/lit/ - Literature

Summary of the argument by the way

>A philosophical view known as ‘mysterianism’ holds that even though there is nothing supernatural about how consciousness arises from neural activity, the human brain is simply not equipped to understand it. The reason we find the mind–brain problem so baffling, the argument goes, is that humans did not evolve sufficient cognitive abilities to solve it, just as armadillos did not evolve the ability to understand arithmetic.

>>17393044
retard take, it's not a problem of lack of cognitive ability it's a problem of simple logic.
You can't have a computer perfectly simulating itself, it will brick.
In the same way an human consciousness can't simulate another human consciousness to understand it.

>>17393023
the whole argument lies on Cartesian autism anyway; there is no such thing as a mind body dichotomy before illuminism.

>>17393073
So... it's a lack of a cognitive ability. Don't be such a fucking pedant anon
>>17393044
It is the only intellectually honest answer if you're a person who reject metaphysical answers to the hard problem (basically, if you're a physicalist).

>>17393081
Who's Plato?

>>17393023
It was pre-emptively solved by Aristotle's hylenoprhism

>>17393112
It wasn't, since he actually cannot give any convincing solution to the problem of the other minds.

>>17393044
I find it hilarious how atheists run into "you just cant understand it bro its a mystery" when trying to explain their worldview

>>17393100
someone who didn't give a fuck about the mind body problem. The world of Forms isn't some fucking detached other dimension it is inherent to the phenomenon, in the same way that the image of horses made by a guy torturing people in a cave implies the existence of the idea of horses.
>>17393096
>so its a lack of cognitive ability
well, no, mygood fren.
If that was the problem you would be theoretically able to solve it through enhancement of the human brain.
You could have IQ one billion and it would take you no closer to solve the problem of consciousness chiefly because it's not an actual problem.

>>17393023
it was solved a long, long time ago mate

https://esotericawakening.com/what-is-reality-the-holofractal-universe

>>17393116
There is no convincing argument that the problem of other minds exist. The default position is that since we consistently have correct knowledge about other natures, such as stones, trees, sea etc. it would not be the default state to believe our own nature's knowledge is fundamentally problematic, rather this would have to be shown with strong arguments and no such thing has be done, rather the presupposition that our epistemology is always if not outright wrong at least questionable at best is accepted with either no evidence or very weak evidence.

>>17393044
>>17393023
humans didn't evolve to understand the motion of galaxies either. it's stupid.

>>17393117
skydaddie solution is much better. kys

>>17393117
How old are you?

Mysterianism is most common among theists. It is atheists that are usually physicalists.

>>17393073
fucking retard. we don't need to have a perfect simulation of the sun inside our brains to say that we understand the sun. we understand what it's made of, how it produces heat and light, how it was created etc.
fucking dumbass. never fucking post again.

>>17393172
well, it is. It's internally consistent with way less axioms.

>>17393176
there's always someone like you in here, is there not?
What was it this time, did your mom drop you on your head when you were a toddler, did your dad throw empty vodka bottles at you from across the room?
Whichever it is you deserved it.

>>17393161
>Alan Watts quote in the middle of the article
Hard pass

>>17393172
All evidence seems to suggest that this is in fact the case.

>>17393197
I already called the Jannie on him

>>17393196
lmao sheltered weak pussy who can't comprehend being wrong and dumb and people calling you out for it.
>y-you were abused
the cope, the pure cope. absolutely pathetic.

>>17393143
>You could have IQ one billion and it would take you no closer to solve the problem of consciousness
Do you realise this applies to all philosophy?

You can't "solve" ethics or epistemology, and since there is no solution there is no "getting closer" to one.

>>17393023
Bruhh who cares? What does it matter?

>>17393221
>projecting this hard
learn to fucking read lol
>>17393222
completely unsustantiated, you can quantify progress in these fields.

>>17393206
7. Replying to a thread stating that you've reported or "saged" it, or another post, is also not allowed.
Just because you don't like it doesn't make it off topic.

