Stephen Law - Is There Anything Non-physical About the Mind?
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What is consciousness, our inner experience of private awareness? Can consciousness be explained by only physical activities of the physical world? Because if not, if there is anything else required to explain consciousness in addition to the physical brain, then consciousness would defeat a materialistic or physicalistic worldview.
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Stephen Law is a philosopher who is the Director of the Certificate in Higher and Education and Director of Philosophy at The Department of Continuing Education, University of Oxford.
Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.
As someone who has had Out of Body Experiences, I can tell you now, without a shred of doubt, that mind and brain can indeed become separate. I will never understand it, and when I say mind, it could infact be consciousness that is a separate entity, but whatever you want to call it, some part of your personality/awareness/memory and personality transcends the physical body. I never used to think it was possible until it happened to me several times, and now I realise my original thought process was incorrect.
The brain is merely like the cockpit of an aircraft while the mind(the soul), is the pilot............................Falun Dafa
Perhaps that Out of Body Experience you had was a dream or an ilussion.... How can you be sure that your mind or soul was really out of your body ?
have you ever had an OBE? if not, go have one :) @@pablocosentino2126
Oh Hooray for Stephen Law! He is the first person I've seen on youtube who used the phrase "begging the question" correctly. Won't go into the details look it up. Most people think it means "This whatever cries out loud for the following question to be asked." But it means "petitio principii - assuming the answer in your question." Bravo Dr. Law, you are rare in that regard. Your understanding of consciousness has got to be incorrect although I can't give a detailed correct answer. Something like, Consciousness existed first and created the material world from what it first became aware of. It was aware of something. These things became more complex over time, and humans possess another "layer" of consciousness: something like awareness of a self separate from a context. This is consciousness, what comes before is pre-conscious: the ability to react, but without having a mental image of the action. Like the saying "Lights on, but nobody's home." Would be glad to learn differently. Thx for the discussion.
The brain is merely like the cockpit of an aircraft while the mind(the soul), is the pilot............................Falun Dafa
Ideas, feelings, introspection, imagination, love, hate, inspiration. All products of the mind. Yet all immaterial. Yet all capable of causation. The substrate for mind is the brain, the product of the mind is everything we feel, see, create and experience. It is real, capable of causation. Capable of creating things, like mathematics, poetry, movies, wars, regret, ennui. The mind is far greater than the sum of its parts.
No, you mistake abstract process description for things.
Unfortunately, YuuToob sandboxes most of my comments, forbidding me from providing alternative evidence 🤷♂️
"Ideas, feelings, introspection, imagination, love, hate, inspiration. All products of the mind. Yet all immaterial."
A thing can be both physical and immaterial.
Take movement for instance.
If the brain is the substrate of the mind (ontologically prior to the mind) then the mind cannot cause anything since it's just along for the ride. In other words, if the mind is only the effect of the brain then the real cause is the brain and the mind might as well not exist.
@@neththom999
What you wrote in other words...
the mind is what the brain is doing.
Since 'doing' comes entirely down to movement and movement is unarguably in the physical realm, we can get a handle on how mind is both physical and immaterial.
The ontology of movement might be interesting to discuss.
Watching my grandchild grow from a newborn to a toddler has been a lovely study of the human mind developing. And it does so in conjunction with the development of the brain. The mind forms as the brain learns to control the body, and to receive the various inputs of sights and sounds. The child forms language skills by watching and listening and speaking with parts of the anatomy controlled by its brain. The child's mind grows clever as the brain grows. The child learns how to be compassionate, how to interact with others, how to ask for help.
The mind seems like an emergent property of the brain as it grows. The only test I can offer is for people to try and use their mind to direct their brains. We can cause movement in all parts of our body, from eyelids to toe tips. An enormous range of control over our physical body. And all of those motions could be connected to the brain through nerves and blood. There is little doubt that our brains are making those movements happen. Even (or more specially) the unconscious movements that go on all over our bodies.
The brain is telling the heart to pump, but we aren't doing so consciously. Our minds do not seem to be directing the heart to beat, but our mental choices can influence the rate of that beating. That is, if we tell ourselves to relax, if we remember to breathe deeply, clear our thoughts, etc., the heart rate can fall. Is this our mind directing our brain? I don't think so. Because were we to go into shock, or fall unconscious, the brain would take similar steps to regulate the heart rate and breathing. Our mental reminders could be nothing more than the natural processes of our brain making adjustments to our behavior to maintain a stable functioning body. It could be our brains producing the reminder to settle the psyche. The subconscious feeding a reminder to the conscious, to align the two for the sake of well being.
And for the mind to exist as separate from the brain, it would have to be able to exist without a brain. This has never been demonstrated. In fact, over the millennia people have been so certain the mind (or soul) exists independent of the brain, have made up infinity number of stories of miraculous proof. If this were true, it would be obvious to us. It would be common.
Sometimes i feel the fact that it works at all is miraculous in itself. Our brains are made from inert matter, the stuff of the universe, yet so complex. At the end of the day when we look out at, reflect on, explore and investigate the universe, it is, essentially, the universe exploring and reflecting on its own self.
The question remains, why is there a such thing as qualia? Why aren't we "philosophical zombies" just biological automata? Why does it feel like to be anything?
@@siarez This is right up there with "why is there something, rather than nothing?" I don't know that we can find an answer to that. At least not one that doesn't include assuming something not in evidence.
The brain is just like the cockpit of an airplane and the pilot is the soul.......Falun Dafa
I have personally seen a spirit... So what's the explanation for those...?
It's a hard question to ask. I was a firm atheist before taking DMT. Now I feel there is more out there and our consciousness can travel elsewhere. It's pretty easy to dismiss if you haven't taken DMT, but once you try it and breakthrough... it's another reality with intelligent beings, it's mad! It will make you question everything on this topic.
Not just through dmt but also through meditation not normal one but like kundalini and other like this i mean I understand that consciousness can be physical but the thing is that we are one we are the product of universe so and i their is more and not everyone can comprehend that
A DMT experience is an ilussion....like a dream.
How do you take DMT? Is it legal? Do you have to do an ayahuasca trip?
@@happierabroad It's illegal in most countries, you can make it yourself is the easiest way. No need to do an ayahuasca trip. Lasts 5-10 minutes.
Another way of thinking about physical causality is to consider the proposition that the mind evolved because it promoted human survival. But a moment's reflection reveals that it wasn't "minds" that evolved in this way, but rather neurologically driven behaviour. In other words, any "mental" component is redundant and causally powerless.
Seek as you may, you will find nothing like mind in the physical world, and indeed no need for it in explanation of what occurs. With a single exception, of course, which is simply that "I" imagine myself to possess one. Admittedly, this last is a puzzle difficult to dismiss!
The brain is just like the cockpit of an airplane and the pilot is the soul.......Falun Dafa
Everyone is a Divine soul and this is the mind. ..Falun Dafa
Could a computer no matter how advanced in circuitry ever sleep off have a dream and then wake up to share it's experience...? Amongst other mental abilities...? If that were to occur would that not make it 'alive'... Or conscious..?
@@user-ht9ye6tv4f There is no comparing our Divine soul to a piece of machinery.
The brain is merely like the cockpit of an aircraft while the mind(the soul), is the pilot............................Falun Dafa
We have no idea what the physical actually is nor can we fully define materiality, so how the heck can we say something is "non-physical"? And the causality argument is excellent. Basically anything "non-physical", or non-causal, or acausality, is a god-of-the-gaps argument. "I am what I am", which is the antithesis of science and the preserve of authoritarianism: "be quiet child, that's enough of you asking "why?!" So, a leap of faith that it is impossible for anyone thinking rationally to accept. Of course, people are rarely rational.
