Mind vs Matter: the Result of an Error of Thought

_{William Murray

June 10, 2019

Intelligent Design}

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(I think we’ve corrupted KF’s thread long enough.)

The entire problem of mind/matter dualism is rooted in a single error of thought: the reification of an abstract descriptive model of experience into an causal agency independent of the mind that conceives it and the mental experience it is extrapolated from. It is similar to the same error of thought that mistakes “forces” and “physical laws” and “energy” as independently existing causal agencies, when in fact they are abstract models of various mental experiences.

All experience and all thought about experience takes place in mind, regardless of whether or not it is caused by something external to mind. Therefore, “an external, physical world” is a mental abstraction about mental experiences. Insisting that the content of the abstraction is “real” is entirely irrelevant.

Since all we have to work from and with is mental experience and mental thoughts about mental experiences, mind is not only primary ontologically and epistemologically; it is ontologically and epistemologically exhaustive. Even if some non-mental, independent “secondary” aspect of our existential framework exists, we have no access to it nor any ability to use it. If some sort of independent physicality exists, it is therefore 100% ontologically and epistemologically irrelevent. The “external physical world” abstraction still lies within the ontological and epistemological framework of mind and it is all we can ever have access to or use.

In fact, once one understand this error of thought, the self-evidently true irrelevant nature of any supposed external world comes clearly into focus.

This error of thought has entrenched the idea of an external world as “real” so deeply into general psychology that it has contaminated thousands of years of thought. It has generated “the hard problem of consciousness” out of nothing but error. It has led to adoption of 3rd-layer abstractions about mental experience as having primacy over mental experience itself from which they are generated (much like insisting that one’s grandchild is one’s own father). It has generated an entirely false dependency on the “reality” of that abstract world in many philosophical lines of thought.

One such bizarre perspective it has generated is this: that if the external physical world doesn’t in fact exist (even though it is 100% irrelevant because it is 100% outside of our access), then mental experience – the ONLY kind of experience we actually have – is deemed “delusional,” when in fact “delusion” can factually only ever be a comparison between kinds of mental experiences and can never include any comparison to any supposed “external physical reality.” The idea that unless an actual external world exists we are doomed to delusion is entirely due to an error of thought. The delusion or reality value of anything can only ever be a comparison of kinds of mental experiences.

It gets worse. Non-materialists (people that are not materialists) insist that epistemological validity requires that some sort of external world exists independent of mind that can cause universal or near universal mental states in observers . It seems no one has figured out that if one insists that non-mental, independent external commodities can cause mental states, thoughts and experiences, they have just given up free will and have become an “in principle” materialist, consigning themselves to existence as caused automatons.

How would we determine what is an externally-caused mental state, thought or experience concerning free will and what is an independent free choice? Answer: as long as something external can cause mental states, there’s no way to know. As with materialism, even rationality is lost.

Comments

SB asks @66:
SB: Please define “independent physicality.” Would something be independent physically if God created it and continues to sustain its existence, even though it can play a distinct causal role.
I don't know that I know what you mean by "God" (especially given that your version can't be assumed efficient). I also don't know what you mean by "play a distinct causal role." Distinct from what? From God's will? From what God has presumably (in your model) created as how we process that information? What I mean by "independent physicality" is "independent of universal mind" - a physical universe that exists outside of universal mind that causes mental states/experiences. In that model, I am a loci of consciousness within universal mind - much like a dream avatar. SB @67:
You answer surprises me because I assumed that, for you, the laws of logic would be non-negotiable, as they are for me.
Okay, if you're asking me do I reject the laws of logic, the answer is no. If you're asking me do I agree that the results of their experiment might somehow indicate (erroneously, via some error in thought) the laws of logic are not valid, I'd have to have know more about the experiment and results. I agree completely with your assessment - they are necessarily sawing off the branch upon which they are sitting if they think the results of the research indicates the laws of logic can be broken or are not valid.William J Murray_{June 15, 2019
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SB @65 said:
You will recall my earlier comment, which I will now explain in different words. In order to know that a cat is a cat, one must first abstract its form (its nature, its class, its essence, its whatness), from matter (the concrete reality of this particular animal which is the object of my experience, complete with all its material qualities)."
Until you recognize the following statement about experience as absolute and self-evidently true, you're not only not going to be able to understand my model, you won't be able to understand my criticisms of comments like the one above. Here is the statement: "The only thing any individual can ever actually experience is mental qualia. It does not matter if something is causing that qualia or not, if an external, independent world exists or not, if we are talking about some physical reality, dreams, hallucinations, delusions, imagination - ALL our direct, conscious (of any sort) experience takes place in mind (qualia) and we cannot escape that fact of our existential situation." That is not a claim that nothing exists outside of mind; it is a factual statement that all experience is mental experience, period. Absolute full stop. In your comment above, you are so invested in the external-world abstract model that you refer to abstract inferences derived from the model as if you are having extra-mental experiences. You cannot extract the nature of a cat you experience from its supposed physical nature (even if it were to actually exist) because all you have access to is your mental qualia cat experience. Regardless of how insistently you reify the model of an external physical world as if you had some kind of direct access to it, that doesn't change the fact that the only thing you can possibly be making statements about is your qualia, or mental experience. It is factually, existentially, logically, experientially impossible for you to extract the "nature" of anything other than what it is in your experience - it doesn't matter one bit if that mental qualia experience corresponds to something outside of your mental experience. Making such claims about something outside of your mental, qualia experience as if you are experiencing something outside of your experience is a logical error based on the erroneous reification of the external world model. You can make factual, truthful claims about your mental experience of qualia and nothing else, certainly not something supposely outside of that experience.William J Murray_{June 15, 2019
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SB @65 said:
This is one good example of elevating expediency over truth. God says in Scripture, that he created the universe and “saw that it was good.” The point of that verse is to [a] make the distinction between the Creator and the creation, not simply to provide the illusion of a creation (the main idea is to rule out Pantheism) – and [b] to show that matter is good, which rules out Gnosticism (the prospect that a good god created a positive world of spirit and a bad god created a negative world of matter).
I'm not here to argue scripture or any religious beliefs. I'm just discussing the logic of my model, which may or may not be the same as Monistic Idealism. From a look at the simple definitions I found, I can't tell.
Are you calling into question the point that I wrote my response to you before you had the experience of reading it?
