Not what you heard? Philosopher of science — and pianist — Bruce Gordon, think again.
Michael Egnor: Is reality fundamentally more like a mind than a physical object?
Many are sure of the answer without understanding the question.
News, “Why idealism is actually a practical philosophy” at Mind Matters News
Basically, it’s the idea that material substances, as substantial entities, do not exist and are not the cause of our perceptions. They do not mediate our experience of the world. Rather, what constitutes what we would call the physical realm are ideas that exist solely in the mind of God, who, as an unlimited and uncreated immaterial being, is the ultimate cause of the sensations and ideas that we, as finite spiritual beings, experience intersubjectively and subjectively as the material universe.
Note: Philosopher George Berkeley (1685–1753) was a Church of England bishop in Ireland. Among his other accomplishments were his studies of human vision: “Berkeley’s empirical theory of vision challenged the then-standard account of distance vision, an account which requires tacit geometrical calculations. His alternative account focuses on visual and tactual objects. Berkeley argues that the visual perception of distance is explained by the correlation of ideas of sight and touch. This associative approach does away with appeals to geometrical calculation while explaining monocular vision and the moon illusion, anomalies that had plagued the geometric account.” – Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
About his idealism: “Berkeley’s system, while it strikes many as counter-intuitive, is strong and flexible enough to counter most objections.” – Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
“All the choir of heaven and furniture of earth — in a word, all those bodies which compose the frame of the world — have not any subsistence without a mind.” ~ George Berkeley
Bruce Gordon: So we are, in effect, living our lives in the mind of God. And he is a mediator of our experience and of our inner subjectivity, rather than some sort of neutral material realm that serves as a third thing between us and the mind of God, so to speak.
Gordon thinks idealism (= reality is first and foremost a mental phenomenon) is defensible, reasonable, and too easily discarded.
(We enjoy setting the cat among the pigeons. But remember, the cat is serious. )
See also: Bill Dembski on how a new book expertly dissects AI doomsday scenarios
Isn’t this view pretty much what WJM has been assiduously promoting here for a while now?
reality = math + consciousness.
Math is most certainly immaterial, and unfortunately we have no idea what consciousness is.
Seversky said:
More or less.
I note that there is still a trace of materialist metaphysics involved – the idea that there is some “thing” that is the real “thing,” even in universal mind, that our consciousness is translating into an experiential approximation thereof. I think the problem in a lot of these arguments is that there is no well-formed theory of mind. I don’t know if my MRT is “well-formed,” but it’s far less vague than anything else I’ve come across. My MRT actually makes testable predictions and identifies different categories of mind.
It’s almost like nobody has given idealism serious thought other than as a comparative philosophical argument against other ontologies. Perhaps nobody thought it was testable? Did nobody else think to create a testable model? Did anyone else even attempt to categorize these different aspects of mind and describe how they function? Perhaps I’m just unfamiliar with the literature.
As to:
I didn’t know that Berkley’s Idealism was empirically developed to the point that it explained “monocular vision and the moon illusion, anomalies that had plagued the geometric account.”
It is very interesting that Berkley, in the early 1700s no less, had a ’empirical theory of vision’ that he used to explain why we perceive the world as we do, and not as would be expected under the “standard account of distance vision, an account which requires tacit geometrical calculations.”
This disagreement between Berkley and the “standard account of distance vision’ reminds me very much of the disagreement that Dr. Egnor had with Dr. Torley over perception.
Dr. Michael Egnor, via Aristotle, contended that “Perception at a distance is no more inconceivable than action at a distance.”
Dr. Torley strenuously objected to Dr. Egnor’s contention.
Dr. Torley strenuously objected that perception cannot possibly occur ‘at a distance’ since a Supernova that we might be observing “ceased to exist nearly 200 millennia ago, long before the dawn of human history.”
At first glance, that sounds like a very reasonable objection to me.
Yet, much like Berkley’s empirically supported Idealism, quantum mechanics, (which is considered our best scientific theory in terms of accuracy and descriptive power), has recently empirically supported Dr. Egnor’s contention and rendered Dr. Torley’s objection to Dr. Egnor to be irrelevant as far as quantum mechanics itself is concerned.
Specifically, (despite Dr. Torley’s strenuous objection against Dr. Egnor’s claim that “Perception at a distance is no more inconceivable than action at a distance”), experiments in quantum mechanics have now confirmed what is termed ‘quantum entanglement in time’ which “implies that the measurements carried out by your eye upon starlight falling through your telescope this winter somehow dictated the polarity of photons more than 9 billion years old.”
It is also interesting to note that this disagreement between Dr. Torley and Dr. Egnor, (where Dr. Torley stressed the objective existence of a physical reality over and above our conscious perception of it), also played out Einstein’s disagreement with philosopher’s of his day over what the proper definition of time should be.
But before we get into that specific disagreement between Einstein and philosophers of his day, over what the proper definition of time should be, it is first necessary to lay some groundwork.
