It’s not a contradiction, it’s an inference based on the experience of empathy with other conscious beings. Beyond that I believe consciousness not matter is fundamental substance of the universe in which we live and move and have our beings. I recognize your consciousness as a manifestation of that fundamental consciousness of the universe. Your accusation of solipsism is totally unfounded.
Solipsism is the natural state of the human mind, reduced by the myth of the objective. It is not an “accusation” in any sense. And you positing that “consciousness is fundamental substance of the universe in which we live and move and have our beings.” is simply an expression of this childlike state we are all born into.
Yes, well you wasted no time in answering my question about whose authority we have to accept.
When I asked:
Whose “equilibrium”, whose view of what is and what is not unacceptable?
And whose POV is going to be posited as anathema?
Where is the objective; where the bias?
Clearly you intend to impose your own personal view.
I am always surprised how quickly you jump over what I have said, like “This is of course a task of finding a working consensus, not dictating one,” and to your own POV and bias, which was exactly what Mad Man P did in my other thread, when talking about finding a way into the future, both of which were invitations to think about how we could do that. Are you the same person?
I have my own POV, of course, and I have spoken about observed consensus amongst certain experts and scholars, but what would anyone expect? I also pointed out that there are observable pressures and constraints on any way ahead that are dictated by nature as much as anything else. So, what is your intention here? Just to troll me, and prove your prejudgement to be true, or engage in a discussion?
So the fact that I think it’s reasonable that you actually exist doesn’t disquality me as a solipcist in your mind?
Well, but “an accelerating doubling of population on a finite planet with finite resources”: we had these problems in the past, because the most accelerating doubling of the population was the one between 1960 (3 billion) and 1999 (6 billion) - 39 years (!) -, the second most accelerating doubling of the population between 1927 (2 billion) and 1974 (4 billion) - 47 years (!) -; and that means: a doubling of the population in a shorter time than those 39 years is not possible anymore (not only because of the law of inertia in demography). Or do you think that we will get - for example - a 12 billion population before 2038? We will probably not even ever reach a 10 billion population.
The world population grew fastest in percentage terms around 1968 and in absolute terms around 1989.
Why does the reckoning have to come from above now, by that I mean that the ones up there - the globalists - were the ones who exploited everything on this planet, even those who were not as successful with the exploitation as the globalists themselves.
“And a changing climate …”? Well, because the water is up to the neck of the globalists, they suddenly come up with the “narrative” of the “changing climate”. The globalists know that the financial system is at the end (“clinically dead” it is already since 2007/'08), and therefore they have to expropriate those who have really achieved something economically, the achievers, in order to get their property. That is behind all these “narratives”, behind “climate change”, behind “Covid-19”, behind the “Ukrainian-Russian war” and what is still to come. In the end, the super-super-super-rich and super-super-super-powerful globalists (0.0001%) will be on one side and the totally impoverished rest (99.9999%) and probably all the few remaining animals will be on the other side - perhaps even only one very small upper class and only one huge lower class or even two different kinds of a species or even a new - transhuman (!) - “species”! Is that what you want? I do not think so!
A (“saved”?) planet without any humans and other “higher” animals, but with perhaps only a bit less CO2, with much more electricity and radiation, 5G, 6G and more on and around (satellites) the planet. That does not mean “a saved Earth”, but does mean the end of all humans and of all other “higher” animals, because they belonged to the Earth and had a right of being on the Earth. The Earth should not be a planet for machines. Machines have no rights, because they are nothing alive, but simply lifeless material. Only living beings can have rights. If the machines take over, then this does mean that the planet Earth is soon also without any life. Why should we fight for a lifeless Earth?
Why this last war?
I take your point and stand corrected. However, the point I was making was that the world population increased from 1 billion in 1800 to 7.9 billion today.
Interesting theory, but if you ask the Australians, who have had extreme flooding for the third year running. In February 2020 there was widespread flooding in Sydney basin and the Blue Mountains, as well as flooding in central west to the north of NSW and flooding caused by Tropical Cyclone Damien in Karratha.
In March 2021, there was widespread flooding again in the Sydney basin and the Mid North Coast of NSW, extending into Southeast Queensland. On the 9-10 June 2021, widespread flash flooding occurred across Gippsland. 160,000 properties blacked out, some for 4 days or more. Traralgon in the Latrobe Valley was one of the hardest-hit places with 200 homes evacuated. And in November 2021 floods in Central Queensland.