>>17393233
yes it does

>>17393231
>completely unsustantiated, you can quantify progress in these fields.
How do you quantify progress if there is no way to measure what progress is? The explanatory power of say metaphysics cannot be quantified, for example.

>>17393143
>
someone who didn't give a fuck about the mind body problem. The world of Forms isn't some fucking detached other dimension it is inherent to the phenomenon, in the same way that the image of horses made by a guy torturing people in a cave implies the existence of the idea of horses
Gotcha, you don't know shit about Plato. Read Phaedo and Timaeus.
>>17393143
>If that was the problem you would be theoretically able to solve it through enhancement of the human brain
No? You made up this premise. A lack of a cognitive ability does not imply that it is possible to be emendated.
>>17393166
Some philosophers tried to give definitive answers to the problem, instead of simply ignoring it. Spinoza and Fichte come to mind.

>>17393239
> A lack of a cognitive ability does not imply that it is possible to be emendated.
yes it does, the potential exists.
> Read Phaedo and Timaeus
I did, you didn't

>>17393236
by results.

Just don't be a mind-body dualist. Be a monist, a pluralist, or a "whacky" dualist (fire vs water, light vs dark, but not mind vs body).

You can't "solve" the problem of transcendental realms. By their very definition, they are transcendent, and thus ontologically separate and uninteracting.

>>17393257
Thanks I completely understand now.

>>17393272
glad I could be of help

>>17393265
>Just don't be a mind-body dualist
why not?

>>17393231
cry more weak little pussy. you're wrong and dumb and whatever fantasies you imagine about me won't change that.

>>17393285
Because it gets rid of the problem. If this is really such a big deal for you, then it should be an indication that the entire framework is completely incoherent.

>>17393285
Substance dualism is a position that literally no philosopher takes seriously, because it has been refuted.

Better to be a property dualist. I personally think the problem is entirely semantic. If we could transmit data from our brains directly and not by language we'd understand this a lot better.

>>17393298
>because it has been refuted.
No it hasn't. It's perfectly consistent.

>>17393303
Ah okay Mr Anon I'll take your word for it and ignore the thousands of compelling arguments made in the last 500 years against substance dualism

>>17393303
yes it has and it's bullshit only Descartes could take seriously anyway, nobody before or after proposed it

>>17393303
refuted by most first year college students

>>17393291
>another Zoroastrian seethe mage seething at the universe to make weak minds cave
lol it is so tiresome

>>17393303
>It's perfectly consistent.
Then why make this thread?

>>17393322
what makes you think he's OP? (he's not)

>>17393311
>>17393313
>>17393315
>I swear these arguments exist but I can't name them
Based... 7 year olds? You're not really making a case for your intellectual credibility.

>>17393331
Says the guy that wrote "No it hasn't. It's perfectly consistent"

Do you literally have Downs syndrome and fail to see the irony here?

>>17393292
>Because it gets rid of the problem. If this is really such a big deal for you
If consciousness, mind or sentience is intrinsically different from the material body/brain, is unproduced by them and exists outside or beyond it, then wouldn’t it be correct to say that the problem of how consciousness emerges from the brain is not a real problem at all? If that is actually true, what is there that is wrong with that?
> If this is really such a big deal for you
If what is a big deal?
>>17393298
How has substance dualism been refuted?

>>17393331
>>17393342
i don't see why i should have to recap a basic argument covered in any phil of mind book or encyclopedia
maybe try do basic reading before asking questions

>>17393339
How do you expect me to prove that isn't been refuted other than by pointing out it hasn't been refuted you inbred?
That's not irony that's brain damage on your part.

>>17393342
>>17393331
>How has substance dualism been refuted?
Princess Elizabeth refuted it while Descartes was still alive. Is this news to you?

>>17393353
>google it
Well there you go.

>>17393342
Then the problem, as Chalmers states when he formulated it and came up with that possibility, is how these two things that cannot interact as they are ontologically separate can possibly interact such that we can even think, reason, sentientize, mind-ate, or whatever to even have this conversation.