The brain is just like the cockpit of an airplane and the pilot is the soul.......Falun Dafa
It can only be argued and not proven either way. Therefore, NO ONE can be so sure of their position.
At this point in time. You cannot definitively say that either side will never be proven correct.
So for now and the foreseeable future I'm correct
@@mtshasta4195 If that helps you
N.B. Before reading the following Glossary entry, it is absolutely imperative to understand that the term “mind” is being used according to the definition provided by the ancient Indian philosophical paradigm (in which it is called “manaḥ”, in Sanskrit), and NOT according to the manner in which the term is used in most all other systems (that is, as a broad synonym for “consciousness” - e.g. “The mind-body problem”).
mind:
Although the meaning of “mind” has already been provided in Chapter 05 of “A Final Instruction Sheet for Humanity”, it shall prove beneficial to further clarify that definition here in the Glossary. It is NOT implied that mind is the sum of the actual thoughts, the sensations, the memories, and the abstract images that inhabit the mental element (or the “space”) that those phenomena occupy, but the faculty itself. This mental space has two phases: the potential state (traditionally referred to as the “unconscious mind”), where there are no mental objects present (such as in deep sleep or during profound meditation), and the actualized state (usually referred to as the “conscious mind”), where the aforementioned abstract objects occupy one’s cognition (such as feelings of pain).
Likewise, the intellect and the pseudo-ego are the containers (or the “receptacles”) that hold conceptual thoughts and the sense of self, respectively. It is important to understand that the aforementioned three subsets of consciousness (mind, intellect, and false- ego) are NOT gross, tangible objects. Rather, they are subtle, intangible objects, that is, objects that can be perceived solely by an observant subject. The three subsets of consciousness transpire from certain areas of the brain (a phenomenon known as “strong emergence”), yet, as stated above, are not themselves composed of gross matter. Only a handful of mammal species possess intelligence (that is, abstract, conceptual thought processes), whilst human beings alone have acquired the pseudo-ego (the I- thought, which develops in infancy, following the id stage). Cf. “matter, gross”, “matter, subtle”, “subject”, and “object”.
In the ancient Indian systems of metaphysics known as “Vedānta” and “Sāṃkhya”, mind is considered the sixth sense, although the five so-called “EXTERNAL” senses are, nonetheless, nominally distinguished from the mind, which is called an “INTERNAL” sense. This seems to be quite logical, because, just as the five “outer” senses involve a triad of experience (the perceived, the perception, and the perceiver), so too does the mind comprise a triad of cognition (the known, the knowing, and the knower). See also Chapter 06.
Nota Bene: There is much confusion (to put it EXTREMELY mildly) in both Western philosophy and in the so-called “Eastern” philosophical traditions, between the faculty of mind (“manaḥ”, in Sanskrit) and the intellect (“buddhiḥ”, in Sanskrit). Therefore, the following example of this distinction ought to help one to understand the difference between the two subtle material elements:
When one observes a movie or television show on the screen of a device that one is holding in one’s hands, one is experiencing auditory, textural, and visual percepts, originating from external objects, which “penetrate” the senses of the body, just as is the case with any other mammal. This is the component of consciousness known as “mind” (at least according to the philosophical terminology of this treatise, which is founded on Vedānta, according to widely-accepted English translations of the Sanskrit terms). However, due to our intelligence, it is possible for we humans (and possibly a couple of other species of mammals, although to a far less-sophisticated degree) to construct conceptual thoughts on top of the purely sensory percepts. E.g. “Hey - look at that silly guy playing in the swimming pool!”, “I wonder what will happen next?”, or “I hate that the murderer has escaped from his prison cell!”. So, although a cat or a dog may be viewing the same movie on the screen of our electronic device, due to its relatively low level of intelligence, it is unable to conceptualize the audio-visual experience in the same manner as a primate, such as we humans.
To provide an even more organic illustration of how the faculty of mind “blends” into the faculty of the intellect, consider the following example: When the feeling of hunger (or to be more precise, appetite) appears in one’s consciousness, that feeling is in the mind. When we have the thought, “I’m hungry”, that is a conceptual idea that is a manifestation of the intellect. So, as a general rule, as animals evolve, they develop an intellectual faculty, in which there is an increasingly greater perception of, or KNOWLEDGE of, the external world (and in the case of at least one species, knowledge of the inner world). In addition to these two faculties of mind and intellect, we humans possess the false-ego (“ahaṃkāraḥ”, in Sanskrit). See Chapter 10 of "F.I.S.H" regarding the notion of egoity.
No. Because we don’t fully understand something doesn’t allow one to pull Magic out of ones arsche to appease insecurities. You are not special. When you die you are gone. After two generations no one will care you ever existed. It’s okay. It’s liberating. Try it.
Well we won't talk about something I don't know but we can talk about something I do know, perception. But that isn't really what we're trying to get at here - Closer to truth is no closer than before.
Falun Dafa is the Way.
2:15 The hard thing to articulate: the universe is not a closed causal system that the speaker claims it to be. If it were, there would be causal loops. You know, A causing B causing C causing A.
The physical model of the universe we have come up with thanks to science reduces all phenomena to the building blocks we call electrons and quarks and their interactions (bosons like light, and Higgs). It can't explain the internal mechanism of those building blocks. Even if it could, that would lead to an infinite regress, which is not physical either. Mind, or consciousness, or subjective experience we all share, is the solution and resolution to that apparently physical yet inescapable incompleteness or inconsistency (as Godel demonstrated.) Let us then cherish our wholeness. Or in spiritual terms, holiness. That's a good way to cherish the physical marvel we call the universe, too.
Which of the trillions of universes are you talking about? The brain is merely like the cockpit of an aircraft while the mind(the soul), is the pilot............................Falun Dafa
All these speech by Law to avoid giving credit. Bravo. Senile at best
Is there anything physical about the mind?
Consider the analogy of hardware vs software: is software dependent on or determined by the hardware it runs on? SW does need HW to run, but it is independent from it. Similarly, Mind is no longer dependent on the Body. Use it. Have fun with it. Make sure to rule it. Or else, as Buddha put it, there is suffering all around.
The mind(soul) is the smallest particle of matter. The brain is just like the cockpit of an airplane and the pilot is the soul.......Falun Dafa
Saying that there is something non physical about brain is like demotivating others and driving people away from neuroscience and letting them to loose thier scientific drive to solve hard problem of consiousness. If we stick to the fact that brain generates the consiousness and subjective qualia then we may sooner will be able to solve the hard problem. Power of Belief in Science is drive to make self fuelling prophesies come true and make dreams a reality.
Sort of agree. However, pretending there is no "Hard Problem" is sticking one's head in the sand and hoping the problem will go away magically . Magical thinking isn't science either.
@@rockapedra1130 hard problem is just difficulty for brain trying to understand itself. There is hard problem. Point me where I said that there is no hard problem. Hard problem exist. It's hard beacuse brain is trying to understand itself.
A rotating fan produces a breeze. A living brain produces a mind that manifests cyber-like features.
As the brain deteriorates, so does the mind. There doesn’t have to be something ‘beyond the physical’ to explain the mind. Matter itself we don’t fully understand.
Exactly. Aging and/or illness are clear proofs that the brain is the mind.
I think this actually falls apart upon closer examination. I'm not aware of anyone in the 'Philosophy of Mind' space arguing that there isn't a correlation between brain and consciousness/mind. Simply because there is correlation, doesn't mean that the brain is the source of consciousness -- even if that seems intuitive and common sense... What we're talking about -- is rather ontological and metaphysical in nature; and thus requires a deeper examination. Could physical processes themselves be correspondent to an extra-phenomenal information substrate of sorts? Some substrate which extends beyond time and space itself perhaps? Leading physics is exploring models independent of space-time, for instance. What is the interplay between the discoveries of quantum field theory, and consciousness (if at-least possible)?