There are several defining attributes, and/or properties, of the immaterial mind which are irreconcilable with the ‘standard belief’ in science today that consciousness is a product of material/physical world, rather than the material/physical world being derivative from consciousness, (as is held in the Theistic view of reality. Indeed, as was held by Max Planck himself).
Dr. Michael Egnor, (who is a neurosurgeon as well as professor of neurosurgery at the State University of New York, Stony Brook), states six properties of immaterial mind that are irreconcilable to the view that consciousness is a product of the material physical world. Those six properties are, “Intentionality,,, Qualia,,, Persistence of Self-Identity,,, Restricted Access,,, Incorrigibility,,, Free Will,,,”
And in regards to the specific mental attribute of “Persistence of Self-Identity” through time, it is also important to note that “Persistence of Self-Identity” through time can also be defined as being ‘the experience of ‘the now’.
And in regards to ‘the experience of ‘the now’ in particular, it is also important to note that we each have a unique perspective of being outside of time. In fact we each seemingly watch from some mysterious outside perspective of time as time seemingly passes us by. Simply put, metaphorically we very much seem to be standing on our own little “islands of now’ as the ‘river of time’ continually flows by us.
The ‘experience of ‘the now’ is simply inexplicable for anyone who wishes to explain consciousness as somehow being a product of the material/physical world.
As Stanley Jaki explained, “There can be no active mind without its sensing its existence in the moment called now.,,, ,,,There is no physical parallel to the mind’s ability to extend from its position in the momentary present to its past moments, or in its ability to imagine its future. The mind remains identical with itself while it lives through its momentary nows.”
And this inexplicable ‘experience of ‘the now” also happens to be exactly where Albert Einstein got into trouble with leading philosophers of his day, (and also happens to be exactly where Einstein eventually got into trouble with quantum mechanics itself).
Around 1935, Einstein was asked by Rudolf Carnap (who was a philosopher):
Einstein’s answer to Carnap was ‘categorical’, he said:
And here is an article that goes into a bit more detail of that specific encounter between Einstein and Rudolf Carnap:
Prior to that encounter with Carnap, Einstein also had another “heated” disagreement with another famous philosopher, Henri Bergson, over what the proper definition of time should be (Bergson, a very famous philosopher of his time, was also very well versed in the specific mental attribute of the ‘experience of the now’). In fact, that disagreement with Henri Bergson over what the proper definition of time should be was one of the primary reasons that Einstein failed to ever receive a Nobel prize for his work on relativity:
Here is an article, (via Harvard educated historian of science Jimena Canales), that goes into a bit more detail about the particular confrontation between Einstein and Henri Bergson:
The specific statement that Einstein made to Carnap on the train, “The experience of ‘the now’ cannot be turned into an object of physical measurement, it can never be a part of physics.” was a very interesting statement for Einstein, (one of the greatest theoretical Physicists to ever live), to make to the philosopher since “The experience of ‘the now’ has, from many recent experiments in quantum mechanics, established itself as very much being a defining part of our physical measurements in quantum mechanics.
For instance, the following delayed choice experiment with atoms, via 2015, demonstrated that, “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,”
Likewise, the following violation of Leggett’s inequality stressed the “quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we’re not observing it.”
The Mind First and/or Theistic implications of quantum experiments such as the preceding are fairly obvious. As Professor Scott Aaronson of MIT once quipped, “Look, we all have fun ridiculing the creationists,,, But if we accept the usual picture of quantum mechanics, then in a certain sense the situation is far worse: the world (as you experience it) might as well not have existed 10^-43 seconds ago!”
As well, ‘the experience of ‘the now’ is also confirmed to be a defining feature of reality in quantum mechanics in that, via the Quantum Zeno effect, atoms appear to be frozen in time from a quantum mechanical perspective.
Specifically, as the following article states, “One of the oddest predictions of quantum theory – that a system can’t change while you’re watching it – has been confirmed in an experiment by Cornell physicists.,,,”
And here are a few more experiments that further drive this point home that ‘the experience of ‘the now” takes precedence over events that occur in space time.
The following experiment found that “Not only can two events be correlated, linking the earlier one to the later one, but two events can become correlated such that it becomes impossible to say which is earlier and which is later.,,,”
The following experiment by Anton Zeilinger, circa 2012, demonstrated that “quantum mechanics can even mimic an influence of future actions on past events”
And as the following 2017 article states, “a decision made in the present can influence something in the past.”
Thus in conclusion, despite how reasonable Dr. Torley’s objection to Dr. Egnor may seem at first glance, (i.e. perception cannot possibly occur ‘at a distance’ since a Supernova that we might be observing “ceased to exist nearly 200 millennia ago, long before the dawn of human history”), no matter how reasonable that objection may seem, the fact of the matter is that Dr. Egnor’s contention that “Perception at a distance is no more inconceivable than action at a distance” finds strong experimental support from quantum mechanics and Dr. Torley’s objection, (as far as experimental evidence from quantum mechanics itself is concerned), is found to be severely wanting.
To repeat Professor Crull’s provocative statement which he made in 2018 “entanglement can occur across two quantum systems that never coexisted,,, it implies that the measurements carried out by your eye upon starlight falling through your telescope this winter somehow dictated the polarity of photons more than 9 billion years old.”