>>17393328
I don't, I'm just pointing out that it can hardly be called perfectly consistent if there's a constant thorn that might as well be called "The Inconsistent Unsolved Dualism Problem".

>>17393361
Judging by the lack of replies these two are probably Googling "Princess Elizabeth Descartes" lmao

>>17393353
>i don't see why i should have to recap a basic argument covered in any phil of mind book or encyclopedia
Because you are the claiming it’s been refuted, the burden is on you to explain how, if you can’t then nobody will take what you are saying seriously

Interesting that idealism solves the problem by denying matter entirely, but it somehow feels like cheating.

>>17393404
>>17393361
kek

>>17393380
>is how these two things that cannot interact as they are ontologically separate can possibly interact such that we can even think, reason, sentientize, mind-ate, or whatever to even have this conversation.
This is easy to solve, there is no interaction that occurs; consciousness is simply non-volitional awareness or sentience. Volition inheres in and is a product of the brain, and so are thoughts, memories etc. As the consciousness which is outside the brain only observes the brain and brain activity likes thoughts, volition, memory etc, there is no physical or otherwise interaction between them; just as you don’t interact with Pluto when you view it through a high-powered telescope
>but observing is still an interaction
That’s wrong, the meaning of ‘interaction’ is ‘reciprocal action or influence’. Observing is not an interaction since there is no reciprocal action or influence. I don’t exert action or influence upon Pluto when viewing it through a telescope, and it doesn’t influence me, so there is nothing reciprocal about it.

>>17393475
hmmm no no it's not a third substance it is one substance whic behaves as "mind" or as "matter" according to conditions, such as medieval alchemist's quintessence

>>17393493
>Heh. They probably don't know every claim ever made.
You're coming of REALLY desperate here buddy. Wonder why you didn't make the argument instead of just referencing it and jerking yourself off

>>17393023
I think there’s a good chance that’s correct, but I don’t think there’s really any good argument to think it’s true other than the fact we haven’t solved consciousness yet.

We should assume it is solvable and continue to work on it, because if we assume it’s not we will never find out if we are wrong

>>17393251
So, you read Phaedo and you still think that for Plato there is no difference between body and soul? Lmao

>>17393516
coooope harder, this thread is a goldmine
>>17393594
you fucking retard you really didn't read it
two things being different =/= dualism of fucking substances.

>>17393624
>coooope harder
With what? I know it might be cruel to pick on the mentally retarded but I must point out you still didn't make an argument.

>>17393023
*blocks your path*

>>17393670
I don't have to make an argument against a non argumentits what people have been trying to tell you since the fucking beginning lol

>>17393689
>I-i-i-i don't have to validate my claims
Well one of us is definitely coping. "lol"

>>17393505
How is moksha possible if it’s the physical body that studies Advaita and it could never convince the Atman to stop looking through the telescope? You very clearly stated that the two cannot interact in any format whatsoever

That’s like Pluto sending a signal to the man on Earth and saying “lol stop watching me”

great thread... bunch of meme-spouting incels refuse to make coherent arguments

>>17393505
I'd say this is legit. Actually solves a major contradiction in neuroscience, too

>>17393624
>two things being different =/= dualism of fucking substances.
Again, Plato is absolutely a substance dualist, unless you think he was a skepticist regardihg physical substances. Our body is a substance, our soul is another substance, and when we are alive they are cojoined. Death is literally described as a separation of substances. Furthermore, the unity of soul and body is not a strict identity, which is to say: when we are alive, our soul is still a different substance than our body (which is also why Plato has to state which one of the two substances should rule over the other).
Furthermore, not only souls and bodies are different substances, they're also occupy two different ontological worlds. Properly speaking, the soul is not an object of the sensible world, unlike bodies.