There may not need to be something transcendent, or 'noumenal' for the mind to exist, but that doesn't not mean that there isn't something to it either.
Also, simply because we don't "need" to "suppose something beyond the physical" seems a tad fallacious. Just a few centuries prior, many philosophers would be arguing that we do not need to presume something wholly physical, and that it would be impossible to prove anyways (which I believe they were correct about). That's an appeal towards simplicity for the sake of one's 'use case', and thus doesn't grant us any greater insight, clarity, or potential discovery.
The fact that we don't understand what matter is, or what space-time is -- are reasons why we cannot exclude some other unseen dimension at play in consciousness.
I must admit, I dislike the current physicalist paradigm because it seems to reduce everything to the same assumptions, and from my observation -- seems to make us less dynamic and perspective thinkers. If you have a hammer in your hand, everything looks like a nail. I prefer a kind of neutral monism, which keeps the possibilities open.
“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”
― Max Planck
@@Archeidos-Arcanathat Planck quote is out of context and wrong, Newage nonsense interpretation.
And by your own logic, just because we don’t have answers does mean to leap off a cliff to imagine non-physical things. It a worse problem than following the knowledge we have and making small assumptions, you know, science. Occam’s razor and all.
@@ihatespam2 1. How is it out of context? Planck was a neutral monist, bordering on an idealist. 2. How is it wrong and what makes you certain of that? 3. What does New Age have to do with that?
“All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together.
We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.”
― Max Planck
As the television deteriorates, the things we see happening also do. Therefore, all of those characters and stories and places are strictly inside the circuitry of the tv.
See how that works?
Refering to the mind as a seperate entity ,is like speaking about our blood pumps being where love lays.
You realize that the heart doesn't actually have anything to do with love or any other emotion, right?
try having an out of body experience...
@@Dion_Mustard People don't actually go outside of their bodies during an out of body experience. I've had the experience myself during sleep paralysis episodes.
It seems like you're outside of your body at the time but once the experience is over it's clear that you weren't.
There's actually been a lot of research on this and it can be caused in various ways. It's a very interesting phenomenon but it has nothing to do with _actually_ being out of your body. The brain is quite active when this occurs and it can be caused by acting upon particular parts of the brain.
Watched several black and white movie reels of surgeons vivisecting brains and observing the progressive changes. Watched many reels of surgeons implanting electrodes and recording the results as described by the patients, from smelling toast to feeling watched. Pretending by assertion that there is an equivalent weight of evidence for dreams, hallucinations, or healthy minds being a manifestation of externalities, is a disservice to the animals that gave their lives for this knowledge, and to the patients that risked their minds to give us certitude.
The brain is the hardware whereas the mind is am interlocking software that operates through the unique design and properties of our neural pathways. The software links us to a greater consciousness.
There are actual peer review scholastic papers that point this out by neuroscientists.
It is just very complex stuff. Even if there is a supernatural everything here could be physical with us only understanding what physical is to a certain degree which i think is key. That is why stuff like mind, consciousness points not to non physical but to parts of physicality to which we have no access.
Something like that, I think. I think there's something missing and when we find it, we may well call it physical. But there appears to be a big honking hole in here somewhere.
@@rockapedra1130 Some stuff is such that it cannot be ''found''. You know like stuff being vague interacting with various sorts of vague mixed with well indentified that is when we are out. Scientific method is just not refined enough for that in fact no method is. We only do well indentified. And there lies the problem. Also well indentified stuff is low hanging fruit and high hanging fruit most of which we already got as it is.
Your soul, you, the part of you that is reading this right now. The brain is just like the cockpit of an airplane and the pilot is the soul.......Falun Dafa
Of course we have access to all the answers to all the mysteries of creation. Falun Dafa is it.
Power acknowledges result just as patience accumulates regeneration
Yes! 😏
I like this explanation. It's clear and plain.
The brain is just like the cockpit of an airplane and the pilot is the soul.......Falun Dafa
We have a pretty good analogy in computers hardware and what they produce: games, apps, etc. etc.
What is the link between transistors, or even hard drive, cpu, ram and the feelings you get when you play csgo or any other immersive game ?
Similar... But that still does not explain will or self consciousness or self awareness.. Being alive....
I admire that you have the courage to point out the elephant in the room.
I'm a Christian, and believe that there is something eternal and "non physical" about the mind. But I wonder if it makes sense that what Christians normally think of as spiritual and non material, is in another sense "physical or material" like a wave of energy that is able to move or impact the material world.
Again, I realize that referring to biblical things will immediately disqualify me in the minds of most here. But being a fairly traditional Christian I believe in demonization (based on what I would argue is good evidence. But that's another convo) People who have demons often report being able to feel in almost a physical way the feeling of the demon as it's leaving. Or they will burp or vomit as the demon is exiting. This would also indicate that the spiritual entity is in some sense "physical" in that it can be physically felt, but non physical in that it is invisible.
So maybe if we broadened our view of what we consider to be material or physical.
(Actually I think Robert should interview a Catholic priest who is versed in both "exorcism" and philosophy. Possibly Fr. Robert Spitzer S.J., former president of Gonzaga University, who is also versed in Near Death Experiences, which I think come to bear on this question.)
How do you define 'physical'? We can agree that the universe is causally closed. We can agree that the 'physical' is causally closed. The problem is to account for the aspect of nature that we sometimes call the 'subjective qualia of personal experience', or some abbreviation of that term, such as 'consciousness'. Then we also need to deal with the words 'natural' and 'supernatural'. The word 'physical' is often defined as excluding reference to the subjective qualia of personal experience. We don't think that the subjective qualia of personal experience are 'supernatural'. Do we define the 'natural' as the 'physical'. Do we say that there are non-physical causes that are still 'natural', or do we admit some other category that is neither 'physical' nor 'supernatural'. Do we say that 'non-physical' causes are 'supernatural'. There is a big gap in our understanding of nature.
The brain is just like the cockpit of an airplane and the pilot is the soul.......Falun Dafa
The brain is merely like the cockpit of an aircraft while the mind(the soul), is the pilot............................Falun Dafa
My brain learns math. With that knowledge, I create a mathematical product to land a spaceship on mars. Did my brain create information?
The eyes cannot see what the mind does not know
If everything at its most broken down state is energy, including the the body, doesn't that point to a 'non physical' or purely enrgetic state of everything? Ultimatley if you break down all mater it appears to all be arising from 'non physical' energy possibly just vibrating at different frequencies. What is intriguing is, if all is ultimately energy vibrating at different frequencies... is how these frequencies interact to eventually form 'matter'
Energy is physical.
@@rumidudethank you, exactly my response.
@@rumidude Are electrons in a wave of probability physical?
@@DSE75
Yes, it is all part of the materialist/physical universe.
There is a Creator.. There is a God... There is a Universal intelligent mind (all powerful all knowing all present) mind,... person That person is not material in any way or physical... He is... A Spirit
Will we ever know?
If mind is physical then we can find the source of life. We can create life with inorganic matter.
We have a very limited perspective on what physical reality is. What is a rock to itself? Who knows? Nobody! We only see its outer qualities. So don't take a dismissive attitude toward the world of matter.
yes but if you deny free will you can say the mind may have no physical affect on the world, and therefore it need not be caused and can therefore be nonphysical -- semantically speaking
Why don't you interview Bernardo Kastrup?
To those who answer "No" keep in mind physics does not explain all of reality, only a small part. Physics doesn't explain super massive phenomena like gravity nor anything smaller scale than electricity. To those who think "we'll just extend physics when we do understand those" - physics doesn't extend to chemistry nor quantum mechanics, they are independent fields of study with their own discoveries and explanations. It's possible physics won't extend to explain consciousness, that it will simply be a new field of study albeit related to but not explained in any way by physics.