There is no question; I experienced reading your response first. The abstract view that you wrote it before I read it (it can only be an abstract view because I didn't witness the event) is what you get when you interpret experiences through the abstract model of a 3D external world with linear time. One reaches the conclusion "he wrote it before I read it" because the evidence (your message) is interpreted through an abstract 3D external world linear-time cause and effect explanatory model.
I don’t understand how you can detect design in the absence of matter, either scientifically or philosophically.
This really doesn't have anything to do with the logical validity of my model or its potential, practical, every-day applications. ID detection is nothing more in essence than pattern recognition of observed information whether it is translated through senses from an external, independent world or not.
I think I am experiencing emerging impressions based on the contents of my subconscious mind, which can be explained by my earlier exposure to matter. It’s all about a random reshuffling of memories. There is nothing in the subconscious mind that was not first in the conscious mind.
That doesn't address the point, which is that you have sensory experiences in dreams generated entirely within your mind as if you were using hands, ears, eyes, etc. This demonstrates that the mind is fully capable of generating the sensory experience without the sensory equipment.
There is nothing in the subconscious mind that was not first in the conscious mind.
I realize this is a statement of faith in your model (since you obviously don't know everything that resides even in your own subconscious, much less everyone else's), but evidence indicates otherwise. From Psychology Today:
The authors argue that, “The fact that blind subjects present [rapid eye movements] and that these are correlated with visual dream recall is another result supporting our argument that they do activate visual areas during dream, being able to generate their own visual imagery. To explain the finding—that subjects who have been blind since birth still seem to exhibit visual activity during REM sleep and dreaming—the authors turn to another study of eye movements in individuals who have never experienced any visual input: human fetuses. Schöpf et al. (2014) conducted a study comparing in utero eye movements to neural activity using fMRI data acquired from seven fetuses. During the study, fetal eye movements were recorded and corresponded with fMRI data. Results showed that already in utero, fetal eye movements correspond with activity in visual and frontal cerebral areas. This suggests that the human visual system is active even prior to birth.”
There are also reports of people blind since birth having sight during an NDE. The idea that new stuff we experience in dreams and other experiences is "stitched together" or somehow extrapolated from prior conscious experience of an externally-existing physical world is the narrative of the external-world model, not an experiential fact nor is it a necessary logical conclusion.William J Murray_{June 15, 2019
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hazel @61, Yes, I think you're probably correct on all counts. I have never had any such mind-expanding experiences, and doubt I ever will. Perhaps if my circumstances were different, I would be more of a psychonaut.daveS_{June 15, 2019
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The human mind is one of the few places where contradictions happily reside next to one another. (The job of reason, in part, is to carry out the required evictions.)kairosfocus_{June 15, 2019
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Deleted - WJM. No proselytizing on my threads, regardless of whether or not they are significant logical extrapolations of available evidence.bornagain77_{June 15, 2019
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Moreover, here is another recent interesting experiment by Anton Zeilinger, (and about 70 other researchers), that closed a 'technical' loophole and insured the complete independence of the measurement settings in a Bell test by using the free will choices of 100,000 human participants instead of having a super fast randomizer determine the measurement settings (as is usually done in these quantum experiments).
Challenging local realism with human choices – A. Zeilinger – 20 May 2018 Abstract: A Bell test, which challenges the philosophical worldview of local realism against experimental observations, is a randomized trial requiring spatially-distributed entanglement, fast and high-efficiency detection, and unpredictable measurement settings. While technology can perfect the first two of these, and while technological randomness sources enable device-independent protocols based on Bell inequality violation, challenging local realism using physical randomizers inevitably makes assumptions about the same physics one aims to test. Bell himself noted this weakness of physical setting choices and argued that human free will could rigorously be used to assure unpredictability in Bell tests. Here we report a suite of local realism tests using human choices, avoiding assumptions about predictability in physics. We recruited ~100,000 human participants to play an online video game that incentivizes fast, sustained input of unpredictable bits while also illustrating Bell test methodology. The participants generated 97,347,490 binary choices, which were directed via a scalable web platform to twelve laboratories on five continents, in which 13 experiments tested local realism using photons, single atoms, atomic ensembles, and superconducting devices. Over a 12-hour period on the 30 Nov. 2016, participants worldwide provided a sustained flow of over 1000 bits/s to the experiments, which used different human-generated bits to choose each measurement setting. The observed correlations strongly contradict local realism and other realist positions in bi-partite and tri-partite scenarios. Project outcomes include closing of the freedom-of-choice loophole, gamification of statistical and quantum non-locality concepts, new methods for quantum-secured communications, a very large dataset of human-generated randomness, and networking techniques for global participation in experimental science. https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.04431
Thus regardless of how Steven Weinberg and other atheists may prefer the universe to behave, with the closing of the last remaining free will loophole in quantum mechanics, “humans are indeed brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level”, and thus these recent findings from quantum mechanics directly undermine, as Weinberg himself stated, the “vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else.” Moreover allowing free will and/or Agent causality into the laws of physics at their most fundamental level has some fairly profound implications for us personally. First, allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics, as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned,,,, (Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and Max Planck, to name a few of the Christian founders),,, and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands (with the closing of the free will loophole by Anton Zeilinger and company), rightly allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics provides us with a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead provides an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between quantum mechanics and general relativity into the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything”. Here are a few posts where I lay out and defend some of the evidence for that claim:
Overturning of the Copernican Principle by both General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/bill-nye-should-check-wikipedia/#comment-671672 (April 2019) Overturning the Copernican principle Thus in conclusion, the new interactive graph by Dr. Dembski provides a powerful independent line of evidence, along with several other powerful lines of evidence, that overturns the Copernican principle and restores humanity back to centrality in the universe, and even, when putting all those lines of evidence together, brings modern science back, full circle, to Christianity from whence it originated in the first place. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/bill-dembski-and-colleagues-create-an-updated-magnifying-the-universe-tool/#comment-675730 I will reiterate my case for Christ’s resurrection from the dead providing the correct solution for the much sought after “Theory of Everything”. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/bill-nye-should-check-wikipedia/#comment-671692 (February 19, 2019) To support Isabel Piczek’s claim that the Shroud of Turin does indeed reveal a true ‘event horizon’, the following study states that ‘The bottom part of the cloth (containing the dorsal image) would have born all the weight of the man’s supine body, yet the dorsal image is not encoded with a greater amount of intensity than the frontal image.’,,, Moreover, besides gravity being dealt with, the shroud also gives us evidence that Quantum Mechanics was dealt with. In the following paper, it was found that it was not possible to describe the image formation on the Shroud in classical terms but they found it necessary to describe the formation of the image on the Shroud in discrete quantum terms. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/experiment-quantum-particles-can-violate-the-mathematical-pigeonhole-principle/#comment-673178 https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/experiment-quantum-particles-can-violate-the-mathematical-pigeonhole-principle/#comment-673179 Supplemental notes defending the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin: https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/viruses-devolve/#comment-674732
To give us a small glimpse of the power that was involved in Christ resurrection from the dead, the following recent article found that, ”it would take 34 Thousand Billion Watts of VUV radiations to make the image on the shroud. This output of electromagnetic energy remains beyond human technology.”
