific discoveries, including the nobel prize winning discovery of 2022.
I think you have misread or misunderstood this essay, Simon. I specifically said that I was not sharing any "beliefs," and that I do not know what any of this is or isn't.
Quoting Max Planck is a logical error known as an appeal to authority. He had his opinion, but he did not KNOW either. In this matter, no one does, which was the point of my essay.
It is you who wants to insist on what you believe, not I.
Perhaps I have. It seems to me from this post that you view consciousness as likely emergent. I view consciousness as likely primary. Neither of us know for sure, and nor does anyone else.
I mentioned emergence because it is one way that consciousness could have arisen, but that is not a "belief."
If one believes in idealism, that demands believing that the material world does not exist and that consciousness was always here. That raises the question of how it got here.
The idealistic argument, in my view, is like the foolish creationist argument for the existence of God. In that conception, God must exist because something must have created the heavens and the earth. But that raises the question of who created God. The usual answer is that God was always here.
In either case, idealism or naturalism, an unsupported assumption is required--a rabbit out of a hat. In idealism, it must be assumed that consciousness was always here and matter is a dream. I consider it more likely that matter was here going back to the Big Bang, and consciousness evolved from that. But, as you say, no one knows.
I would suggest that we only ever definitively experience being conscious and conscious experiences. That is not a belief, it is in my view an experiential fact.
So why assume experiencing/consciousness has emerged from something, if in experience it is always primary? (I am not talking about what we experience - like thoughts, feelings, perception etc)
Let's put words like idealism/ materialism/ physicalism to one side and stick with the specific point as to whether consciousness is emergent or not.
To disregard direct experience and assume emergence at some point in time (specifically in the distant past following the 'big bang' - which is itself not a fact but a best scientific theory) implies belief: a belief in something other than the only 'thing' anyone can ever actually be sure of. Namely consciousness.
"we only ever definitively experience being conscious and conscious experiences."
This is a meaningless tautology often trotted out by idealism fans.
Consciousness and experience are the same thing, so to say that you "experience" consciousness means nothing except that you are awake and not unconscious, as you might be when anesthetized, knocked out by a blow to the head, or otherwise rendered unconscious during which time there is no experience.
"We only ever definitively experience being conscious and conscious experiences" "In experience consciousness is always primary" "Matter is always an appearance within consciousness" There's no way you can really know that, I don't personally understand why would you even try so hard to believe in something like that... Is matter really "within" consciousness? How can you objectify consciousness? Where you do it from and Who is even able to do that? All of those claims of yours are simply perceptions you want to create a philosophy around. How do you know consciousness is always primary? The claim in itself doesn't hold water... How can you divide consciousness from matter, distinguish between the two, and say one is before the other? If you are honest, that will be pure conjecture, a hard effort to intellectually understand what consciousness and the world is. Put your intellect aside and you will see that what you call matter and consciousness are just your thoughts, beyond all that there is no way to distinguish between consciousness and matter, ultimately those are just concepts.
Thank you, Hektor. Yes. Conceptual approaches certainly fail to touch it, and even so-called direct experience will never reveal the actual nature of reality. We are what we are and have no way to stand apart from that to observe it and know what it is.
Good one.
Hello. You talk about holding 'beliefs uncritically', and then proceed to share your beliefs about consciousness being emergent. Materialism is based on this belief - that consciousness emerges from matter, despite the famous 'hard problem'.
There is no evidence, even in theory, as to how consciousness could emerge from matter. This is a fact. As is the recognition that no one could ever experience anything outside consciousness/awareness (including matter, which is always an appearance within consciousness). Yet to suggest that consciousness is primary, which is everyone's direct experience, is portrayed as being a 'spiritual handhold'.
I enjoy your writing, but I'm going to go with legendary physicist Max Planck, who says, "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"
This isn't wishful thinking, but more in line with our experience and recent scientific discoveries, including the nobel prize winning discovery of 2022.
I think you have misread or misunderstood this essay, Simon. I specifically said that I was not sharing any "beliefs," and that I do not know what any of this is or isn't.
Quoting Max Planck is a logical error known as an appeal to authority. He had his opinion, but he did not KNOW either. In this matter, no one does, which was the point of my essay.
It is you who wants to insist on what you believe, not I.
Perhaps I have. It seems to me from this post that you view consciousness as likely emergent. I view consciousness as likely primary. Neither of us know for sure, and nor does anyone else.
I mentioned emergence because it is one way that consciousness could have arisen, but that is not a "belief."
If one believes in idealism, that demands believing that the material world does not exist and that consciousness was always here. That raises the question of how it got here.
The idealistic argument, in my view, is like the foolish creationist argument for the existence of God. In that conception, God must exist because something must have created the heavens and the earth. But that raises the question of who created God. The usual answer is that God was always here.
In either case, idealism or naturalism, an unsupported assumption is required--a rabbit out of a hat. In idealism, it must be assumed that consciousness was always here and matter is a dream. I consider it more likely that matter was here going back to the Big Bang, and consciousness evolved from that. But, as you say, no one knows.
I would suggest that we only ever definitively experience being conscious and conscious experiences. That is not a belief, it is in my view an experiential fact.
So why assume experiencing/consciousness has emerged from something, if in experience it is always primary? (I am not talking about what we experience - like thoughts, feelings, perception etc)
Let's put words like idealism/ materialism/ physicalism to one side and stick with the specific point as to whether consciousness is emergent or not.
To disregard direct experience and assume emergence at some point in time (specifically in the distant past following the 'big bang' - which is itself not a fact but a best scientific theory) implies belief: a belief in something other than the only 'thing' anyone can ever actually be sure of. Namely consciousness.
"we only ever definitively experience being conscious and conscious experiences."
This is a meaningless tautology often trotted out by idealism fans.
Consciousness and experience are the same thing, so to say that you "experience" consciousness means nothing except that you are awake and not unconscious, as you might be when anesthetized, knocked out by a blow to the head, or otherwise rendered unconscious during which time there is no experience.
I covered this in detail here:
https://robertsaltzman.substack.com/p/whats-wrong-with-nonduality-304
"We only ever definitively experience being conscious and conscious experiences" "In experience consciousness is always primary" "Matter is always an appearance within consciousness" There's no way you can really know that, I don't personally understand why would you even try so hard to believe in something like that... Is matter really "within" consciousness? How can you objectify consciousness? Where you do it from and Who is even able to do that? All of those claims of yours are simply perceptions you want to create a philosophy around. How do you know consciousness is always primary? The claim in itself doesn't hold water... How can you divide consciousness from matter, distinguish between the two, and say one is before the other? If you are honest, that will be pure conjecture, a hard effort to intellectually understand what consciousness and the world is. Put your intellect aside and you will see that what you call matter and consciousness are just your thoughts, beyond all that there is no way to distinguish between consciousness and matter, ultimately those are just concepts.
Thank you, Hektor. Yes. Conceptual approaches certainly fail to touch it, and even so-called direct experience will never reveal the actual nature of reality. We are what we are and have no way to stand apart from that to observe it and know what it is.