The brain is just like the cockpit of an airplane and the pilot is the soul.......Falun Dafa
Consciousness is you, the soul, when you are awake.............Falun Dafa
What are you even talking about? Physics is everything in the universe from the largest to the smallest.
The brain is merely like the cockpit of an aircraft while the mind(the soul), is the pilot............................Falun Dafa
@@dr_shrinker No it's not, physics doesn't accurately describe anything smaller than electricity (quanta), nor larger than a galaxy, it might explain gravity but hasn't yet, it doesn't touch on consciousness and given Chalmers' Hard Problem it apparently can't, there's no valid function that even could be discovered, and of course has nothing to say about concepts adjacent to consciousness like psychology, sociology, etc. Even within the domain of physics, particle theory is falling apart - Higgs Boson was a failure, didn't complete the picture. There really are not particles on the smallest scale, and even if there were it wouldn't explain existence.
Simulation theory were consciousness itself is the « computer », elegantly pose this problem of mater and mind interacting
It's all in your head.
😀I'm not sure if this is just a joke, or more😁
Nope, cause when your head is dead, it’s still here.
1. physical determinism means *everything* - including every thought - was pre-determined at the Bing Bang; 2. the mindless, pre-determined interaction of particles & fields gives rise to biological/psychological organisms that interact in complex ways believing they have free will; 3. Nobody can describe what would be different if they actually had free will, so determinist reductionism is non-falsifiable & effectively meaningless - even if absolutely undeniable.
It depends what we call meaning. Ive come to the conclusion that meaning is an actionable correlation between sets of information. So a weather report correlates to actual weather, and is meaningful because it enables us to plan appropriately such as by wearing appropriate clothing. A map has meaning because it correlates to actual terrain, enabling us to navigate successfully. So I think meaning is fundamental to the nature of the physical world.
Call me nobody. The brain is just like the cockpit of an airplane and the pilot is the soul.......Falun Dafady.
Physical reality is underpinned by the quantum reality…any wave function requires a secondary wave function to initiate… consciousness seems to require inputs from beyond our scope of understanding and determination.Classic third man problem of Plato’s cave. Ask another question:Do humans determine the absolute limits of consciousness?
how does the physical brain apprehend or develop concept of time? what happens in brain when think about or deal with time?
Consider the concept of time. The past, the present and the future do not all exist together and there is no retro-causality! The past is recorded and the present is evolving into both the recorded past and an unwritten future - atto-second by atto-second! Newton's cosmic clock continues to tick! The thing we call the present does not exist, it is merely an imaginary line used to delineate the past from the future. The present isn't even a planck-length of time!
Einstein was, and is wrong, and he knew it! Space is a thing and Time is a thing, but Space-Time is NOT a thing. Dark energy and matter are NOT things. Infinity is NOT a thing and Zero is NOT a thing! Free will and consciousness are things, and they are fundamental! Gravity is also fundamental and is NOT what is referred to as the weak force.
Gravity is the Ether of the universe and it is the wellspring of all other forces! Without gravity NOTHING else would even exist. The "Big Bang" never happened and the universe is NOT expanding, but conversely, everything in the observable universe is SHRINKING proportionally at the same time, atto-second by atto-second, returning all the eluded-to matter to the void of the vacuum of energy fluctuations! This is the source of the red shift, not tired photons!
Eventually ALL stars and galaxies, and yes, black holes too will evaporate and will wink out of existence for us! The shrinking can be compared to the constantly decreasing volume of a tuning fork that has been struck, or the ringing-down of the signal level in a an LC (inductive/capacitive) electronic, tuned-tank resonant circuit, with the input removed and monitored over a number of time constants. Watch this 17 minute video from Dialect, "Why the theory of relativity doesn't add up" (In Einstein's own words) - It's on TH-cam
There are regular rhythms of electrical activity across the brain called brain waves. These synchronise and coordinate brain activity across regions and are the basis for our perception of time.
@@simonhibbs887 There is a lot of electrical activity in the brain that causes what they call "Brainwaves" but they change amplitude and frequency constantly. The brain is not like a computer with a clock that generates timing pulses to process bits of information. It is much more complex than that and is a combination of electrical and chemical stimuli.
The brain does not think. The brain is just like the cockpit of an airplane and the pilot is the soul.......Falun Dafa .
So are you born with the soul of a serial killer then, that can't be changed by thinking?
brain lesions or injuries lead to changes in behavior, cognition, or self-awareness provide compelling evidence. If the brain were just a passive receiver, one would not expect selective changes in consciousness based on localized damage.
Go away. Your logic and common sense are not welcome here.
The brain is just like the cockpit of an airplane and the pilot is the soul.......Falun Dafa
The brain receives all its orders from the soul. When it is damaged it cannot always respond.
❤❤
What exactly would "non-physical" be? I've actually never experienced any such thing.
All matter consists of particles. The brain is merely like the cockpit of an aircraft while the mind(the soul), is the pilot............................Falun Dafa
It seems to me that his analogies are better understood as disanalogies. For example, we may indeed not know that Reg Dwight and Elton John are the same person but nobody of normal understanding could fail to see the simple identity involved when pointed out. The same can hardly be said of the purported "identity" of mind and brain. As another example, what does he mean by "from the inside"? The closed and complete causal system of physics he refers to has no truck with "insides", being entirely extrinsically defined.
I think he's also missing the real point about physical causality. That point is that it is already a complete explanation of anything and everything that occurs within its domain. Because of this, positing something over and above such causality is explanatorily redundant. Hence the only position on the mind strictly consistent with physical causality is eliminativism.
The only remaining problem is then that this position is nonsensical. So there must be something wrong with physicalism. I leave this as an exercise for the reader.
The brain is just like the cockpit of an airplane and the pilot is the soul.......Falun Dafa
The brain is merely like the cockpit of an aircraft while the mind(the soul), is the pilot............................Falun Dafa
Our mistake is thinking that the world itself is not mental. It is also a mental construct that we all share apart our personal experience. Consciousness is fundamental, not space-time. On my channel I explain this more in depth.
The brain is just like the cockpit of an airplane and the pilot is the soul.......Falun Dafa
Everything has a soul...............Falun Dafa.................Mankind is God's most precious creation.................Falun Dafa
The brain is merely like the cockpit of an aircraft while the mind(the soul), is the pilot............................Falun Dafa
Great conversation. RLK gets closer
To focus the question in title: what animates bodies?
The Self.
The Self or Atman or super Soul; Brahman.
When a cat arises and becomes animated by the Self, it functions as a cat. What a horse arises and is animated it functions as a horse. When a human arises and is animated, it functions not merely as a human, but has a special ability the animals don't have, and that's Self realization. Such are all conditions, subsisting & entirely dependent upon the Self. This that animates all is the Self.
Street lights and intersections have different conditions and colors. Ultimately, it is the one electricity that animates all of the lights with various functions. Should light identify itself with the filter, that being its condition - only fools do that.
imo: The brain to the mind is like what a house is to a home
On one hand, within imaginary time:
Mind appeals to the invisible logical processing (thinking) of information, at a limitless speed... which means that mind is non physical.
At the other hand, in real time:
Mind appeals to the visible logical processing (acting) of information, at a limited speed that can’t exceed C... which means mind is physical.
Therefore, it is all about understanding the notion of time.