Astonishing discovery at Christ’s tomb supports Turin Shroud – NOV 26TH 2016 Excerpt: The first attempts made to reproduce the face on the Shroud by radiation, used a CO2 laser which produced an image on a linen fabric that is similar at a macroscopic level. However, microscopic analysis showed a coloring that is too deep and many charred linen threads, features that are incompatible with the Shroud image. Instead, the results of ENEA “show that a short and intense burst of VUV directional radiation can color a linen cloth so as to reproduce many of the peculiar characteristics of the body image on the Shroud of Turin, including shades of color, the surface color of the fibrils of the outer linen fabric, and the absence of fluorescence”. ‘However, Enea scientists warn, “it should be noted that the total power of VUV radiations required to instantly color the surface of linen that corresponds to a human of average height, body surface area equal to = 2000 MW/cm2 17000 cm2 = 34 thousand billion watts makes it impractical today to reproduce the entire Shroud image using a single laser excimer, since this power cannot be produced by any VUV light source built to date (the most powerful available on the market come to several billion watts )”. Comment The ENEA study of the Holy Shroud of Turin concluded that it would take 34 Thousand Billion Watts of VUV radiations to make the image on the shroud. This output of electromagnetic energy remains beyond human technology. http://westvirginianews.blogspot.com/2011/12/new-study-claims-shroud-of-turin-is.html
bornagain77_{June 15, 2019
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Hard core materialists argue that consciousness is an illusion. Hard core Theists argue that material is an illusion. Problem for materialists is that if consciousness is an illusion then everything we hold as being undeniably real, including our own sense of self identity, becomes illusory:
In fact, (as I have pointed out several times now), assuming Naturalism instead of Theism as the worldview on which all of science is based leads to the catastrophic epistemological failure of science itself.
Basically, because of reductive materialism (and/or methodological naturalism), the atheistic materialist is forced to claim that he is merely a ‘neuronal illusion’ (Coyne, Dennett, etc..), who has the illusion of free will (Harris), who has unreliable beliefs about reality (Plantinga), who has illusory perceptions of reality (Hoffman), who, since he has no real time empirical evidence substantiating his grandiose claims, must make up illusory “just so stories” with the illusory, and impotent, ‘designer substitute’ of natural selection (Behe, Gould, Sternberg), so as to ‘explain away’ the appearance (i.e. illusion) of design (Crick, Dawkins), and who must make up illusory meanings and purposes for his life since the reality of the nihilism inherent in his atheistic worldview is too much for him to bear (Weikart), and who must also hold morality to be subjective and illusory since he has rejected God (Craig, Kreeft). Bottom line, nothing is real in the atheist’s worldview, least of all, morality, meaning and purposes for life.,,, – Darwin’s Theory vs Falsification – 39:45 minute mark https://youtu.be/8rzw0JkuKuQ?t=2387
Thus, although the Darwinist may firmly believes he is on the terra firma of science (in his appeal, even demand, for methodological naturalism), the fact of the matter is that, when examining the details of his materialistic/naturalistic worldview, it is found that Darwinists/Atheists are adrift in an ocean of fantasy and imagination with no discernible anchor for reality to grab on to. It would be hard to fathom a worldview more antagonistic to modern science than Atheistic materialism and/or methodological naturalism have turned out to be.
2 Corinthians 10:5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;
Whereas the problem for hard core Theists, in their claim that material is illusory, is relatively minor and by no means does it spell catastrophic failure for their epistemology as the opposite claim for materialists does to their epistemology. The main counter-argument that I've heard from materialists is that of kicking a rock and thus they know the rock is real. Of course this neglects the fact that if we were not conscious then we could not have the experience of the pain of kicking the rock in the first place. i.e. The rock would not be real to us if we were not first conscious! Moreover, quantum mechanics has revealed that the atoms of the rock are not the solid billiard ball type particles that materialists originally envisioned them to be. This following video, starting at the 24:31 minute mark, has some excellent photographs of atoms that gets this ‘non-solid’ point of the energy/matter of a rock:
Discovering Science: Uncertain Principles - video - 24:31 minute mark https://youtu.be/iu6kqO4L0KQ?t=1471
In fact, (as you can somewhat tell from the preceding video that show 'waves of electrons bouncing off walls'), it is the unchanging, transcendent, universal constants within the atoms that are the ONLY solid, uncompromising “thing” in the rock. As Heisenberg stated, "Atoms are not things.”
“The ontology of materialism rested upon the illusion that the kind of existence, the direct ‘actuality’ of the world around us, can be extrapolated into the atomic range. This extrapolation, however, is impossible…Atoms are not things.” - Werner Heisenberg (1962). “Physics and philosophy: the revolution in modern science”, Harpercollins College Div.)
Thus the 'hardness' of the rock does not derive from the atoms being 'solid' billiard ball type particles. as materialists had originally envisioned, but instead the hardness of the rock is derived purely from the 'unseen' realm of transcendent universal constants. And this is a thoroughly Theistic presupposition. (In fact, the belief in universal laws and constants is a presupposition that lay at the founding of modern science itself by Christian Theists, i.e. especially Newton's first 'unification' in physics).
Psalm 119:89 Your word, O LORD, is everlasting; it is firmly fixed in the heavens. Your faithfulness continues through all generations; You established the earth, and it endures.… Matthew 24:35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away.