So yes. Plato was a substance dualist. Technically he doesn't even stop at dualism, since he also accepts other ontological categories (at the very least we should add the Demiurge and Ideas, which corresponds to Cause and Limit in the tetradic scheme of Philebus).

>>17393505
>>17393833
Samefag

>>17393023
>Shut the fuck up Sartre you utter retard, it's not even a problem.
t. Heidi

>>17393876
>Again, Plato is absolutely a substance dualist
says your ass

>>17393689
yeah, you

>>17393885
lies

>>17393023
>Mysterianists
what a fucking stupid name, and its not even a new position, whats the point of repackaging something thats pretty basic phil?

>>17393044
Sounds more like total speculation to fit your worldview than any sort of argument.

>>17393117
Right. It comes down to belief ironically.

>>17393174
The people you’re describing sound a lot like empiricists either way. You said in plain text they believe there is nothing supernatural about consciousness. Hence, the problem with plain theism.

>>17393885

>>17393891
Can you stop being so smug about such a blatant mistake?
Do you really think that for Plato souls are sensible objects? A thesis he rejects literally every time he starts talking about souls?
I challenge you to find one (1) single passage in which Plato claims that the soul is a sensible object.

Also, since you're a fucking retard, I'll remind you that the soul not being a sensible object would be substance dualism.

>>17393044
>>A philosophical view known as ‘mysterianism’ holds that even though there is nothing supernatural about how consciousness arises from neural activity, the human brain is simply not equipped to understand it. The reason we find the mind–brain problem so baffling, the argument goes, is that humans did not evolve sufficient cognitive abilities to solve it, just as armadillos did not evolve the ability to understand arithmetic.

There is no 'riddle'. If a question can be asked an answer can be found.

>>17393023

Jesus Christ OP, have you thought that maybe we've just been doing this cognitive science thing for like about 70 years (maybe 90 if you want to be generous) only, and considering we've probably never approached an object of a complexity approaching that of a brain, we just shouldn't be too fucking quick to say what can and what can't be solved with it?

>>17393923
Who came up with it first? Please give me the exact formulation don't say shit like "the Greeks"

>>17394001
You got filtered by the hard problem.

>>17394001
Well I'm just posing a question so don't get angry at me. But the view here isn't that the problem seems difficult now, it's that it's intractable in principle. No matter how much we know about the brain, can we know how brain matter makes phenomenological experience?

>>17393960
>>17393900

>>17394007

William James had essentially the same position.

hylic-tier: materialism
okay-tier: dualism
awakening-tier: idealism
ascending-tier: panpsychism, hylozoism
moksha-tier: cosmopsychist priority monism

>>17393172
this unironically

>>17394010
>it's that it's intractable in principle. No matter how much we know about the brain, can we know how brain matter makes phenomenological experience?

Up to a limited point, given the very limited understanding of how cognitive processes take places.
I remember reading a paper which explained the field aspect of our visual experience (human vision being a field defined by lines and shades) by the conservation and reproduction of the pattern of input from the retina to the top layer of our visual brain C4.
Take ontology of colors. You can still find philosophers who will deny the possibility of comparing color experiential data (and as such, the very idea that color is a normative factor in human experience) between subjects when we've had color corrective lenses commercially available for years.

>>17393342
>how consciousness emerges from the brain
This nigga still thinks conscious comes from his brain rather than receiving it like a radio lmao

>>17394009

Say's the one who got filtered out of Cognitive Science because it couldn't feed him all the answers right fucking now.

>>17394082
Not that anon
Still, the hard problem of consciiusness, in all its formulation, conclusively proves that physicalost accounts of reality cannot solve it, not even in principle. No increase in our knowledge od cognitive processes can make up for that (which is why serious materialists, like Dennett and Frankish, will downright deny that phenomenical experience/consciousness exists.