N.B. Before reading the following Glossary entry, it is absolutely imperative to understand that the term “mind” is being used according to the definition provided by the ancient Indian philosophical paradigm (in which it is called “manaḥ”, in Sanskrit), and NOT according to the manner in which the term is used in most all other systems (that is, as a broad synonym for “consciousness” - e.g. “The mind-body problem”).
mind:
Although the meaning of “mind” has already been provided in Chapter 05 of “A Final Instruction Sheet for Humanity”, it shall prove beneficial to further clarify that definition here in the Glossary. It is NOT implied that mind is the sum of the actual thoughts, the sensations, the memories, and the abstract images that inhabit the mental element (or the “space”) that those phenomena occupy, but the faculty itself. This mental space has two phases: the potential state (traditionally referred to as the “unconscious mind”), where there are no mental objects present (such as in deep sleep or during profound meditation), and the actualized state (usually referred to as the “conscious mind”), where the aforementioned abstract objects occupy one’s cognition (such as feelings of pain).
Likewise, the intellect and the pseudo-ego are the containers (or the “receptacles”) that hold conceptual thoughts and the sense of self, respectively. It is important to understand that the aforementioned three subsets of consciousness (mind, intellect, and false- ego) are NOT gross, tangible objects. Rather, they are subtle, intangible objects, that is, objects that can be perceived solely by an observant subject. The three subsets of consciousness transpire from certain areas of the brain (a phenomenon known as “strong emergence”), yet, as stated above, are not themselves composed of gross matter. Only a handful of mammal species possess intelligence (that is, abstract, conceptual thought processes), whilst human beings alone have acquired the pseudo-ego (the I- thought, which develops in infancy, following the id stage). Cf. “matter, gross”, “matter, subtle”, “subject”, and “object”.
In the ancient Indian systems of metaphysics known as “Vedānta” and “Sāṃkhya”, mind is considered the sixth sense, although the five so-called “EXTERNAL” senses are, nonetheless, nominally distinguished from the mind, which is called an “INTERNAL” sense. This seems to be quite logical, because, just as the five “outer” senses involve a triad of experience (the perceived, the perception, and the perceiver), so too does the mind comprise a triad of cognition (the known, the knowing, and the knower). See also Chapter 06.
Nota Bene: There is much confusion (to put it EXTREMELY mildly) in both Western philosophy and in the so-called “Eastern” philosophical traditions, between the faculty of mind (“manaḥ”, in Sanskrit) and the intellect (“buddhiḥ”, in Sanskrit). Therefore, the following example of this distinction ought to help one to understand the difference between the two subtle material elements:
When one observes a movie or television show on the screen of a device that one is holding in one’s hands, one is experiencing auditory, textural, and visual percepts, originating from external objects, which “penetrate” the senses of the body, just as is the case with any other mammal. This is the component of consciousness known as “mind” (at least according to the philosophical terminology of this treatise, which is founded on Vedānta, according to widely-accepted English translations of the Sanskrit terms). However, due to our intelligence, it is possible for we humans (and possibly a couple of other species of mammals, although to a far less-sophisticated degree) to construct conceptual thoughts on top of the purely sensory percepts. E.g. “Hey - look at that silly guy playing in the swimming pool!”, “I wonder what will happen next?”, or “I hate that the murderer has escaped from his prison cell!”. So, although a cat or a dog may be viewing the same movie on the screen of our electronic device, due to its relatively low level of intelligence, it is unable to conceptualize the audio-visual experience in the same manner as a primate, such as we humans.
To provide an even more organic illustration of how the faculty of mind “blends” into the faculty of the intellect, consider the following example: When the feeling of hunger (or to be more precise, appetite) appears in one’s consciousness, that feeling is in the mind. When we have the thought, “I’m hungry”, that is a conceptual idea that is a manifestation of the intellect. So, as a general rule, as animals evolve, they develop an intellectual faculty, in which there is an increasingly greater perception of, or KNOWLEDGE of, the external world (and in the case of at least one species, knowledge of the inner world). In addition to these two faculties of mind and intellect, we humans possess the false-ego (“ahaṃkāraḥ”, in Sanskrit). See Chapter 10 of "F.I.S.H" regarding the notion of egoity.
The brain is just like the cockpit of an airplane and the pilot is the soul.......Falun Dafa
The mind is the soul which is the part of you that is reading this right now.
It's 100% unscientific to think that there are no nonphysical aspects to us simply because it is outside of the metrics science can directly observe.
Even the belief in a fully causal universe is a case of speaking above our actual knowledge because we cannot see all the moving parts.
Ad none of this is to say science should promote either idea, but they should learn to stay in their lane.
Analogies, like this one here made by Stephen, are beautiful, but they don't necessarily express the true real dynamic.
Is a quantum field physical? Is a virtual world or game world physical? Is consciousness or its mind physical?
Maybe these are the wrong questions and the answer does not require a transcendent answer.
This guy is right on. Just because it seems strange, isn’t evidence. Just because we currently don’t have all the answer doesn’t mean magic counts. Sure, there may be a mechanism to connect this unsubstantiated wish for a non-physical component with the physical, but we don’t see either.
It’s like the old sayin about god, our theory doesn’t require a god or a non-physical, whatever. Maybe there is something, but maybe we are really in a child’s doll house, or still on earth or a head in a jar…
The question is why do you want that to be? Is it a remnant of the the old ways of thinking embedded in our language and concepts, is it our deep urge to life conflicting with our knowledge of mortality? The cognitive dissonance of that reality forces us to look for a magic escape.
Could a computer or any similar creation one day develop to a point where it pleads for its life with good reason if there is a threat to dismantle it...? Could it fall in love...?
The brain is just like the cockpit of an airplane and the pilot is the soul.......Falun Dafa
@@user-ht9ye6tv4f no
@@jeffforsythe9514 that is a primitive idea with no reason to believe.
@@ihatespam2 Very pedestrian response.
The idea that the physical world is causally closed - that every physical event has a physical cause - is simply an assumption of modern science, particularly physics. The physical world as we know it could be a limited representation of a greater reality that humans construct. In other words, physics does not deal with the physical world but our idea of it.
All the external influences guide the mind so the only question is are some of these external influences part of 'your' mind
The brain is just like the cockpit of an airplane and the pilot is the soul.......Falun Dafa
Stephen Law didn't give any argument that the mind is physical, he was purely talking about brain activity, this is the same mistake everyone makes.
Everything that exists contains matter but the mind is not the brain..............Falun Dafa
The brain is merely like the cockpit of an aircraft while the mind(the soul), is the pilot............................Falun Dafa
Fascinating. One thing that makes me think that the mind is more than the physical brain is that fact that over time each cell in the body dies and is replaced by a new one. Therefore after a period of time all of the cells have been replaced but the original mind still exists. This seems to indicate that the mind is an over lying structure on top of the physical element.
Consider the persistence of the processes.
For one thing brain cells tend not to die and get replaced. The atoms that make them up are in a constant state of turnover however. The turnover that takes place largely maintains the neuronal connections and proclivities / chemically based 'memories'... So we subjectively seem to have continuity with our earlier selves. To a large extent this is probably an illusion, however the 'unbroken chain' quality of the system could arguably reclaim a degree of maintained personal identity.
This dudes big idea was just to catagorize the word "consciousness" lmao that's helpful thanks man
The Aristotelean either/or has plagued the western science for 500 years.
My comment is this :one aspect of the mind that was lost in the argument is the phenomenon of will... Which is directly associated with consciousness . And self awareness... I don't think physical phenomena are capable of producing will and therefore self consciousness .. If then physical phenomena cannot produce that quality (will, self consciousness) then those entities comprise something... :THAT IS NOT PHYSICAL self awareness self determination... Then self will cannot in my view be associated with purely the chemical processes or any working of the physical brain...
Okay, y'all keep saying "non-physical". Maybe you should start with non-baryonic. Cosmologists are dead certain (with pretty good reason) that most of the matter of this universe is literally impossible for us to touch unless you consider gravitational interactions as contact. And if you do, that's an entire other freaking combinatorial infinity of interactions you gotta consider, from literally everywhere and (asymptotically) everywhen in this universe.