Thus, the next time someone may doubt the promises for eternal life that God has made to us in Christ, just go kick a rock. The hardness of the rock is a reflection of the fact that God NEVER goes back on his word. i.e. The hardness of the rock derives from God's unchanging word!) Of course, besides having their most basic presupposition about the 'solid' billiard ball nature of atoms overturned, quantum mechanics has gone further and also falsified the materialist's notion of realism, i.e. overturned the belief that an independent physical reality exists apart from our conscious awareness of it:
Reality doesn’t exist until we measure it, (Delayed Choice) quantum experiment confirms – Mind = blown. – FIONA MACDONALD – 1 JUN 2015 Excerpt: “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,” lead researcher and physicist Andrew Truscott said in a press release. http://www.sciencealert.com/reality-doesn-t-exist-until-we-measure-it-quantum-experiment-confirms Quantum physics says goodbye to reality - Apr 20, 2007 Excerpt: They found that, just as in the realizations of Bell's thought experiment, Leggett's inequality is violated – thus stressing the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we're not observing it. "Our study shows that 'just' giving up the concept of locality would not be enough to obtain a more complete description of quantum mechanics," Aspelmeyer told Physics Web. "You would also have to give up certain intuitive features of realism." http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/27640
Of course this is a bridge too far for materialists, and even some theists seem to be very reluctant to accept these consistent empirical findings from quantum mechanics against realism. Yet, none the less, the problem is not with these consistent findings of quantum mechanics, (I can assure you that these findings overturning realism will only get stronger), but is with the a-priori beliefs that people have about the nature of reality.
"Despite the unrivaled empirical success of quantum theory, the very suggestion that it may be literally true as a description of nature is still greeted with cynicism, incomprehension and even anger." (T. Folger, “Quantum Shmantum”; Discover 22:37-43, 2001)
And yet despite some, even most, people wanting desperately to cling to their a-priori beliefs about reality existing apart from our conscious observation of it, the experiments of quantum mechanics could care less about their a-priori beliefs. For prime example of this is Steven Weinberg. Steven Weinberg, an atheist himself, states in the following article, In the instrumentalist approach (in quantum mechanics) humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level.,,, the instrumentalist approach turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else.,,, In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure,,, Unlike the case of classical physics, a choice must be made,,,
The Trouble with Quantum Mechanics – Steven Weinberg – January 19, 2017 Excerpt: The instrumentalist approach,, (the) wave function,, is merely an instrument that provides predictions of the probabilities of various outcomes when measurements are made.,, In the instrumentalist approach,,, humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level. According to Eugene Wigner, a pioneer of quantum mechanics, “it was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness.”11 Thus the instrumentalist approach turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else. It is not that we object to thinking about humans. Rather, we want to understand the relation of humans to nature, not just assuming the character of this relation by incorporating it in what we suppose are nature’s fundamental laws, but rather by deduction from laws that make no explicit reference to humans. We may in the end have to give up this goal,,, Some physicists who adopt an instrumentalist approach argue that the probabilities we infer from the wave function are objective probabilities, independent of whether humans are making a measurement. I don’t find this tenable. In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure, such as the spin in one or another direction. Unlike the case of classical physics, a choice must be made,,, http://quantum.phys.unm.edu/466-17/QuantumMechanicsWeinberg.pdf
In fact Weinberg, again an atheist, rejected the instrumentalist approach precisely because “humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level” and because it undermined the Darwinian worldview from within. Yet, regardless of how he and other atheists may prefer the world to behave, quantum mechanics itself could care less how atheists prefer the world to behave. For instance, this recent 2019 experimental confirmation of the “Wigner’s Friend” thought experiment established that “measurement results,, must be understood relative to the observer who performed the measurement”.
More Than One Reality Exists (in Quantum Physics) By Mindy Weisberger – March 20, 2019 Excerpt: “measurement results,, must be understood relative to the observer who performed the measurement”. https://www.livescience.com/65029-dueling-reality-photons.html
Moreover, although there have been several major loopholes in quantum mechanics over the past several decades that atheists have tried to appeal to in order to try to avoid the ‘spooky’ Theistic implications of quantum mechanics, over the past several years each of those major loopholes have each been closed one by one. The last major loophole that was left to be closed was the “setting independence” and/or the ‘free-will’ loophole:
Closing the ‘free will’ loophole: Using distant quasars to test Bell’s theorem – February 20, 2014 Excerpt: Though two major loopholes have since been closed, a third remains; physicists refer to it as “setting independence,” or more provocatively, “free will.” This loophole proposes that a particle detector’s settings may “conspire” with events in the shared causal past of the detectors themselves to determine which properties of the particle to measure — a scenario that, however far-fetched, implies that a physicist running the experiment does not have complete free will in choosing each detector’s setting. Such a scenario would result in biased measurements, suggesting that two particles are correlated more than they actually are, and giving more weight to quantum mechanics than classical physics. “It sounds creepy, but people realized that’s a logical possibility that hasn’t been closed yet,” says MIT’s David Kaiser, the Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science and senior lecturer in the Department of Physics. “Before we make the leap to say the equations of quantum theory tell us the world is inescapably crazy and bizarre, have we closed every conceivable logical loophole, even if they may not seem plausible in the world we know today?” https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140220112515.htm
And now Anton Zeilinger and company have recently, as of 2018, pushed the ‘free will loophole’ back to 7.8 billion years ago, thereby firmly establishing the ‘common sense’ fact that the free will choices of the experimenter in the quantum experiments are truly free and are not determined by any possible causal influences from the past for at least the last 7.8 billion years, and that experimenters themselves are therefore shown to be truly free to choose whatever measurement settings in the experiments that he or she may so desire to choose so as to ‘logically’ probe whatever aspect of reality that he or she may be interested in probing.
Cosmic Bell Test Using Random Measurement Settings from High-Redshift Quasars – Anton Zeilinger – 14 June 2018 Abstract: In this Letter, we present a cosmic Bell experiment with polarization-entangled photons, in which measurement settings were determined based on real-time measurements of the wavelength of photons from high-redshift quasars, whose light was emitted billions of years ago; the experiment simultaneously ensures locality. Assuming fair sampling for all detected photons and that the wavelength of the quasar photons had not been selectively altered or previewed between emission and detection, we observe statistically significant violation of Bell’s inequality by 9.3 standard deviations, corresponding to an estimated p value of ? 7.4 × 10^21. This experiment pushes back to at least ? 7.8 Gyr ago the most recent time by which any local-realist influences could have exploited the “freedom-of-choice” loophole to engineer the observed Bell violation, excluding any such mechanism from 96% of the space-time volume of the past light cone of our experiment, extending from the big bang to today. https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.080403
bornagain77_{June 15, 2019
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Consciousness is primary. Reason cannot explain the Uncreated Transcendent Reality. Don't even try. Waste of time. Okay, go ahead and waste your time if you don't have anything better to do.mike1962_{June 14, 2019
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SB: That raises another question: Do you support those quantum theorists who reject the laws of causality and non-contradiction on the basis of quantum experiments? If not, why not?
I think they are trying to understand their results through the prism of the model of an independently existing external world, which generates errors of thought, but I’d need a link or more information to make an informed appraisal.