Quote and Verse
Such idealism runs into the grand delusion problem. Our civilisation is haunted by radical doubt and a thirst for general certainty that retreats each time we approach it. Wisdom is to recognise what can be known with certainty, e.g. that error exists, what can be known with responsible confidence short of incorrigible certainty and what is uncertain but may confront us existentially in the moment of decision.
That is not much different than classical theology. The only real difference is speaking of “the mind of God” as if that is a separate part of God.
St. Paul explains:
It’s not “God’s mind” but God Himself – His unity being. His nature is the same as His attributes (He is wisdom, He is justice).
I’d think an analysis of this view would require a lot of knowledge about God.
“Basically, it’s the idea that material substances, as substantial entities, do not exist and are not the cause of our perceptions. They do not mediate our experience of the world. Rather, what constitutes what we would call the physical realm are ideas that exist solely in the mind of God..”
Does this mean there really are no stars, and no big bang 13 billions years ago? If so, how can he claim that YEC has been scientifically falsified (http://www.godandscience.org/y.....onism.html)?
But then, I suppose Bruce Gordon believes that the Bible – which speaks of both matter and mind – doesn’t really exist either.
Capalas, although I take it you are a Young Earth Creationist (YEC), I still want to thank you for citing Bruce Gordon’s critique of YEC.
In his critique Dr. Gordon states, “unfortunately, young-earth literalism about the early chapters of Genesis fails to employ a sound grammatical-historical approach to the text. Classical Hebrew literary devices and the ancient Near Eastern context of biblical revelation are virtually ignored by young-earth interpreters. Instead, a naively literal modern reading driven by linguistic conventions embedded in a contemporary understanding of the world and what it means to write history is embraced.”,,,,
That pretty much hits the nail on the head. Thanks again for citing the link.
The main conflict in interpretation seems to center on the Hebrew word “Yom”. And I hold that old Earth Creationists are correct to point out that, to be consistent in your interpretation of the Bible, YEC cannot maintain that “Yom” must always and only refer to 24 hour periods.
It is also interesting to note that, historically speaking, the roots for YEC are not that deep, and that YEC is a fairly recent invention.
In the following reference, a YEC himself states that, “Creation Science (YEC) is a new movement of the twentieth century.”
It is also interesting to note that Augustine himself, one of the early church fathers, writing in the fifth century, stated that “What kind of days these were it is extremely difficult, or perhaps impossible, to determine”,,,
Thus holding to a strict YEC interpretation of the Bible was certainly not required in Augustine’s view of scriptures and in Augustine view of being a Christian. And I certainly don’t think that YECs want to go down the road of calling Augustine himself a heretic of the Christian faith for failing to hold to a strict YEC view of scripture.
Likewise, many prominent biblical scholars of the modern era, who hold to the inerrancy of scriptures, also hold that the word “Yom” does not imply a literal 24 hour day.
Moreover, In my honest opinion, it is a crying shame that YEC have, scientifically, chosen to die on this particular hill.
Modern science, out of all the possible worldviews it could have been born out of, (and directly contrary to what atheists try to claim today), was uniquely born out of the Christian worldview, and the Christian worldview alone.
Via Stephen Meyer’s new book, “Return of the God Hypothesis”, here are the three necessary presuppositions that lay at the founding of modern science in Medieval Christian Europe.
And here is a short defense of all 3 presuppositions
Moreover, none of the Christian founders of modern science that I am aware of, (Newton, Galileo, Kepler, Kelvin, etc.. etc..), held to a strict 6000 year YEC view of creation.
Thus, in my honest opinion, since modern science owes its very origins to Christianity, it is a crying shame that YECs would portray to the general public that Christianity entails a certain animosity towards science.
If anyone has a direct conflict with science, it certainly is not Christians, but it is Darwinists.
In fact, Darwinists, and naturalists in general, with their insistence on ‘methodological naturalism’ as a guiding principle in science, actually drive science into catastrophic epistemological failure.
I recently defended that claim here
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/michael-egnor-heres-why-an-argument-for-gods-existence-is-a-scientific-argument/#comment-728164
Thus Capalas, in conclusion, I share much of Dr. Gordon’s deep frustration with the YEC movement, in that well meaning Christians should willingly, and needlessly, portray themselves to the general public as being somewhat unscientific. Especially when Christianity itself provides the correct conceptual foundation for us to even ‘do science’ in the first place.
YEC is simply not warranted biblically, nor, (in my honest opinion), is it scientifically defensible in any robustly consistent manner.
Hi, Bornagain77
Looks like mentioning YEC struck a raw nerve. My intent was not to defend YEC (although all your arguments are rebutted by, for example, J. Sarfati’s “The Genesis Account”).
Rather, my point is that in judging YEC to be scientifically disproven Gordon assumes a scientific realism, where stars and big bangs exist objectively. But his idealism is better suited to a non-realist, instrumentalist view of science. In that case the 13 billion year history of the universe before man has no real existence.