Perfect law of confusion.
Confusion always precedes wisdom................Falun Dafa
Is there anything non mental about matter? Matter is ultimately just a concept of mind, you can’t get outside of mind to prove this apparent thing outside of mind that we call matter. Materialism is a philosophy, not scientific fact, it’s a nominal reality. Both the concept of mind and matter are wrong, reality isn’t material, mental or a mixture of either. Basing our entire intellects off materialism is the biggest roadblock to physics, people take it as fact when it’s a fiction, a tool, a label to help explain things, it’s like drawing up a map and trying to build your house ON the map, the map is just a symbolic representation of reality.
Well, I think physics is leaving space-time behind -- and I'm personally noticing many leading physicists which are becoming far more ontologically and metaphysically agnostic, which I think will lead to major leaps in our understanding; and ultimately a much less dogmatic atmosphere within institutional Science.
I do take a slight issue with the claim that "both mind and matter are wrong, and that reality isn't material, mental or a mixture of either." -- because isn't this fundamentally unknowable? We don't know what the fundamental nature or substrate is... and thus we must use something we are capable of comprehending as an 'ontological bridge' towards guesstimating, correct?
To me, the mind is epistemically primary and fundamental -- and the mind and it's contents are a reasonable basis to comprehend the whole of reality. We can posit a theoretical 'matter' as ontically fundamental... but we shouldn't mistake the playground we're building for the whole-wide-world (which we seem to have already done, at large).
Personally, I gravitate towards a kind of neutral monism -- in which I feel is most open to all possibilities.
No, the physical world has been here for 14 billion years before our minds even evolved or any evidence of any other minds, so no, matter is not “just a concept of mind” unless you are making the less profound point that what we colloquial refer to as matter is made of of energy, which says nothing about the fundamental,entail nature of physicality.
@@ihatespam2 You appear to be premising your argument on a presupposition.
How do you "Know" the physical world has been here for 14 billion years?
Science, as we currently think of it -- is simply a best guess. The likelihood that "Science" -- or what Thomas Kuhn called "normal science" -- is correct, is actually quite slim. "he Science" can be considered a kind of house of cards, or tree branching structure. At any point, a stack of evidence or information could come along and invalidate potentially the whole tree.
Science is not a linear straight line of progress as Karl Popper imagined. Kuhn correctly identified that Science effectively establishes a doctrine/dogma, and psychologically and sociologically, becomes resistant to any information which threatens the primary branches, or even the trunk of the tree (such as it's metaphysical assumptions which it has been established on).
Thus, Science undergoes paradigm shifts. We appear to be going through one right now, judging form leading physics.
@@ihatespam2
That’s faith. You make that claim, but that’s not observable. And there are theories that don’t allow for your faith.
Do you think science proves anything? Much less the age of the universe?
Even the fact you claim about the beginning, refutes your claim. If there was a beginning of the physical universe, that implies it came from the nonphysical.
“The Final Theory: Rethinking Our Scientific Legacy “, Mark McCutcheon for proper physics. Metaphysics still a guess.
Is There Anything Non-physical About the Mind? Yes, obviously. The mind itself is nonphysical; since one can not weigh it, measure or detect it, in any way. So, that is nonphysical. Don't know why I always have to be the one to clarify these questions...
You clarified nothing. Here’s an exact analog to your proposition. So a computer computation is non physical? No. It’s called the second law of thermal dynamics. Entropy increases. What is it you don’t understand about information, bit from it?
I would say purification of mind comes from sacrifice, austerity, and determination and can't come from any external medicine
What effect does gravity have on the mind?
Gravity is an illusion, it is karma that keeps us here on earth.................Falun Dafa
@@jeffforsythe9514 so no effect?
why DOESN'T the mind accept a 'physical' explanation? why would a machine reject its status as a machine? why DO we remember that leaves are green, when we know that our perceptions of color are different from what exists? maybe we need something to manage all these perceptions which are not the things themselves.
The mind is using the body we are a product of a higher Mind the firma and maybe the higher mind just harvest experiences
Why don’t they attempt to explain what “physical” is?
Bingo. We don't even understand what "physical" means. Trying to then explain the only means that we can conceive/process what is supposedly "physical" and that we don't understand seems like you are in a garbage-in-garbage-out situation.
@@konberner170
Yet all the super-geniuses in the comments think it’s just obvious.
@@deanodebo Yet that do not have one single iota of evidence that didn't pass through their "mind".
They actually do discuss that in another clip from the same original interview. Empirically we cannot say what the underlying cause or nature of the physical is. All we have is observations of patterns and consistencies of behaviour in the world we experience.
The physical is what we observe, and the processes we measure, characterise, and describe mathematically. Science is just a very rigorous process for performing such observations, and creating and verifying such mathematical descriptions, in order to eliminate human error as far as possible.
@@simonhibbs887 If the issue in question is "mind" then ALL "data" collected from observations is inadmissible. The hidden presumption is that mind, which we admit we don't understand, is in some way accurate. That is obviously illogical. Hume did more with his regularities theory, but he was smart enough to also say that such evidence only counts for the past and it is speculation that it will count for the future.
The mind has a physical location, which implies that it is physical in some important/fundamental way. My mind is located where my body is.
How does the mind have a physical location? I’d argue your mind is certainly not wherever your body is. Your mind has a relation (for fairly uncontroversial Russellian reasons) to, eg, WW1 or even more temporally remote events, states of affairs, particulars, individuals, &c. Your body isn’t where WW1, &c., was.
The brain is just like the cockpit of an airplane and the pilot is the soul.......Falun Dafa
@@RalphBrooker-gn9iv Have you ever gone somewhere, and actually left your mind behind?
Here's a thought experiment: You are told to leave mind in a room and have a conversation with a person in that room. Your body is taken outside, and the supposed "conversation" in the room is recorded. Then your body is brought back into room, and are told to recite the conversation to verify it. You won't be able to do it.
The soul usually stays in the brain or the heart but is free to locate in any part of the body.................Falun Dafa
@@jeffforsythe9514 Please define the soul so I know exactly what you're referring to. Is the mind and senses part of the soul in your view?
I think when we say BRAIN we mean the organ itself and when we say MIND we mean the process of thinking ........
am i right ?
The process of thinking is called "cognition". So I'd rather say the mind is the combination of cognition (thoughts; emotions; memories) and consciousness (awareness of thoughts, emotions and memories)
@@extavwudda
Thanks 👍
We are determined to not acknowledge that our soul (non physical) is of God and placed into a body for the purpose of function in the physical world. How does that work? I don't know the details but we see it around us all the time.
You can concentrate your attention on the back of someone's ,over many meters , and get them to turn around. Through practice you can strengthen this ability. Maybe strengthen is the wrong word, as strength doesn't come into it.
Perhaps the strength is in your smell,
detected by the other unconsciously but
enough to cause the other to unconsciously turn.
@@REDPUMPERNICKEL No. Too far away. Many others present.
Perhaps you have a STRONG smell
_"Is There Anything Non-physical About the Mind?"_
The mind is entirely physical. It's an object in consciousness. But the core awareness itself (i.e. the subjective consciousness); that is non-physical; hence subject, not object.
The brain is just like the cockpit of an airplane and the pilot is the soul.......Falun Dafa
Honestly, isn't materialism holding us back and facing us into ridiculous thinking. It's all matter and laws? Even this message? Even your counter argument? All matter all physics? Maybe we just don't have enough experience to determine these things? Seems kinda obvious we are ignorant here like the blind men arguing over what an elephant is....
While it might be true that nature is in some sense a closed system, the most blatant mistake is to identify nature with the known laws of physics, which are all reductive. And it's not as if the reductive laws of physics that we already know are all that well defined. We can't even really say how wavefunctions work to eliminate possibilities!