You answer surprises me because I assumed that, for you, the laws of logic would be non-negotiable, as they are for me. For my part, I don't need to hear the quantum theorists interpretation of quantum events to know that A cannot also be non-A at the same time and in the same sense or that all effects require proportionate causes. Quantum experiments do not inform the laws of logic and causality, the laws of logic and causality inform quantum experiments. So we know that if a scientist is willing to negotiate these laws away on the basis of some observation, we also know, for that reason alone, that he has abandoned rationality and should not be taken seriously. He has just sawed off the branch on which he is sitting. I don't understand how you can question the point.StephenB_{June 14, 2019
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SB: Please define “independent physicality.” Would something be independent physically if God created it and continues to sustain its existence, even though it can play a distinct causal role.
Look what you’re doing here – you’re essentially saying here, if I am inferring properly, that god is mentally manifesting, sustaining and ordering an entire, distinct physical world in order for it to cause experiences (qualia) in people in a certain comprehensible fashion.
On the contrary, I am simply asserting a metaphysical truth. Nothing contingent can exist or remain in existence unless a self existent being first created it out of nothing and keeps it from falling back into nothingness. Also, my question persists. You did not address it.
How much more efficient would it be for God to just directly, mentally cause the same experiences, after whichh people can use their own free will to accept, deny, evaluate, categorize, and reason from? Why bother going through the middle-man of an entire physical universe and an interface to get the same exact experiential result?
You need to explain why God would worry about efficiency at all inasmuch as he can perform all acts with equal ease. God doesn’t’ need to use secondary causality, but it seems as if he often does. You are making several unwarranted assumptions here. And, of course, you did not address my question.
It makes absolutely no sense, under theism, for God to create an entire system that included creating and maintaining an independent, external-to-mind physical world and an interface so that we could have qualia (mental experiences) of that world, if God can just produce the same qualia directly. He supposedly has ALL the information and capacity. We cannot ever have an experience outside of mental qualia … what would be the point of building and maintaining so much entirely useless architecture?
That is like asking why did God bother to create men and women with souls and bodies when he could just as easily have been satisfied with creating angels, which are pure spirits and contain no matter all. It is also like asking why would God assume human form and die on a cross to save his creatures when he could have just as easily pricked his finger with a pin and offered that little drop of blood as a sacrifice to the Father. It is like asking why God equipped his creatures with the capacity to solve problems when he could have simply provided all the answers so they wouldn’t have to think. It is like saying that ockham was smarter than God because he used his razor and God didn’t use his.StephenB_{June 14, 2019
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WJM
There appears to be something substantial you’re not understanding about the model. I never claimed we understood what a thing is by creating a model of it. I said we experience a thing, and then use models or create models about it.
I assume that you are referring to your philosophical model of monistic idealism, which I will refer to as (MI). I understand that MI is a logical possibility. I am simply saying that there is no reason to believe that it is true and many reasons to believe that it is not true.
The difference between your model and mine is this: yours requires a whole extra existential domain (external physical reality), an interface to acquire information from that domain, and a matter-qualia gap to somehow bridge, while mine has none of those issues because God can provide the same experience without any of that; the mind of god can just directly interact with our mind and give us the same experience, same rules, same apparent structure, laws, forces, physics, etc. … without ever leaving the domain of mind.
This is one good example of elevating expediency over truth. God says in Scripture, that he created the universe and “saw that it was good.” The point of that verse is to [a] make the distinction between the Creator and the creation, not simply to provide the illusion of a creation (the main idea is to rule out Pantheism) – and [b] to show that matter is good, which rules out Gnosticism (the prospect that a good god created a positive world of spirit and a bad god created a negative world of matter). So my model takes into account not only the philosophy of common sense (form exists and matter exists) but also God’s own account of his creation. I don't think the MI model lends itself to making important metaphysical distinctions such as these.
It’s not ever an experiential fact that something precedes our mental experience of it; it’s the conclusion of the abstract model of an external world.
Are you calling into question the point that I wrote my response to you before you had the experience of reading it?
I don’t think you understood my model well enough to make this assessment. In my model, “the absence of matter” is entirely irrelevant; the patterns of information we apprehend mentally via experience can be as easily discerned wrt ID because that’s all we have to work with anyway (Plato’s cave).
I don’t understand how you can detect design in the absence of matter, either scientifically or philosophically. Can you take me through the process step by step? What exactly are you observing and what methods are you using to conclude that the object of your observation was, indeed, the product of design? How do you know that you are not observing the product of your own imagination rather than something that was designed by an agent whose existence is different from your own? .
What do you think is going on when you have sensory experiences in a dream? Do you think those are actually physical arms and legs and eyes and ears you’re using in a dream?
I think I am experiencing emerging impressions based on the contents of my subconscious mind, which can be explained by my earlier exposure to matter. It’s all about a random reshuffling of memories. There is nothing in the subconscious mind that was not first in the conscious mind. SB: Meanwhile, you have not explained how, in the absence of matter, you can know the difference between a dog and a cat.
You’d first have to explain why matter is necessary to know the difference between a dog and a cat for that challenge to have any value. What essential role does “matter” play in understanding the difference between a dog and a cat?
You will recall my earlier comment, which I will now explain in different words. In order to know that a cat is a cat, one must first abstract its form (its nature, its class, its essence, its whatness), from matter (the concrete reality of this particular animal which is the object of my experience, complete with all its material qualities). If I know “what” it is, then I also know what it is not (law of identity). Therefore, I know that a dog is not a cat. So my question persists: How do you know, in the absence of matter, that a dog is a dog and is not a cat.StephenB_{June 14, 2019
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Hazel@63, I wasn’t suggesting that our perceptions don’t accurately reflect reality for the most part, but there are plenty of examples where 99.999% of people perceive something in the same way but, when more closely examined, our perception is shown to be inaccurate. An staged example would be what we see in a 3D movie. 99.999% of us perceive that shark jumping out at us but it is, of course, just our brains misperceiving a two dimensional image. Another example can be attested to by anyone who just got progressive glasses and went golfing shortly after. As you move your head back and forth as you line up that putt, you perceive that the edges of the green are rising and falling. But, the amazing thing is that after a few days you don’t see this any more.Brother Brian_{June 14, 2019
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If 99.999% of the people all perceive the external world in virtually the same way 99.999% of the time, I am not going to doubt that those perceptions are accurate at the macro-level in which we live. Of course, it could all be a grand delusion affecting us all, but sophomoric scenarios like that have no interest to me: everything could have come into existence last Thursday, also, but no one takes last Thursdayism seriously.hazel_{June 14, 2019
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Hazel
All of these, in my opinion, are evidence that the mind is intricately entangled with the physical brain, and that our normal perceptions of reality can be altered considerably if the brain is changed by significant chemical or physiological disruptions.
