How Material is Reality (I-II)

Response to: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=AtXjaSJFs6E

Pyrrho's questions to me:

I take a lot of language lightly, I don't want to assume, so I started with a question.

You sound as if you have a natural philosophy, drawn from whatever nature tells us.

I think we are learning to sift out a lot of false ideas that crept into what otherwise was a good evolution of a sense of beauty, healthy things are beautiful, and so on... but some things evolve to fool the cues we look for rather than provide the fundamental power we are looking for evolutionarily.

the question is about how material is the world to you.

my response:

hey Pyrrho,

I am uploading a video as we speak... I went a little over time so it'll be a two parter, it was too good a question to condense it anymore. I do have a natural philosophy, and I do consider myself a physicalist. But in the video I go into describing what I think these words entail. I know you are somewhat familiar with Greek philosophy, so I talked about the origin of the word 'physical' and how that original meaning has changed over the centuries. I have a great deal of affinity for the early Greek notion of physis, or the way of nature. It seems to be strikingly similar to the Tao.

I question whether or not nature has an underlying essence or is based on a set of fundamental laws. I can't necessarily prove it doesn't have such laws, but I have no way of knowing of they actually do. If they do exist, my observing consciousness could not be at all separate from them. Assuming I might have knowledge of these laws would be like a computer having consciousness. Can a computer be aware of its programming? If it could, that consciousness would be entirely superfluous, it would serve no purpose. The computer only manipulates data and follows rules, what good would having knowledge of those rules do? This is why I think understanding evolution only in terms of natural selection leaves out the phenomenon of consciousness all together. If it is all just the playing out of random mutations along with the "law" of natural selection, there is absolutely no reason why the randomness needs to be "aware." Awareness is only important if it can make choices. Choice can't exist in an entirely law driven, material world. It strikes me as contradictory for us to assume we can have knowledge of the world in itself when that knowledge is of completely deterministic laws. How could I possibly know or experience myself at the neuronal (material) level without ceasing to be conscious? But the trick is we are aware of our neurons right now, and that awareness is precisely what neurons are. The notion that nature has some essence underlying its appearance makes some materialists think that our experiential state of awareness is really just the happenstance firing of genetically/environmentally selected neural sequences. The problem is no neural explanation of consciousness is ever going to make our conscious experience go away. So what the materialist assumes are explanations that lay the phenomenon bare are really just embodied descriptions that give us a new way of interacting with the world through our experience of it. Here's another way of looking at it:

Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and his companion are on a stroll through Cambridge.

'I've always wondered why', says Wittgenstein, 'for so long people thought that the Sun revolved around the Earth.'

'Why?' said his surprised interlocutor, 'well, I suppose it just looks that way'

'Hmm', retorted Wittgenstein. 'and what would it look like if the Earth revolved around the Sun?'.


So I am a physicalist, but I do not think physical means the underlying laws of nature. I don't think nature has laws. Or if it does, it also has freedom. But rather than see a war between determinism and chance, I try to find a more holistic perspective. Nature is an appearance, nothing more, nothing less. The only essence is the whole. We cannot step outside our experience of nature to know it because that knowledge itself arises out of experience. So it's all physical, but there is no end in site. There is no way to pin it down and define it, or control it. We are too tied to what we are trying to catch to ever actually catch it. Yes, it's a bit like chasing one's tail, looking for certain knowledge is (sorry for the Yoda-speak, it just sounded wiser that way!)

-Matt

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Tags:

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• physical
• tao
• greek
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• philosophy

[mtheoryrules]

It seems that many of those that denounce religion are inclined to believe that our ancestor were gulable and unable to use reason instead of looking at the profound implications of the religious concepts themselves and why they are appealing to many because they are basic and we intutitively sense the validity of the concepts even when we are not able to articulate their communication.

I was just putting that out there I guess more to get it off my chest than to make a specific realivent point

[0ThouArtThat0]

I agree with you about the wisdom of our ancestors. I think it has something to do with the myth of progress that makes people think anyone living over 100 years ago must have been ignorant.

[mtheoryrules]

The fact that is that in reality the scientists of the time attempted to discourage these type of contemplations and reasoning, that is what set the stage and made it possible for religion to suppress rational thought in the first place, why is that so many overlook this when discussing things of this nature I will never understand.

[0ThouArtThat0]

Not sure exactly what you're trying to say here...

Remember that the foundation of science is philosophy. You may say no, the basis is empiricism, but just what it is that counts as empirical is entirely a philosophical question.

[LordCorinth]

haha, metaphysical existentialism is soooooooooo not common amongst people from 18-32

'course everyone wonders this stuff, its not unusual. the other day i was blowing my own mind by thinking deeply about how there is a past, and that things happened that arent happening now. its just, wow man, past. haha

☺

[TheLovesoul1]

hmm. (000)

[soldatheero]

0ThouArtThat0 I think you should google Meher Baba I think you may find him interesting.

[aarondkeogh]

you look like Ad-Rock from beastie boys

[hastious]

I'd like to see your vid 20 years from now

It will be very different.

[RioUchiha]

Philosophy is never perfect.

[AllahConsciousness]

I bet their are non-physical atheists who laugh at their peers for believing in some theorhetical "physical" world, then they all of a sudden find themselves being shit out of a human vagina and smacked on the ass. Silly atheists.....

[Yldii]

I believe that at its core, the mind does know it's own essence and hence has knowledge everything. It is the conscious mind that is the dreamer.

[paradirob]

Excellent vid! Dennett says he is a materialist without making apologies for it. Physicalism has a closer association with empiricism and logical positivism. If everything is material or has its foundations in matter, e.g. our neurons are composed of matter and not any part of them is made up of the Cartesian substance 'res cogitans,' and we agree with this proposition, then Dennett's point is well taken. The map is not the territory and somehow we imagine our first person take is the territory.

[zencat]

The Mind can't know it's essence, or we would have knowledge of everything? Incorrect assuption. By "knowledge of everything", you simply mean ideas, which is not True Knowledge. The mind can indeed know its essence. Buddhists call this this knowledge 'enlightenment'.