|
Post by Stranger2 on Mar 10, 2020 12:25:47 GMT
It's funny that the modern science and philosophy only recently re-discovered what Buddhists knew for millennia: Padmasambhava: Self Liberation through Seeing with Naked AwarenessThe bottom-line is very simple: consciousness is fundamental and irreducible to matter, in other words, it can not be a by-product of any material structures or processes. The argument is pretty simple. Assume that the world is only material. That means we are simply a biological robots with our brains being bio-computers. Can any material computer have conscious experience, the experience of qualia? Obviously not, there is no way. If we make an electronic computer by exactly reproducing every neuron and synaptic connection of our brain with electrical circuits, then the functioning of this computer will be not different form the functioning of the brain. How can such computer have conscious experience of qualia? It's just clearly not possible. Therefore, the qualia are irreducible to matter. Wihich means that the nature of consciousness is fundamental. So now, what we know from our direct conscious experience is that consciousness is definitely exists. But we can never know if matter exists, matter always remains an unprovable hypothesis. So now, using the principle of the Occam razor, why do we even need the hypothesis of the existence of matter? What if we can explain all physics without even referring to matter? In fact, such explanations already exist and being further developed at Stanford University, see the works of Donald Hoffman in the parallel thread and the Information-Theoretic Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics . The Information-Theoretic Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics assumes that the equations of quantum mechanics describe only the flow of information, not the behavior of material particles/waves. Amazingly, such interpretation removes all of the notorious paradoxes of quantum mechanics. But this interpretation does not ask the question: where this flow of information occurs, if we do not assume the existence of matter? Obviously, it occurs in consciousness! So, Information-Theoretic Interpretation aligns nicely with the view that consciousness is all that exists. Also, materialistic interpretations of quantum mechanics over the last years faced very challenging findings and paradoxes. The phenomenon of quantum entanglement contradicts to the principle of locality and causality. Recently, it was also experimentally found that quantum entanglement leads to violation of the principle of observer-independence (in other words, there is no such thing as an objective reality on the quantum level).
|
|
|
Post by Henrik on Mar 10, 2020 14:57:11 GMT
Good post
I agree, but I think we should be careful about going all out the other way and disregard physicality as a whole. If we do that we end up as Descartes' "Brain-in-a-jar" unable to tell if other minds even exist. Even if perhaps in some way, there is only one mind, as in some kind of "mind-of-creation", we cannot disregard other people/minds? This applies even if we include any other "secret senses", as any sense is connected to something "phsyically" other.
I think: consciousness in some form or other gives rise to everything else, but the "everything" else being "just consciousness" is nonetheless forming "barriers" that make everything else and enables us to experience and exist. Thus, disregarding our experience as "being in a physical world" just disolves all barriers, self and life itself -> going back into total unity and absolutism. The two are two sides of the same "coin", being Consciousness (big C) -> divided into consciousness/mind (small c) and the external world/senses (separated consciousness). The very basis of duality.
So not sure I needed to write all this, but I like to talk when I first get started :-)
My main point: Yes, there is only consciousness. This C exists as different forms of c and we experience the other forms of c as "physicality". There are always levels/differentations to this. So in one level this and this forms a relationship and this and that is possible. In the next level that and this forms a relationship and thus and those is possible. The effect is cascading from the "top" and the closer you get to the top the more "influence" is possible, beacuse it cascades naturally "down the levels"
|
|
|
Post by Stranger2 on Mar 10, 2020 19:18:16 GMT
Exactly, this is similar to Hoffman's model of a multiplicity of conscious agents in one consciousness. But the thing is, in his model all the agents are simply pieces of the same fundamental substance of consciousness, it's just a network within one system. Then, even though there might be a "physicality", the "physical" side can not be anything other than a certain quality of the same fundamental reality. Descarte's dualism of matter and consciousness as two fundamentally different natures does not stand because two entities of different nature can not interact with each other. So, whether the "physical" side exists or not is actually irrelevant. The consciousness is still fundamental (either the fundamental reality itself, or a fundamental quality of it). I'm not a proponent of necessarily discarding the material side, but it definitely has problems (experimental contradictions) and, from philosophical standpoint, the hypothesis of matter is not necessary (Occam's razor). The "consciousness only" worldview seems to be the most elegant, simple and consistent.
|
|