I agree that the mind and the brain are inseparable. There simply isn’t any compelling evidence that the mind can exist without the physical brain. But your use of “normal perception of reality” raises the question of how accurate our normal perception are at perceiving reality. They are obviously adequate for survival but adequate need not equate to accurate.Brother Brian_{June 14, 2019
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to Dave: yes, many people (including myself) have had significant drug-induced experiences that open them up to a broader view of reality. I have already mentioned the Carlos Castenada books to wjm, but he didn't respond. They offer a fascinating "alternate reality" perspective, although they are now widely considered to be fiction (but not by the true believers.) I've also mentioned various psychological abnormalities as described by people like Oliver Sacks. All of these, in my opinion, are evidence that the mind is intricately entangled with the physical brain, and that our normal perceptions of reality can be altered considerably if the brain is changed by significant chemical or physiological disruptions. So yes, our perceptions of reality can be altered, but I don't see that as evidence that physical reality doesn't exist. P.S. Here's an interesting article about a 1000-year old bag found with the remains of a man in South America with traces of psychedelics, and even a tube for snorting them. People have been doing this from time immemorial, I think. Shaman baghazel_{June 14, 2019
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Hazel @59: I agree that it is irrelevant since I'm not advocating theism as some intrinsic aspect of the model (although a case might be made that universal mind requires something comparable to "God"), but that's an inference and motivation would be a different discussion. However, I'm trying to get comprehension of the model to SB, so I tried to frame it accordingly and make a specific case he might be more open to. IOW, IF there was a creator god, then given the nature of experience and the assumed qualities of that god (which SB expressed), then an external physical world is both inefficient and irrelevant.William J Murray_{June 14, 2019
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Arguments about what makes sense for God to do are really irrelevant. One can argue that it makes no sense for God to create anything at all, being it is sufficient unto itself, and it certainly makes no sense to make a bunch of sub-minds that think there is an external reality when there isn't. You can do better than this, wjm. :-)hazel_{June 14, 2019
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Dave@ @55: Yep. McKenna is just the tip of one of the enormous icebergs of experience, information, logic and evidence that is basically simply dismissed or unseen by both materialists and non-materialists alike because both usually have ideological/identity commitments to the idea that an independent physical world exists.William J Murray_{June 14, 2019
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It makes absolutely no sense, under theism, for God to create an entire system that included creating and maintaining an independent, external-to-mind physical world and an interface so that we could have qualia (mental experiences) of that world, if God can just produce the same qualia directly. He supposedly has ALL the information and capacity. We cannot ever have an experience outside of mental qualia ... what would be the point of building and maintaining so much entirely useless architecture? It's like having the capacity to instantly send someone money via technology from your bank account to theirs, but insisting that they take actual paper money and using Fedex to deliver it. Good grief ... is God limited to clunky mechanical constructs? Might as well say he needs gears, nuts and bolts to deliver an experience to us.William J Murray_{June 14, 2019
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I said in a prior post: "The entire problem of mind/matter dualism is rooted in a single error of thought: the reification of an abstract descriptive model of experience into an causal agency independent of the mind that conceives it and the mental experience it is extrapolated from. It is similar to the same error of thought that mistakes “forces” and “physical laws” and “energy” as independently existing causal agencies, when in fact they are abstract models of various mental experiences." To which he added:
Yet another assumed conclusion. If matter does exist, then we can work with it and from it. You continue to make one bald assertion after the other. It seems evident that your entire enterprise is an assumed conclusion.
StephenB @44 quoted that and responded:
You are assuming your conclusion with a vengeance
He then quoted me further: "All experience and all thought about experience takes place in mind, regardless of whether or not it is caused by something external to mind. Therefore, “an external, physical world” is a mental abstraction about mental experiences. Insisting that the content of the abstraction is “real” is entirely irrelevant." Nowhere in any of that was I assuming my conclusion that we live in a mental reality; I'm stating experiential fact (all qualia experience occurs in what we call "mind.") This is something Plato clearly made apparent. The only thing we can ever experience, regardless of what they are "about", are mental states - qualia. Even if it feels like your hand is cold, that qualia still occurs in the mind. The logic, experimentation and simple thought experiments show the intractable mental nature of qualia. EVEN IF there was an external physical world and we use that perspective, what your hand touches must send electrochemical information up to the brain, and the brain must process that information, bridge the gap to the conscious mind, and produce qualia. Otherwise, you don't feel anything. Furthermore, if your wiring or interpretive modules are messed up, you might experience that "cold hand" as music or a smell or 3D imagery. You cannot cut off your hand, remove it from your sight, put a cat in it and still feel the cat. Now, if you SEE them put a cat in your cut off hand, you might feel it - because the experience of qualia doesn't require any actual physical connection via specific senses. I can experience a cat in a dream without employing ANY physical senses. I can imagine a thing and experience it physiologically. I'm not assuming my conclusion because this mental qualia is the only thing we directly experience. It is then a logical necessity that from that experience we have generated an abstract model that an external world exists that is represented some way into qualia. I'm not saying we experience the abstract model, SB, as some of the way you phrase your comments seems to suggest. I'm saying we organize qualia into abstract models about the qualia; the most pervasive model is that an external physical world exists. I'm not saying that is a bad model, per se - it's very useful and predictive.
Meanwhile, you have not explained how, in the absence of matter, you can know the difference between a dog and a cat, perform a design inference, or explain why it takes billions of years for the light of a far away star to reach us.
You'd first have to explain why matter is necessary to know the difference between a dog and a cat for that challenge to have any value. What essential role does "matter" play in understanding the difference between a dog and a cat? As far as your question about light, you might want to read this article and watch the video.
That raises another question: Do you support those quantum theorists who reject the laws of causality and non-contradiction on the basis of quantum experiments? If not, why not?
I think they are trying to understand their results through the prism of the model of an independently existing external world, which generates errors of thought, but I'd need a link or more information to make an informed appraisal.
Please define “independent physicality.” Would something be independent physically if God created it and continues to sustain its existence, even though it can play a distinct causal role.