... I'm going to admit something you that is sometimes a little dangerous among my philosophical and scientific friends even though I did a doctorate in brain science, neurophysiology, I still cannot reject the possibility that there is something non-physical that we need to make a brain into a mind, I know you're going to disagree with me. 0:22 ... 2:25 ... to look at this and you've said it well from if you believe that there is something non-physical which many religious people do and some philosophers not most then you have this problem of how can something non-physical interact with the physical world when the physical world seems to be a closed system that's an absolute problem that those people have the other hand when you look at all the things that brains are electrical impulses uh chemicals floating across synapses between the neurons um that is not about things that may represent things but it's it seems like such a different character that mind and consciousness and our inner sense of awareness seems like one can affect the other but cannot possibly be the same thing so basically you have deep problems on both sides but there is one answer which you know you and I are not going to find but it's important to dissect out the issues. 3:28 SL: ... 7:18 ... so overall how do you look at the uh potential requirement of something beyond the brain to explain the mind? 7:26 ... there are more positions on the table than we've looked at so far people often think that well there you got two options here you've either got to kind of go for a soul some something like that um or you've got to say that the mind is the brain and that's it there are other positions we could look at um you could be an eliminativist an eliminative materialist you could simply deny that there's any such thing as the mind you could and this is the view that I'm personally most sympathetic to you could say that to have a mind is to have a rich repertoire of abilities and publicaly observable stuff is what minds consist in um it's a mistake to identify minds with souls but it's also a mistake to identify mind with brains actually um maybe having a mind is a bit like being soluble 8:30❤I'm wondering what your boundary of the physical and the non-physical. According to CMB, the universal barriers are speed limits, something that moves faster than light speed is non-physical, e.g. spacetime inside of event horizon of black hole.
Consciousness, like gravity and free will is fundamental in the universe and is an emergent property of biological entities of all types. The level of demonstrated consciousness is dependent on the level of reasoning intelligence of the biology in question. Many sub-human clusters of cells, plant and animal, have a much higher level of consciousness than we attribute to them.
The idea that the universe is only about 14 billion earth-years old is as ridiculous to me as the religious myths that the earth is only 10 thousand years old! There is no need for a singularity and a "Big Bang" for the universe to exist and exhibit all the wonders of reality that we can see and experience. I wish I could show you some graphics, but for now, you will just have to use your imagination to picture this. Bear in mind that this is only an example of a possibility, not my actual theory of the universe - If you are interested in my "Theory of Everything", leave a comment!
Imagine a spherical toroidal shape, like an apple with a small central core connecting the top to the bottom, in an otherwise "empty" space. If you google toroidal you can see a good image of one. The hole on one side appears to be a black hole with everything being drawn into it, and on the other side is a white hole from which everything flows out.
All reality that flows out of the white hole circles the circumference of the toroidal shape in all directions like longitudinal lines on a globe to eventually re-enter on the black hole side, only to be compressed and ejected through the white hole again and the process is repeats infinitely.
Our known universe does not include either of these two white or black holes.
We are merely a 14 billion year surface patch on the path along one of the longitudinal lines making the journey around the toroidal shape between the white and black holes, which explains why the universe appears to us to be flat. It also explains why large galaxies exist at the furthest reaches of our known universe in every direction as the new JWST images show us, and it also works with the Ether. Gravity is NOT what is referred to as the weak force. Gravity is the fundamental force and it is the wellspring of all other forces. Without gravity NOTHING else would even exist.
The Ether IS the force of gravity that shrinks eluded-to matter uniformly over time! I say eluded-to matter because actual matter doesn't exist, it's all energy that is collapsing into itself like the fading sound of a tuning fork decaying over time - a long, long time, shrinking everything uniformly and returning it to the void of the quantum fluctuations of the vacuum from which it all came. Even black holes shrink into the void and they call it "evaporation"!
Our known universe is just one of countless others making the journey out of one side, around and back into the other, again and again and again! The time needed to make the complete trip around the toroidal sphere is likely undefined trillions and trillions of years, but likely could be calculated based on curvature of the known universe.
This can all fit nicely with some string theory and a multi-world/multi-universe theory and explain why our known universe appears to be the result of spewing energy from a big bang. Newton was right about the cosmic clock, it's just that it has been ticking a lot longer than we think - a "hole" lot longer - pun intended.
Free Will absolutely exists and YOU are the Captain of your own ship of destiny and you pick the directions, speed and ports. Your own reality IS what your mind and senses perceive it to be and it is just as real and valid as anyone else's perceptions of it.
The question of determinism can not be separated from the debate over consciousness, but, that being said you should also know that it is based on the relationship of perceived reality by a consciousness. Some amount of determinism does exist on the macro-level, and plays out under Newton's cosmic clock.
Think about it like the impending merging of the Milky Way Galaxy with the Andromeda Galaxy and other Newtonian physics down to and including our solar system's existence and our sun's interactions with other stars in our galaxy. However, determinism on the micro-level as it relates to biological entities and our lives is much less a factor. Consciousness plays a much bigger role there.
Peoples lives and events that occur in them are determined more by our conscious decisions that are made in basically three different ways. Many are made emotionally, while some are made logically, and many are a mixed weighted combination of both. The timelines of our lives generally follow the path that we lay out for them from the time we become sentient and throughout our lives.
If you want to see the difference that your conscious decisions make on your reality timeline, try this experiment. Make a conscious choice to let any significant decisions you make for a set amount of time be determined by a coin toss or cutting a deck of cards, a purely random act of chance. I assure you that the events of your life's expected time line will change drastically, but it will fit nicely with the many worlds theory.
Now, lets talk a little bit about consciousness and it's effect in our lives. First, without consciousness there is nothing, and I do mean NOTHING. The perceptions of our senses actually creates our reality. Without our ability to perceive it, it would not exist. Without consciousness everything that existed would be totally predetermined, but there would be nothing to acknowledge it and give it substance - No reality could exist.
Consciousness is in fact a very complex electromagnetic waveform, call it "brainwaves" if you like, generated by all sentient life forms and just like in electronics theory, the product of merging of all those complex probability waveforms results in many more waveforms that are the sum, the difference, plus all of the originals. The number and types of those interactions are innumerable, or if you prefer "infinite", although I dislike using that word because infinity does not exist any more than "zero" really exists in our reality or math for that matter.
If you only consider the other eight billion people on this earth, with which we have a somewhat shared perception of reality, less with some and much more with friends, family and colleagues, you should quickly realize that it can be considered to be a giant venn diagram with intersections indicating the areas where our individual perceptions of reality converge into a shared reality. If you are reading this, our realities are converging and there is a sharing of our perceived reality going on right now.
I will leave you with one last thought. Consider that our reality is all about consciousness and many worlds and this is the formula for it. R=I/Z In which R = "Reality", I = "Infinity", and Z = "Zero" Anything divided by Zero equals undefined Infinity and Infinity divided by Zero equals undefined "Infinite Infinities"!
“The Final Theory: Rethinking Our Scientific Legacy “, Mark McCutcheon for proper physics. Metaphysics after that.
The question is funny.
What makes you think the mind is physical at all?
If mind is physical then why can't we resurrect the human body.
Oh, yes !! There is something Non Physical in the Mind ... Metaphysics.
Primitive scientific minds are incapable of accepting metaphysical principles.
Yea,pseudo science at best, alchemy, hocus pocus
@@shynickel8239 well, the fact that hocus pocus exist proves my point ... does a stone change their ways because of fairy tales ? yeah, humans do ...
I personally. (stands to be contested by anyone but.. ) have seen... A ghost... Does science dismiss unequivocally the existence of such phenomena if so my case rests here....