Capalas in response to this statement by Dr. Gordon,
In response to that statement, you asked,
No it doesn’t mean that in the least, it simply means that besides God creating the universe and stars, (and our conscious selves), that God also sustains the universe and stars (and our conscious selves) in their continual existence.
i.e. God did not create the universe as a self-existent entity, and then walk away to let the universe unfold along its own merry course, (as Deists, and Theistic evolutionists, hold), but God not only created the universe but upholds the universe (and our conscious selves) in their continual existence.
And this view where God created and also sustains the universe, (and our conscious selves) in their continual, moment by moment, existence is in fact the correct Christian view to hold.
As Acts 17:28 states “For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.'”
i.e. God is not some distance clock maker, nor is He aloof from his creation, (as some people are prone to think), but God is intimately involved in sustaining every aspect of His creation in its continual existence. i.e. Our very ‘being’ depends on God!
And as the scripture also says, a sparrow “shall not fall on the ground without your Father.”
Even Dr. Jason Lisle, who is a YEC, holds that the correct Christian view to hold is that God sustains the universe in its continual existence.
My question to you is this, what other worldview, other than Idealism, would explain the infinite Mind of God upholding the universe in its continual existence.
That is to say, if God really does uphold the universe in its continual existence, (as is held in Christianity) then some form of idealism must necessarily be true.
So exactly what other worldview are you putting forth other than Idealism to explain the infinite Mind of God sustaining the universe (and our conscious selves) in their continual existence.?
Capalas states, “Looks like mentioning YEC struck a raw nerve.”
No not really. I deal with people who are incorrect in their presuppositions all the time. I learned to quit being overly upset at people being wrong a long time ago. It still bothers me a little bit, but not nearly as much as it use to.
You then state,
“My intent was not to defend YEC (although all your arguments are rebutted by, for example, J. Sarfati’s “The Genesis Account”).”
Oh goody, a refutation of ‘all my arguments’.
Well, not to be nit-picky, but, (for one example of my arguments), could you cite exactly where it has been refuted that Augustine said what I cited him as saying?
If you can’t do that one simple thing, of proving that what I cited Augustine as saying was wrong, then clearly you have not refuted ‘all my arguments’ as you claimed, but instead you are just bluffing that ‘all my arguments’ have been refuted.
Not a good start for you if you are trying to have an honest discussion instead of engaging in meaningless rhetoric,
You then state,
So Capalas, let me get this straight, are you saying that holding to a mind-first view of reality makes science less real?
But how exactly is that suppose to work?
If we ourselves were not first conscious, then their could be no reality for us to be aware of! Period!
So apparently, contrary to what you seem to be claiming, consciousness and reality have a deep and inseparable bond that can’t be so easily broken
But hey, don’t take my word for it,
Further quote by Max Planck,,,:
Hi Bornagain77
You claim that God upholding the universe in its existence necessarily entails idealism.
That matter (e.g. stars) must rely on God for its continued existence is not the issue. I have no problem with that. The issue is that Gordon says matter (e.g. stars) doesn’t really exist at all.
And why should God upholding the universe entail idealism? Why can’t God (Mind or spirit) create a material universe, and then providentially continue to uphold it? First mind, then matter.
It seems to me that the biblical position is that both mind and matter exist. Substance dualism; we are embodied souls.
Caprias states,
There is a nuance that you are missing that is the source of your confusion.
In answer to the question “What is Idealism?’, Dr. Gordon nuances his answer that ‘material substances do not exist’ with the qualifier of “as substantial entities’. And further nuances his statement with “what constitutes what we would call the physical realm are ideas that exist solely in the mind of God”
Specifically he states,
Gordon is NOT denying the outright existence of matter, (and stars), he is denying their existence as ‘substantial entities’ that can exist independently of the Mind of God.
That is a very important nuance to take note of.
You then state,
And exactly how is the infinite Mind of God ‘providentially’ upholding the universe suppose to entail anything less than Idealism?
You then state,
Again, the question is not whether they exist or not, the question is whether they can exist apart from the infinite Mind of God upholding them in their continual existence. i.e. Can they exist as ‘substantial entities’ apart from the Mind of God.
Both common sense and science say that they can’t exist as ‘substantial entities’ apart from God upholding them in their continual existence.
Perhaps, to further clear this matter up, it would be good to look at what science has to say about all of this.
Science, specifically quantum mechanics, definitely supports Idealism.
For example, in the following Wheeler’s delayed choice experiment that was done with atoms, (instead of photons as it is normally done), it proved that, “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,”
Moreover, as if that was not bad enough, and as Anton Zeilinger himself states in the following interview, “it is not just us (we ourselves) that don’t know where the particle is, the particle itself does not know where it is). This “nonexistence” is an objective feature of reality.,,,”
So exactly where does the atom exist prior to measurement if it is not existing in the physical realm?
Well science helps to shed light on that question to.
Prior to measurement, and thus prior to the collapse of the quantum wave, the particle, in its quantum wave state, is defined as being in a infinite dimensional state that takes an infinite amount of information to describe properly.