Look what you're doing here - you're essentially saying here, if I am inferring properly, that god is mentally manifesting, sustaining and ordering an entire, distinct physical world in order for it to cause experiences (qualia) in people in a certain comprehensible fashion. How much more efficient would it be for God to just directly, mentally cause the same experiences, after whichh people can use their own free will to accept, deny, evaluate, categorize, and reason from? Why bother going through the middle-man of an entire physical universe and an interface to get the same exact experiential result?William J Murray_{June 14, 2019
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WJM, Thanks. And regarding:
Terence McKenna and his use of DMT.
I was just going to mention him. I am open to reality being very different from my model, in part due to people like McKenna (he and Ralph Abraham, specifically). I'm a bit skeptical, but I find these reports of indescribable experiences under the influence of DMT to be fascinating.daveS_{June 14, 2019
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SteveO @52: Whether or not anything is funny depends on how you're looking at it. Perhaps because he believed it was not real, he found it funny. Perhaps if he thought he was seeing reality at a different level, so to speak, or via some sensory capacity he didn't know he had, he would have reacted more with wonder or excitement and it would provoke further experimentation, like it did with Terence McKenna and his use of DMT.William J Murray_{June 14, 2019
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Let me continue with the dream analogy. Let's posit that what we are actually living "in" is the mind of god projecting a dream. Let's further postulate that what we are are individualized conscious avatars "in" that dream state. The qualitative difference is that the dream of god (or universal mind) is much deeper and much more consistent than most of our own dreams. There is absolutely nothing that we experience as an external physical reality that this model cannot explain because there isn't anything an external world can cause in our mental experience that mind is incapable of producing on its own - because even if something was causing it from the outside, the mind must still be capable of taking that information and using mental commodities to create the qualia we experience. As long as the information is available, the qualia can be produced by mind. The information doesn't require an actual physical world - we know information is of mind. Furthermore, the mental model predicts (or retrodicts) that, given a reasonable cognitive open-ness, we will find such things as universal entanglement (we're all connected to everything else in universal mind), a lack of physicality at the root level; a breakdown of physical causation and linear time causation sequence; the capacity to experience without brain or body; various PSI capacities; that everything at its root is information and the processing of that information; and so many other things that the external-world physicality model just cannot deal with. Such a model means that we will (or at least be able to) experience things that are inexplicable in terms of an external physical reality (given that we don't use cognitive biases to black them out of our minds). Most of us just dismiss such experiences or information, even when research demonstrates its validity. The model predicts that we have the capacity to do and experience far, far more than was available (predictively) from the external world model. For instance, we have available to us direct access to all information (think how Tesla came up with a lot of his formulas and creations); we can cause external world changes via a proper reconditioning of our psychology and sometimes just with changes in conscious thoughts (which millions of people attest to and which research supports); we can enter other mental-reality states besides what we call "dreams" and "consensual physical reality"; etc., and have fully interactive experiences there - all without even leaving the comfort of our home. :)William J Murray_{June 14, 2019
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WJM I always enjoy your writing and apologies in advance if this is a trivial example! A younger colleague related a story to me about a recent trip to Amsterdam. As a novice he purchased some mild "special" truffles to try (available to purchase legally in various stores there). Later, back in his hotel room, he saw the window curtains defy gravity and raise from the hems in his direction. At the same time, he observed wave patterns moving along the length of the curtains. There were other very odd experiences also. If experience = reality, as you mentioned earlier, why would he, during the experience, find the curtains so belly-achingly funny (as he described it)? I had assumed the laughter was based on his awareness that experience != reality.steveO_{June 14, 2019
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SB @48 said:
Again, this unsupported claim needs some kind of rational defense. We use models in science, yes, but our ability to abstract essences (what a thing is) from undefined material objects does not derive from models at all.
There appears to be something substantial you're not understanding about the model. I never claimed we understood what a thing is by creating a model of it. I said we experience a thing, and then use models or create models about it. I'm going to try a different tactic SB - I'm going to try and explain this in theistic-model terms to see if I can provide you some better insight into the model. In a theistic model, before God created anything, everything existed as information in the mind of God because - well, what else could it have existed as? The very concept of "intelligent design" requires that the information exists prior to the design process. Further, "omniscience" requires that God has ALL the information about everything. Information about how to create a physical universe (in your model); how to create a human mind; how to make a sensory interface; how to bridge the hard problem gap from physical excitations of matter to qualia; how to structure the human mind so that it is capable of understanding and using logic and properly interacting with, utilizing and categorizing different kinds of experience. ALL of that was and is representations of information whether or not something actually, physically exists in an external world AND/OR in the perceptual qualia of an observer/experiencer. The difference between your model and mine is this: yours requires a whole extra existential domain (external physical reality), an interface to acquire information from that domain, and a matter-qualia gap to somehow bridge, while mine has none of those issues because God can provide the same experience without any of that; the mind of god can just directly interact with our mind and give us the same experience, same rules, same apparent structure, laws, forces, physics, etc. ... without ever leaving the domain of mind. We already know this is possible in principle because we all have dreams where we have physical experiences of what appears to be an external physical world all inside our own minds. It's really not that much of a stretch to look at what we think is an external physical world and re-frame it as existing in a larger, more consistent divine "dream." Perhaps my answers will make more sense to you from that perspective.
Rational thinking would take account of the fact that the physical event (the light emitted by a far-away galaxy), usually precedes the mental event (our conscious reception and experience of that event).
It's not ever an experiential fact that something precedes our mental experience of it; it's the conclusion of the abstract model of an external world.
And of course, that eight-hundred pound elephant in the room has not gone away. In the absence of matter, it is impossible to detect the existence of an intelligent agent by examining the physical evidence found in nature. It would be nice if you could acknowledge that point.
I don't think you understood my model well enough to make this assessment. In my model, "the absence of matter" is entirely irrelevant; the patterns of information we apprehend mentally via experience can be as easily discerned wrt ID because that's all we have to work with anyway (Plato's cave).
I would need to study the methodology of these experiments.
It's a thought experiment that directly refutes your claim that you experience things "in your senses." If I cut of your right arm, take that arm 100 miles away, and put a cat in its hand, will you experience the cat? No. Why is that? Because (under your model, which is what I'm arguing from now) the information cannot reach your brain, where it would be processed and interpreted into qualia. You never experience anything "in your senses" because qualia is a mental experience, period. What do you think is going on when you have sensory experiences in a dream? Do you think those are actually physical arms and legs and eyes and ears you're using in a dream?William J Murray_{June 14, 2019
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DaveS @4: That's a fair way of looking at it.William J Murray_{June 14, 2019
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WJM, Reflecting further on your post #30, the whole process of going to an optometrist and getting a pair of eyeglasses under your model appears to be a ritual of sorts. Your goal is not to get a physical pair of glasses (made of matter), but to transform yourself psychologically, so there are potentially many paths you could take (e.g., visiting an optometrist vs. visiting a shaman). Is that correct?daveS_{June 13, 2019
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WJM
We create models of the cat, where it exists and how we came to experience it later.