In January 2022, in Wide Bay-Burnett, Fraser Coast and Gympie Regions, there were floods caused by ex-Tropical Cyclone Seth. In February 2022, in Eastern Australia there were floods. In March 2022, there were the Eastern Australia floods.
Temperatures are rising world-wide due to greenhouse gases trapping more heat in the atmosphere. As of 2019, the average surface temperature of the Earth was 1.17 degrees Celsius higher than the average for the pre-industrial timeframe of 1880-1900. The increasing temperatures aren’t uniform everywhere. In some areas, the Earth’s temperature has already increased by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times. Approximately 20 percent of the population lives in areas that have experienced this level of temperature rise.
Droughts are becoming longer and more extreme around the world. 2002 North American drought, 2003 UK Drought and Heatwave, 2006 UK Drought and Heatwave, 2008–2009 Kenya Drought, 2010–2013 Southern United States and Mexico drought, 2011 UK Drought and March–April Heatwave (The drought continued from 2010 and lasted through until March 2012), 2010 Sahel famine, 2011 East Africa drought, 2011–2017 California drought, 2012 Sahel drought, 2012–13 North American drought, 2016 New York drought, 2018–2021 Southern African drought, 2020–21 North American drought.
Tropical storms becoming more severe due to warmer ocean water temperatures. Hurricane Iris 2001, Hurricane Isabel 2003, Hurricane Charley 2004, Hurricane Frances 2004, Hurricane Ivan 2004, Hurricane Jeanne 2004, Hurricane Dennis 2005, Hurricane Katrina 2005, Hurricane Rita 2005, Hurricane Wilma 2005, Cyclone Nargis (Myanmar, 2008), Hurricane Ike 2008.
As temperatures rise there is less snowpack in mountain ranges and polar areas and the snow melts faster. Overall, glaciers are melting at a faster rate. In the United States, the snowpack disappearance dates in southern Alaska, the Cascades, Sierra Nevadas, across the lower Midwest, and along parts of the Appalachians are changing more rapidly than in regions like the Rocky Mountains and Upper Midwest. Globally, parts of the coastal Arctic, the European Alps, and lower regions of the Himalayas have been more affected. The snowpack in Oregon, Washington, and the Sierra Nevada and Cascade Mountains of California was at a record low in 2015.
Sea ice in the Arctic Ocean around the North Pole is melting faster with the warmer temperatures and progressed more rapidly than previously predicted, has the potential to cause multiple environmental stresses, including warming, acidification, and strengthened stratification of the ocean.
Permafrost is melting, releasing methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. Climatic warming since the last third of the 19th century has caused a warming of the permafrost to a depth of more than 100 metres.
Sea levels are rising, threatening coastal communities and estuarine ecosystems, and the rate has increased in recent decades. In 2014, global sea level was 2.6 inches 67 mm above the 1993 average—the highest annual average in the satellite record (1993-present). Sea level continues to rise at a rate of about one-eighth of an inch 3.2 mm per year. Higher sea levels mean that deadly and destructive storm surges push farther inland than they once did, which also means more frequent nuisance flooding. Disruptive and expensive, nuisance flooding is estimated to be from 300 percent to 900 percent more frequent within U.S. coastal communities than it was just 50 years ago.
Bob please help me make the connection between your last post and metaphysical idealism which is what I think this thread is about.
I know Kastrup argues against the theory Koch is associated with i.e. Giulio Tononi’s Information Integration Theory in Why Materialism Is Baloney: How True Skeptics Know There Is No Death and Fathom Answers to life, the Universe, and Everything (p. 36ff). John Hunt Publishing. Kindle Edition, but I thought it would be interesting to take it up here since it is considered to be on the forefront of research on the material basis for consciousness.
Christof Koch is a proponent of the idea of consciousness emerges out of complex nervous networks. He maintains that consciousness is a fundamental property of complex things, He introduced the concept that consciousness is a fundamental property of networked entities, and therefore cannot be derived from anything else, since it is a simple substance. He advocates for a modern variant of panpsychism, the ancient philosophical belief that some form of consciousness can be found in all things.
According to Florian Mormann and Christof Koch (2007):
I admit it, I digressed …
I think an explanation for how the correlation of consciousness to material reaction is hinted at in this:
This would suggest what we experience, that consciousness is not one stream of awareness, but complicated when it becomes individual consciousness.