Now, saying that a atom does not exist in the physical realm prior to measurement, but that it exists in a ‘infinite dimensional’ realm and that it takes an infinite amount of information to describe it properly prior to measurement, certainly sounds very much to me, as a Christian Theist, that the atom is existing in the infinite Mind of God prior to measurement.
In short, quantum mechanics itself supports the contention that Idealism is true.
Of related note, in the following video, Richard Feynman (of quantum electrodynamic fame) asks “Why should it take an infinite amount of logic to figure out what one stinky tiny bit of space-time is going to do?”
I don’t know about Richard Feynman, but as for myself, being a Christian Theist, I find it rather comforting to know that it takes an ‘infinite amount of logic to figure out what one stinky tiny bit of space-time is going to do’:
The reason why I find it rather comforting is because of John 1:1, which says “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” ‘The Word’ in John 1:1 is translated from ‘Logos’ in Greek. Logos also happens to be the root word from which we derive our modern word logic.
So that it would take an infinite amount of logic to know what tiny bit of spacetime is going to do is pretty much exactly what one should expect to see under Christian presuppositions.
Bornagain77 states:
“Gordon is NOT denying the outright existence of matter, (and stars), he is denying their existence as ‘substantial entities’ that can exist independently of the Mind of God.”
Really?? If so, how Gordon’s idealism differ from, say, Descartes’ dualism, which also insists that created substances (body and mind) depend on God for their continued existence?
Capalas
Off hand, I would say that it doesn’t,
But then again, according to Dr. Egnor, Descartes distinction has been abused by materialists, and their abuse is the source of much confusion today in science.
Neurosurgeon Dr. Egnor (who interviewed Dr. Gordon) holds to Aristotelian hylomorphism rather than holding to Cartesian dualism
Sorry, BA77. Bruce Gordon IS saying there is no material world.
From: https://mindmatters.ai/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/04/Transcript-Mind-Matters-130-Bruce-Gordon.pdf Page 5:
Capalas said:
That things exist entirely in mind does not mean they don’t “really” exist. It just means they “really” exist in a different way than the way you think “really” should imply.
It makes zero sense for God to create a whole domain of existence (matter) to accomplish the same thing that can be done without it. Does God need matter to instantiate information in? To keep track of it? To distribute it properly? To ensure it is transmitted and translated properly?
No? Then what’s the point?
WJM
These are essential questions that get at the heart of the problem.
The idea that all of “created reality” is sustained by God from moment-to-moment goes back a long way in Western theological tradition.
Quoting Aquinas, who quotes Augustine:
So the idea that all material creation is in the Mind of God (its Being is sustained by God) is compatible with the idea that “everything comes from universal mind”.
But note, I mention a “material creation”. So, matter does exist in that view. Its origin is from God, but it is a “domain” of its own. Not “independent” (as Augustine above), but distinct. That’s the common human experience. We know the difference between an imagination and reality. Between a thought and a material object.
Your first point proposes “what sense does it make for God to create a material domain”?
I think we have to start with “what sense does it make for God to create anything”?
So, we have to know why there is a created world. Is that creation distinct from God, or is it the same as God. Some believe that “we are God” – so there’s no real creation there.
I hold the classical Christian view – God created a distinct reality “the world” and all life in it.
SA:
That’s not really the point. What baffles me is why so-called “non-materialists” (semi-materialists, actually) defend (against the overwhelming scientific evidence) the existence of a material world. Science has proved (inasmuch as science proves anything) there is no such thing as “matter.” Why are people even talking about a “material world” as if this never happened? Is it just sloppy language? What are you people even talking about>
What’s the point? Is it necessary to your theology?
Does “a distinct reality” require that world be material in nature?
When you dream you are in a solid physical world, is that gravity keeping you on the ground? Is the ground material in nature? Do you experience it as any less physical?
We know how to distinguish between different categories of mental experience. Do you have trouble with this? What difference does it make if “the physical world” is one category of mental experience, with it’s own specific qualities, and imagination is another? And memories are another? And logic is another? Are we going to suddenly not be able to tell the difference if we drop the notion that some material world external of mind exists?
William J Murray states,
“Sorry, BA77. Bruce Gordon IS saying there is no material world.”
But I didn’t claim that Bruce Gordon claimed that there was a material world. I pointed out that, In answer to the question “What is Idealism?’, Dr. Gordon nuances his answer that ‘material substances do not exist’ with the qualifier of “as substantial entities’. And further nuances his statement with “what constitutes what we would call the physical realm are ideas that exist solely in the mind of God”
i.e. “Gordon is NOT denying the outright existence of matter, (and stars), he is denying their existence as ‘substantial entities’ that can exist independently of the Mind of God.
Nothing is your reference contradicts what I have stated.
In your reference Dr. Gordon just further confirms, via the “Cheshire cat” experiment, that what we perceive as physical reality is not a self existent entity, but what we perceive as physical reality must ‘inhere’ in a immaterial mind. (i.e. Dr. Gordon is just further delineating the fact that “what constitutes what we would call the physical realm are ideas that exist solely in the mind of God”)
None of that contradicts what I have stated.
i.e. “Gordon is NOT denying the outright existence of matter, (and stars), he is denying their existence as ‘substantial entities’ that can exist independently of the Mind of God.