Again, this unsupported claim needs some kind of rational defense. We use models in science, yes, but our ability to abstract essences (what a thing is) from undefined material objects does not derive from models at all. I have provided epistemologically-grounded reasons to show why this is the case, but you have provided no reasons to support the proposition that, outside of science, we normally think in terms of models. SB: We simply experience this or that cat through our senses, –
No. Even if the sensory equipment existed outside of mind, the actual experience occurs first and only in the mind – you seeing a cat, hearing it purr, reaching out and touching it – all those experiences take place in the mind. We know this because if you shut your mind off, the cat may as well not even exist because you cannot see it, feel it or hear it.
We know as a practical matter that the cat’s purr occurs before we hear it. If it is situated eleven hundred feet away from us, the sound will come to exist exactly one second before it reached us. Clearly, our experience of the cat, at least in part, depends on the existence of the cat; the existence of the cat does not depend on our experience of it.
You are working this through backward, SB. We have a mental experience of a cat. We then generate an abstract model that an exterior world exists and that we have some sort of sensory input and interface between our mental state/experience and the cat. Note that this is an abstract model laid upon another abstract model – an abstract model built from an abstract model.
I understand that this is your claim, but you have given us no reasons to believe it is true. Also, you have not explained why the senses cannot exist in the brain while our thoughts originate in the mind. You simply assume that there is not, or cannot be, such a thing as a physical brain.
However, we still have the hard problem of personal experience, of consciousness: there is no reason why or explanation how anything (matter) proposed in the abstract model should or could make the jump from external physical excitation of matter or energy into a full-blown conscious experience.
Sorry, but that is a strawman argument. No one, certainly not me, thinks that the matter or energy in question is responsible for (or the cause of) the human capacity to experience it. The faculty of mind is a product of the Creator, not the dynamics of matter and energy. Also, you are asking us to agree with your unsupported claim that our experience of matter is something that we "model" from the inside out rather than something that we receive from the outside in. On the contrary, I say that matter presents itself to us a physical experience, the meaning of which is interpreted by the mind.
you have reified the model to the point you’ve elevated the subject of the model to causal status in terms of your original mental experience – a dangerous and slippery slope.
How can I reify a model that I claim doesn’t exist? Our knowledge of things is the product of abstraction, not modeling. Modeling only gives us approximations; abstraction presents things as they really are (their whatness). The atomic or subatomic structure of a thing tells us nothing at all about its nature, what it is, or what it is for. Science does not equal epistemology.
– again, you cannot abstract any ideas from “material existence”; it’s literally impossible, unless you’re going to say that matter causes ideas, and there is no evidence for that.
The knowledge of what a thing is begins as sense experience and is completed in the mind by way of mental abstraction. The senses present the physicality of this or that cat, but the mind is the cause of our understanding about “what” it is - a member of a class of animals that we call cats –something that lives, purrs, and rolls over in a playful way, among other things. Our senses tell us nothing about the nature of a cat. If the cat doesn’t really exist, then there is nothing physical to abstract from.
– it’s not possible for experience to take place “in the senses” because none of that information (proposed as excitations of matter running up the neural circuitry of the arm) is translated into experiential format until it (supposedly) hits the brain (which, I assume you think has something to do with the mind and mental experiences).
I argue that the brain and mind are both involved in conscious experience, though each presents a different kind of experience or information (i. e. sensing vs thinking), In terms of physical things, such as animals, tools, buildings etc., the brain receives material phenomena through the senses, causing a sensible experience, which is then “worked on” by the mind in the form of an abstraction, which is a mental experience. It is through the latter experience that we recognize a things design, or its whatness, or its form. As such, we do not recognize our "model" that approximates the thing, we recognize the thing as it is itself. (A can opener or a fountain pen).
Do you suppose that if I cut off your head and keep you alive in a vat, you will be able to “feel” a cat I put in your hand, or ice or a fire? You might be able to feel it if you’re watching me do it … as many experiments demonstrate. Why is that? It’s because you don’t experience anything at the “sense” level, only at the mental level.
I would need to study the methodology of these experiments. Since both the mind as a non-material faculty and the brain as an material organ can cause pain, and since each can influence that other, I think the question is unanswerable, at least without more information, such as this: Is the mind still functioning and the brain (or the senses) now dead, or vice versa? Since human minds cannot operate in a body without a brain, and since brains cannot operate in the absence of a head, I can't imagine what such an experiment would prove. Of course, your philosophy of idealistic monism doesn't recognize the distinction between a material organ that produces electrical impulses and a non-material faculty that grasps abstract concepts, so there wouldn't seem to be much room for a productive discussion on the matter. SB – I experience hot and cold weather in the senses and then, I think about it and react to it. I may try to project the idea of hot and cold all day long, but it will not change the weather.
Thinking about things, visualizing them, is known to be able to produce the same physiological effects in many cases as the “actual” experience of a thing; quite a bit of psychotherapy is based on this. Have you ever tried to change the weather by projecting those ideas?
I totally agree that thoughts can produce physiological effects, at least in humans, but I don’t think that the earth’s ecology is quite as impressionable to suggestions as the human body. SB: To say that we have no “access” to the outside world is to ignore the role of the senses or to deny their existence altogether.
No, it is the result of proper, rational thinking and clearing out errors of thought that come from the elevation of the model of an external world to primacy over that from which it originates.
Rational thinking would take account of the fact that the physical event (the light emitted by a far-away galaxy), usually precedes the mental event (our conscious reception and experience of that event). In that sense, our conscious experience would be passive, not active. We do not cause an event of that sort to happen by an exercise of our conscious experience. On the other hand, our conscious experience *does* precede the physical event in some cases–such as when we decide to run a mile. The problem is that you acknowledge only the one way operation by which the mind is *always* the active cause and the physical event is *always* a passive event. Sometimes it is the other way around, but your prior commitment to monistic idealism prevents you from thinking in those terms. And of course, that eight-hundred pound elephant in the room has not gone away. In the absence of matter, it is impossible to detect the existence of an intelligent agent by examining the physical evidence found in nature. It would be nice if you could acknowledge that point.StephenB_{June 12, 2019
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Axel @44: No, I'm not aware of that doctrine.William J Murray_{June 12, 2019
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