He goes on to say:
He also quotes George Wald:
A modest proposal not easily accomplished. Scientism forbid that we take a fresh look at what the major religions have been saying about the question since the dawn of history. Some characterize traditional wisdom as the strawman that fundamentalist literalism affords them. Others may conflate objective idealism with religious dogmatism. Chalmers seems to be on the track of fresh insight. I would like to know what he thinks of the perenniel philosophy of people like Watts and Aldous Huxley.
In the podcast “Mindscape” with Sean Carrol, he is asked about idealism, and he says:
However, in the paper “Idealism and the Mind-Body Problem,” he concludes thus:
So where does he stand?
If your conceptions of materialism, or the natural world, is incoherent with your conception of consciousness… that’s YOUR problem, no?
Maybe your conception of one of them is a foolish one… but why project your own idiosyncrasies onto others? Why is this a “we” problem?
Why not ask for help from those who do not run into the issues your having?
Maybe you should refer to your signature a little.
Not only do you quote wrongly, but you don’t even look at what we present. Go away Mad Man P, you are just showing your embarrassment.
Apologies… did not mean to quote you, I just plucked that from your post to felix, so your name was quoted. I realize, that’s from Chalmers.
I’ll make the correction… but by all means, please feel free to judge my questions as stupid, or judge me stupid… that is your prerogative.
Your signature suits you, btw…
Neither of you are stupid. So the difference must lay somewhere else. Wisdom would be knowing how to proceed in dialogue so that all can learn.
May we all go from unreality to reality, from darkness to light (it’s a metaphor). Plato recognized that everyone seeks immortality one way or another. It’s something the life force does and why we have children. It’s in our biology. To deny it is surely nihilism.
Whatever reality is at bottom of everything whether we call it physical or mental, we are all one in that. It’s just that the way it presents itself to us is always in consciousness. The mind produces the sensation of the hard stuff we call matter. At the quantum level it is different and has different rules. Even for the hardcore materialist matter ain’t what it used to be!
This is true… we’re constantly evolving our understanding.
But the conception of materialism posed in the OP of this thread and repeated by Chalmers is flawed… This conception of material monism where a different “mind” element is spawned into existence by the “material” element, is obviously indefensible as a monistic model. Whenever you conceive of a mind as something immaterial, something other than physical, you’re assuming a dualism that is inconsistent with materialism which is a monistic model… suggesting that matter creates the immaterial does not help make it more coherent. The problem was created in the definition, these concepts are incompatible… Correct the conception of materialism to actually be monistic and the problems solve themselves…
Actual monism would be, where every conscious experience you have, is matter, not created by matter… it IS matter. Given materialism, consciousness is a physical object and every event is a material event. A specific object performing a specific function… like a car, or a cup. And like those objects, if it is disassembled or altered, it cease to be that specific object and become a different object. One might say the category of identity, is irreducible… it’s one of the laws of logic… but that does not mean the object is irreducible.
The proposition of materialism is that when we look at a brain, we’re getting the sight sensory version of a mind. The mind is neither a by-product nor an epiphonema of the brain, It’s not a different thing at all… it’s the same thing, merely sensed through a different channel, in a different way. No amount of smelling a cup can tell you what the tactile texture of a cup will feel like, no amount of hearing a car well tell you what licking a car tastes like… and in much the same way, no amount of looking at a brain, can tell you what it feels like to be that mind… only actually BEING the object should feel like BEING the object.
As for the charge made in the OP, of assuming my conclusion, or the circularity of proposing a monistic materialism, It’s obviously a testable idea and the tests come back as affirming…
I would argue, in a monistic model, it doesn’t matter what we call the ONE thing everything is made of… mind or matter… it’s the same thing. The relationship between the different objects, however, that’s where we might meaningfully disagree. Whether or not the car we hear is the car we see, or whether brains are in fact minds… Obviously, it’s no use spinning it the other way. If in fact they are the same thing, then it’s semantically meaningless to argue about whether A is B or B is A.
In conclusion… it’s no wonder you don’t think materialism is defensible, given the dualism that you bring to it.
_
Consciousness can only be as prevalent, as the brain’s chemical properties allow it to be…
Cosmic consciousness —> sentient beings —> animal/mineral/vegetable consciousness… so derived from the material world, for nothing materialises out of thin air.
David Chalmers presents three arguments in his paper “Consciousness and its Place in Nature”