There have been extensive, repeated, meticulous investigations into ghost sightings and hauntings. Nothing conclusive has ever been documented. Just stuff like vague smudges on grainy old photographs, and a lot of obvious fakes.
I’m sure you had an experience, maybe you saw or felt something, it may have seemed very real, but is it really not at all possible you are mistaken? The human sensory system and memory is notoriously unreliable. We are terrible witnesses. There has been very extensive research proving that we frequently get our observations, and our memories of them very substantially wrong. We are also highly prone to misinterpreting our experiences. So I don’t at all doubt that you had an experience, but that’s not enough to prove anything about the actual causes of that experience. Thats a matter of interpretation.
The bar for scientific evidence is extremely high for this reason. It’s why scientific evidence must be recorded using precise instruments with verified accuracy levels, must be repeated not just many times by one team but where possible by different teams and preferably using different experimental methods. Thats actually all science is. It’s a standard for extremely careful and precise verification of observations, precisely to overcome this inherent unreliability of human observations and memory.
There are many non-physical things.
For example, the rules of football, legislation, stories, software
Mathematics!
@@williamschacht7076
Biology !
@@tedgrant2 Is biology non-physical?
@@williamschacht7076
Of course.
Biology is a body of knowledge about living things.
The living things are physical, but the knowledge is not.
@@tedgrant2 Very good. I assume that we are giving a "shout out" to our respective fields of study. 🙂
Mind has no mass. Mind is a form of energy unknown to us. That's the "soul". That's what "WE" are. In this theory, you are still in a realm of physics. Light also has no mass, but it can interact with the matter, using energy
Probably. We have no idea what's going on here, but the closer we get to admitting this is a simulation, the closer to truth we probably get.
That’s a giant leap, when reality is right here.
Admitting means you think it true, but you have no proof, let alone the obvious Occam’s razor issue with such evasive mind game type ideas.
In your own words, define “TRUTH”. ☝️🤔☝️
mm objective reality. @@JagadguruSvamiVegananda
@@potheadphysics, so where does that leave SUBJECTIVE reality?
In your own words, define “REALITY”. ☝️🤔☝️
Being lost and admitting it is a good start.............Falun Dafa
The sugar cube thing is a terrible analogy. Minds have absolutely nothing in common "solubility". My conscious experience is not some kind of abstract potential for something. My conscious experience is a _thing_ that is self-evidently not identical with a bunch of neurons firing. IMHO.
What do you mean by ‘thing’. Would you say your conscious experience is more like an object, or more like an activity?
Inconclusive. Is there another question?
There are living beings without brain, nervous system and heart. An example is a jelly fish. But it exhibits mind, consciousnesses.
Consciousness is 100% electric.
I think it is more of a steampunk thing with gears and steam.
Like my Tesla?🤣
Consciousness runs on coal because they both start with C. Also steam might be involved.
"mind" is a concept invented by humans.
Whether or not it corresponds to anything real is a matter of opinion.
You decide !
Very simple. ; Brain Mind =. Dreams
What one espires from the physical glimpses/experiences to convert into own experience. Eg Love beauty LIFE ; PAINT INTO IMAGINED IMAGES COLOURS !!!!! ;;
PICTURE! FULLSTOP PERIOD
As senses consciousness is Inherent as well or soul ;. All in all matter INHERENT AND CHANGES AFTER LIFESPAN = EVOLUTION ...........goes on as per law of nature
Well, native Americans did say that your dreams were your reality and reality is a dream!
If you be true, then what is the fundamental particle for consciousness?
The water analogy does not hold up. All the so called change in properties from dispersed gas molecules to crowded gas molecules are ecperienced as mist, wetness, water, or humidity or steam. Merely sensations. Otherwise they are merely manifestations of the same thing. Not an analogy to consciousness. Who is ‘seeing’, surely not the synapses, proteins, or electrical signals or networks.
I hope that I never find out he was prompting his guests. Time may be well spent nailing down some physics, chemistry, biology or supernatural activity, but please don't jerk our chains for clicks.
Let's have a simple test : if the mind is the same aa the brain activity or just a product of it,you should get the same level of output from plugging electrodes to the brain as you would from.a computer onto a peripheral like a screen or sound equipment. Yet you do not. Just as the electronics of a computer can be outputted as a movie, or words and images, plugging into the brain should produce images, ideas, word, sounds, emotions ( we should actually perceive the emotions directly)... yet all we get are thermal images and squiggly lines of brain electrical activity. We do not see the meaningful content of the mind at all. So to me it's obvious from this experiment that the mind is non physical and how it interacts with the physical world is actually an incoherent problematic : it could be suggested that something non physical does not need a MECHANISM to interact with the physical world ipso facto, it is inherent in it or the physical is actually an expression or matrix of an ideal reality. Thus the problem of interaction disappears once the ground or base state of reality is seen as Consciousness, not the physical world. The problem with all these scientific conundrums about the mind is that it defaults to the natural world and then seeks to explain the mind after that standpoint. But our exploration of the natural world has now got us to the point in which we know that spacetime does not in fact exist as the ground state: consciousness does. The Nobel prize for physics in 2022 win by Alain Aspect and his colleagues proves that very conclusion. Therefore if spacetime is a COHERENT STRUCTURED ILLUSION that science can observe and describe, then the real counterintuitive problem is to show how reality ( Bell transcendent reality) which is the ground state produces physical reality including brain states and perceptions, not mind states !
In case this seems puzzling, I revert to my experiment : why does output from my brain NOT reproduce my mental content as a computer can output a movie or directly meaningful information content? Why cannot we "see" emotions and feelings or meaning ? Why cannot we describe and output qualia? My answer is that it is because mind is the ground state and phenomena are secondary states in reverse of the standard scientific position.
For references, see the theoretical work of Bernardo Kastrup, Rupert Spira and Donald Hoffman.
The brain is just like the cockpit of an airplane and the pilot is the soul.......Falun Dafa
Sorry to all the NPCs who feel their consciousness is material lol
Sorry to all of the victims of a con think there is a something outside of the physical.
Software, or at least the logic that makes it work, is non-physical. But computation is still entirely physical.
To be true, logic is coded and code is represented as binary add stored in memory and thus physical.
@@z.C.008Yes it must be physically encoded. But the logic itself has a sort of platonic existence of its own. Software has a purpose, but it's hard to say a purpose physically exists.
But it's not mystical magic, and neither is how our brains produce mental states.
@@z.C.008Not true, the logic is derived from code. In other words; the logic comes after the event, not before.
It is the same with ideas. They won’t disappear with us. More, multiple people can have the same idea far away from eachother without any contact. Ideas exist outside us.
The mind only appears computational. Or rather, cognition appears as computation, but is not really. Cognition can only be described in computational terms after the fact. And for the other quality of the mind (consciousness) not even THAT is true.
Mind is how the mind describes itself to itself. Brain is how it is implemented.
So the definiendum ends up unmodified in the definiens!
The brain only controls the flesh, it is the soul that thinks.
Forget about humans for a moment: why do animals die?
only at times is brain non physical for example curing cancer brain is non physical or a spinal tap the brain at full health is physical
Of course dualism is true no amount of physical things interacting can make something completely unlike itself like consciousness it is as irrational as say you can turn water into fire if water interacts with itself the right way.
Use electrolysis to separate the hydrogen and oxygen from the water molecules into their gaseous forms. Allow the two gases to mix. Add a spark.
Define non-physical pleas e? It’s a polite word for delusional or magic thinking as defined in psychology, right? As green ups we should know better today when talking science
Numbers are not physical. Logic, the self, identity over time, dignity, morality, laws of
Physics, induction, causation, words, etc
Are you kidding me?
Actually physical is only loosely defined.