Highlighting the primacy of immaterial mind over and above what we perceive as a physical reality was the entire point of him referencing the “Cheshire cat” experiment.
Of note: I’ve referenced the same exact experiment myself to drive the point home that what we perceive as physical reality must be ‘information theoretic” in its foundational basis. and cannot be ‘materialistic’ in its foundational basis.
WJM
Yes, I do experience a dream in a significantly different way than an experience in conscious reality. In the same way, I can think of a solid thing, but my mental idea of it is much different than my actual experience of it in material reality. That’s one way I distinguish the two. An imagination is a mental experience and an encounter with a physical object is different than that.
Yes, of course I do. “I thought I saw a dog in the backyard”. That thought can be mistaken. I validate the thought by looking at material reality and validating it. When I realize the initial thought was incorrect, I realize that the mental thought was not equivalent with reality, even though I thought it was. The very same mind that gave me the incorrect thought of the appearance of the dog, had to use external reality to correct that. So, information in our mind alone (imagination) is not adequate to understand the truth about things. We validate truths by referring to external, material reality.
If someone says that the value of their imaginary thought is equivalent to the value of physical experience since they’re both mental states – then this would make quite a big difference in life. That’s why we want to validate thoughts against external reality, to the extent that we can do so. If everything is just mental, then the categories we create for various mental experiences are arbitrary. Why should an imagination be considered any more or less true than a physical experience? They’re both only expressions of the mind – all from the same cause. We can assign one as one thing and the other as another, but again, there’s no reason for this.
Certainly, memories can be more or less accurate. This is the struggle that historians have. We look to the external, material world to learn how accurate the memory is.
Some forms of logic can be validated by external reality, such as some simple math. But logic is more generally a method for reasoning and rationality, and logic would not work in a monist system where everything is one, since the first principle of reason holds that things actually exist and there are distinctions between being and non-being. The thought of a unicorn is an existing thing. But the unicorn is not existing.
How would we tell the difference? I believe you are operating under the external world template and it’s hard to shake that off, but if that could happen, then there is no logical necessity to categorize thoughts in a certain way. They’re all thoughts. They’re all real. Any comparison with anything else would be illusory, since comparisons would be impossible.
Thus, reason itself would break down.
WJM
I’m sure you realize that it is the common human experience since the beginning of recorded history that people experience a material reality as different from thoughts. The idea that the physical world does not really exist is relatively new and held by a tiny minority of the human population. So it can’t be that strange that many people still hold that view – the entire world of Western philosophy up to the 19th century held that view. So, to start expecting that everyone is going to readily agree that there is no material world seems to misunderstand the common human experience, as I see it.
But you offered an important distinction in the above.
You speak of materialists and non-materialists – then splitting them with semi-materialists. But it seems to me like a reaction against materialism — opposing that, means one is a “non-materialist” or perhaps “immaterialist”. Thus, that view should oppose the existence of a material world. But the idea that a material world exists, just as people experience it in day to day life, is not a concession to the philosophy of materialism. It just recognizes a distinction between physical reality and mental states. How that distinction was created by God is a different matter. But we experience material aspects through sensation. That’s the classic formula for knowledge. “Anything in the mind was first in the senses”. That can be questioned regarding rational propositions that build on mental concepts alone, but basically that’s the rule. We sense something, then process it in the mind. To sense it means to apprehend an external reality with our senses.
Can it be said that we sense things without the use of our mind?
I think we can and do. We certainly can and do without our conscious mind. We do not need to be consciously aware to sense (feel) something. Is our mind still active? I think that can be debatable. I think it is beyond science to determine that clearly, but perhaps not I don’t know for sure. In my view at this moment, yes we can have multiple sensory experiences (even simultaneously) without the mind involved. If so, then this would mean that there is an external reality that we experience. I am open to the contrary view, but that’s the way I see it.
Science has proved that matter is not some chunks of stuff filling up space. But we still experience physical reality in ordinary life. That’s what we can consider “the material world”. The fact that this is not “matter” as it is traditionally known, does not mean that a material world does not exist. It is that instead of having been generated by observable, material subatomic particles, it is generated by immaterial energy.
Could we say that “since God is pure spirit, totally immaterial, He could not create anything material”? I don’t think so. In the same way, the immaterial essences at the foundation of physical reality create what we know as the material world – that which we experience outside of ourselves.
Well, it correlates with lived experience. Yes, it’s given as part of theological wisdom. But I think most importantly, I do not see any evidence that human beings can speak and act and live consistently in the idea that there is no physical world. I don’t think we have the vocabulary or the mental framework for that.
As for the nature of the world, I think that does require that it is categorized as material. As for the origin of the world, that could be (and I believe is) an immaterial source. God created a material universe. At the foundation of this material world could be immaterial essences that create what we know of as physical.
Gordon’s view:
So he is saying that matter and physical properties exist, they just inhere in a mind not in a physical substrate.
