The frontier is everywhere. The vision is all encompassing. The way is forward. The timeline is at its most cutting edge advantage.
Life is more than just a flat chess board. We are the chess pieces, and we have masterminds over our heads - angels - that guide and steer us various ways. To cut the fabric, and bend the cloth and clockwork that project their effects onto us would glimmer into view the shiny chapters of future eons swimming in our current predicament. We must learn the stars, and reach out for the horizon to blow down old illusions, and gleam these mysterious, extra-dimensional factories hanging over our heads.
materialism’s error is in proceeding a thesis from the foundation of a linguistic misuse of the word ‘consciousness’, and then denying the consequent of the conclusion reached after the false premise is challenged.
first, that consciousness is an entity or ‘property’ of the body (error #1). second, that this property ceases to exist when the body ceases to exist (error #2)… or rather, a non-problem, because there isn’t a property which can cease existing when the body ‘dies’. see how the materialist’s conclusion derives from a non-sensical premise in the first place.
‘consciousness’ is a description of a kind of activity, a behavior, not an entity that ‘emerges’ out of a system, or is reducible to a system (these are issues of ‘correlation’, not reducibility), or sits in a brain or ‘mind’. but at the same time, immaterialists and/or panpsychists (i.e., chalmers) are burdened with a similar problem. identifying a behavior as constituting an instance of ‘consciousness’ requires an analogy which takes on meaning only through a shared language. it is not enough to say just because the entity ‘p-zombie’ acts like i do, it is therefore conscious. i have to be able to attribute to its behavior some intent (dennett’s ‘intentional systems’ essay is good), and i can’t do that with a rock or a lion because they don’t speak my language (‘how can i know the world a lion inhabits?!’ - wittgenstein)
both materialism and immaterialism have their share of problems. on that account, usually it’s the miserable existential philosophers who insist that when you’re dead, you’re dead… and the overly anxious philosophers who aren’t entirely satisfied with life that insist you move on to something better when you die. both of these characters are a good study in human psychology. but as far as the epistemology of the matter is concerned, it remains open due to an equal number of logical problems with the contending theories.
if there is anything unfortunate about this problem, it’s that some asshole who you absolutely loathe might just be eternal. now that would truly suck.