Silver Asiatic: So he is saying that matter and physical properties exist, they just inhere in a mind not in a physical substrate.
What does “physical” substrate mean?
You guys are not listening very closely. Tighten it up.
This statement (also the response by BA77) crystallizes the inherent problem I’m having in these conversations, and why your position and that of others is so baffling to me.
Gordon is unambiguously stating that there is no material world. This is explicit. The science is explicit. It seems ambiguous to you and others for the simple reason that you don’t fully understand what Gordon – or I – are talking about. You don’t understand the language or the concepts of mental reality theory. This is evident when you casually conflate “material” with “physical” and “real.”
It’s like what happens when Upright Biped tries to explain the components and processes required to achieve a functioning semiotic system. I had to have several private exchanges with UB just to understand what he was saying, to be able to conceptualize it successfully.
You and others here have spent little time (if any) trying to understand the concepts and terminology undergirding MRT; you can’t even get out of the habit of conflating “material” with “physical.” You think they necessarily mean the same thing. When someone explicitly says there is no material world, you cannot take that literally. When science demonstrates there is no such thing as a material word, you start using ambiguous phrases that have no contextual meaning, like “some sort” of material world. OR “some sort” of world external of mind.
Science and Gordon are clear; there is no “real world” outside of our experience; it is in our experience, and in our experience alone, that “real” qualities and commodities occur.
What this branch of quantum physics has been doing explicitly for decades is test the the ERT theory; this is the theory that there is a domain things that exist independent of our experience; that these things contain specific, inherent information that is imported into our experience, causing those experiences – or, at least, specific qualities of those experiences.
As the resulting factual information came in, physicists made many attempts to salvage ERT by figuring out loopholes in the data – meaning, some way to salvage “local reality,” or the existence of independent (of experience, observation, measurement) and specific states or qualities. All those loopholes were experimentally closed. Every relevant experiment showed, unambiguously, that there was no material world, no “reality,” no objective, independent state somewhere “out there” independent of the experience (experience meaning the mental qualia.)
ERT has been, as much as it is scientifically possible at this point, conclusively disproved. No such independent states or qualities – much less “matter” – has been found or indicated. The opposite has been found to be the case: there are no non-qualia, or independent-of-mind states or characteristics to be found.
Logically, that they would find this to be the case is a no-brainer. Even if there were such a world, we would not be able to locate it, because all experience occurs in mind. The only thing we can possibly be experimenting on or with is mental phenomena.
But, all that said, I understand this is a very difficult reconceptualization that can take years to comprehend, much less work out what to do with it and how to organize a rational model of reality and existence under such a paradigm. The terminology itself is hard to deal with appropriately. It requires a sophisticated model of categories of mental experience and qualities and how they interact. Under a very rudimentary and vague model (if any) of “mind,” MRT is impossible to even remotely comprehend.
This problem is exacerbated when one is ideologically committed to ERT of some sort.
WJM, the bottom line is that “materialists” seem to believe that atoms and quarks, etc., have an independent existence, where they exist “on their own.” QM demolished that idea. Consciousness is primary and everything else flows from that. For any given person, you’ll be wasting your time until the person comes to see that consciousness is primary. The good news is that the scientific evidence is in complete agreement with this.
WJM we are participators in what we may choose to perceive, but we are still not the ultimate cause of what our mind perceives. God is !
i.e. There is always the inside world of perceiver, and an ‘outside’ world of that which is perceived.
The ‘outside’ world of that which is perceived, and which we call ‘physical’ reality, is not ‘material’.
And in that we are in full agreement.
But that still does not negate the fact that there must be an ‘outside’ world that is being perceived by the perceiver.
I hold that the ‘outside’ world, which is not material, but which is still being perceived by the mind, rather than being material, (and in order to stay consistent with what quantum mechanics has now revealed), must instead be information theoretic in its foundational essence.
The ‘Cheshire cat’ experiment highlighted by Gordon directly supports this contention in that the most basic features, i.e. spin and position, of a particle can be separated from one another and received as separate bits of information by the mind.
This ‘information theoretic’ view of ‘physical’ reality also plays out in solving the long standing paradoxes of the ‘uncertainty principle’ and wave-particle duality.
And this information theoretic view of what we call ‘physical’ reality, as mentioned previously, is also very friendly to the Idealism of Christian Theism.
BA77:
I agree with the “inside” and “outside,” but the inside and outside we are talking about under MRT is inside of the individual and outside of the individual, not inside of mind (universal mind) and outside of mind.
KM: exactly. Also, materialism has not only been demolished; so has dualism. Idealism has been scientifically proved inasmuch as science proves things.
BA77:
I realize you’re using scare quotes here, so I’m going to try to model this very accurately.
The following will use “internal” and “external” in terms of the individual perceiver (not internal or eternal of mind. Under MRT, what is internal and external of the individual perceiver is all mental stuff happening in universal mind.)
People think of things like thinking about logic, and imagining something, as an internal experience. However, logic is not internal to the observer, logic is a separate thing the observer is interacting with and using. When we imagine, we are not what we imagine; what we are imagining lies outside of our sense of self as the observer of what we are imagining. The ultimate aspect of the individual observer is that which is experiencing the thought just like we are the observer experiencing the physical world. It has just become our habit to think of one set of experiences as internal, and another set of experiences as external. Our physical bodies are outside of our sense of self. Our brain is outside of our essential sense of self Yes, we are controlling, to one degree or another, what we think; but ultimately it is the same as controlling our physical bodies and directing them.
The essential, ineffable individual observer is not those experiences; it is that which is having those experiences.
So, in that sense, every experience is, to some degree, “external” except that root sense of individual self as that which is having those experiences – even thoughts and imagination. I am not the thoughts I experiences; I am that which is experiencing and directing those thoughts like a mental body, comparable to our physical body.
This is why I don’t call it “internal reality theory.” External Reality Theory = external of universal mind, or insisting that some kind of thing other than mind exists that determines or causes our experiences.
As far as God (universal mind) causing all experiences, as ultimate cause, that is correct. God does not choose our experiences for us, we do that. I think you agree with that.
BA77 said:
I agree. I mean, this has been scientifically demonstrated. I’m just hoping to clear up what may be misconceptions about what the E and M refer to in ERT and MRT. “External” is in relationship to universal mind, and refers to the proposed existence of something other than mind (mind being a diverse set of sub-categorically distinct phenomena and qualities.) “External” in the theory does not relate to the individual perceiver.
The individual perceiver, the observational consciousness, should not be casually be said to be “mind.” It is a highly specific category of mental phenomena unlike other categories. It is ineffable. So, to say “…but which is still being perceived by the mind,” you might want to say “being perceived by the individual perceivers, or observers.” “By the mind” invites misunderstanding, IMO.
As I laid out in #34, we are not our perceptions; we are that which is having those perceptions. What we call “the outside world” is a category of perceptions and experiences we are having in universal mind that have categorical qualities and distinctions from other experiences we are having.
Perhaps the discussion would be less inherently problematic if I changed the nomenclature from ERT and MRT to DRT and IRT; Dualism Reality Theory and Idealism Reality Theory.
The troll goes on abetted by those who answer the troll.
Dualism is right, because there is a fundamental distinction between a matter of personal opinion, and a matter of fact.
That some parameter of an object is decided upon “observation”, is irrellevant (besides it also not being true).
It is still a true fact that the parameter consists of a set of possibilities, prior to it being decided. These possibilities are real things, which can be accurately described.
So an object has some parameters which are in a decided state, and some parameters which are in an undecided state of possibilities.
So what? Mathematics is able to handle it objectively.
The logic of fact is, that a fact is obtained by evidence of a creation forcing to produce a 1 tot 1 corresponding model of it. And we can do that with objects, we can make a 1 to 1 corresponding model of them, accurately reflecting that some parameter of the object is in an undecided state of possibilities.
MJW says, “Also, materialism has not only been demolished; so has dualism. Idealism has been scientifically proved inasmuch as science proves things.”
I grant that materialism is easily scientifically disproven by the perceived fact of my own consciousness. But there is no such sound scientific disproof of dualism. Given that science is grounded in our perceptions of the physical world, how could we possibly prove scientifically that these perceptions come directly from God rather than via a substantial material world?
Capalas,
Because quantum physics experimentation has conclusively shown there is no such thing as “matter” – at least, none to be found anywhere we have looked. What they have found is information potential which is abstract in nature – not “instantiated” on matter or encoded in specified states of “energy.” Science has clearly proven ontological idealism to be true – inasmuch as science “proves” anything. We are conscious beings interacting with abstract information which generates experience. All of those things are mental in nature. Thus: there is no dualism.
WJM says “…quantum physics experimentation has conclusively shown there is no such thing as “matter” …What they have found is information potential… Science has clearly proven ontological idealism to be true.”
Science has “clearly proven” no such thing. The experimental quantum facts can be interpreted in various ways. Deciding which interpretation is best must thus rely on metaphysical, rather than purely physical, considerations. To say that experiments find “information potential” rather than matter is to confuse an abstract mathematical model with the concrete reality it is trying to represent.
Capalas said:
That’s not what is going on at all. What the different interpretations of the results of the physical experiments have been attempting to do is reconcile those results with the theory that concrete states exist independent of observation. These are not “abstract mathematical models;” these are experimental facts. The math is used to create a mathematical model that describes the results in terms of a conceptual model of what is occurring in the experiments.
These experiments, for over 100 years, have been attempts to demonstrate that there is some kind of “concrete” reality “out there” that is providing the basis for our observations. These experiments were not conducted in the abstract as mathematical calculations; they were done physically with physical results.
The result of over 100 years of physical experimentation, basically attempting to “prove” that some kind of “concrete reality” exists “out there” are in: there is no “concrete reality” out there – at least that we have been able to find. Current abstract models and interpretations are about this fact, which is why some physicists have begrudgingly switched over to consciousness-centric, informational, and various forms of Idealist models.