>>17394118
Check also this >>17394124
Cognitive science cannot account for consciousness insofar as it has to adopt the third-personal objective point of view. Nagel describes this limitation really well in his famous paper "What It's Like to Be a Bat"

>>17393752
>How is moksha possible if it’s the physical body that studies Advaita and it could never convince the Atman to stop looking through the telescope? You very clearly stated that the two cannot interact in any format whatsoever
Moksha is not a non-preexisting result which is produced into existence. Moksha is beginningless and eternal, and is always the nature of the Atma-Brahman. The physical body of the jiva and the jivas mind (thoughts, volition, intellect, memory etc) do not attain moksha. The Atma-Brahman does not have to stop looking through the telescope because it never did to begin with, it was instead always abiding liberated and abiding in non-duality, free from the distinction of subject vs object or observer vs observed. Observership is falsely attributed to the Atma-Brahman by the jiva because people confuse the reflection (chidabhasa) of the Self in the intellect for the Self Itself, as one might confuse the reflection of oneself in a mirror with oneself. When ignorance is removed the underlying truth of the Self’s already-existent eternal liberation and non-doership/non-observership is revealed.

GSB.2.21---The Self, while remaining immutable, is imagined to be the knower of objects such as sound, which are actually perceived by the intellect and the organs of sense. This is because the Self is not distinguished from the mental states, due to nescience.
Similarly, the Self is spoken of as having become enlightened only because of avidya {nescience} associating it with that intellectual perception- which is also unreal- which takes the form of discrimination between the Self and the not-Self, while in reality the Self has undergone no change whatever. { That is to say, neither ignorance nor its opposite, enlightenment, pertains to the Self. Both relate only to the intellect {or mind} and are wrongly attributed to the Self, which, however, is ever free from avidya or ignorance.}.

>>17394124
>>17394134

> "You cannot explain consciousness"
> "Well, not now, but we can begin to explain certain experiential facts."
> "YOU CANNOT EXPLAIN CONSCIOUSNESS, WHAT IS IT LIKE TO BE A LITTLE BATERINO, HUH?"

Literally you.

>>17393475
cartesian dualism isnt the only dualism

>>17394218
I'm starting to think you literally don't know what the hard problem is (nor how it is distinguished from the easy problems of consciousness, which is probably what you have in mind)

>>17394218
the point is you will never be able to explain it in principle.

>>17394252
>the point is you will never be able to explain it in principle.

And my point is that there is no such thing as 'the unexplainable in principle".

>>17394171
>When ignorance is removed the underlying truth of the Self’s already-existent eternal liberation and non-doership/non-observership is revealed
When ignorance is removed from what? The atman has no ignorance. Why does ignorance need to be removed from the illusory physical body in order to perceive the atman?

>>17394266
Yes, there is when the method you're using is completely inadequate for dealing with a given problem (as it is the case when you're trying to study a first-personal objects with a methodology which can only accept data coming from the third-personal point of view).
No matter what we will discover about cognitive processes, their functioning will always be completely compatible with the complete absence of phenomenal consciousness (unless you're willing to refute physicalism even harder by accepting shit like libertarian free will and reject therefore physicalist causal closure).

>>17393206
you would have more luck wrapping my ass cheeks around your face and sucking out a wet fart cuck.

>>17394301
>When ignorance is removed from what?
From the jiva. The jiva is a beginningless complex of ignorance which involves the maya-caused association between the light of the Self and the intellect that acts as the receptacle for its reflection, this results in people confusing the intellect for the self and the related superimposition of doership, enjoyership etc onto the Atman. When you isolate awareness from all of its contents there is just formless and immediate self-revealing awareness left which is non-dual and which is intrinsically non-volitional and without any object or observership. The seeming association of this sentience with the states of the intellect mistakenly overlaid over it is like a cloth seeming to impart its color to the crystal ball it is placed behind, the whole time the ball itself is actually unchanged and colorless. This underlying sentience only seems to (but not in actuality) become an observer in relation to the things superimposed on it. The underlying awareness is not fooled, the intellect of the jiva which is illumined by and endowed with life by the light of the Self is what is fooled.
>The atman has no ignorance.
correct
>Why does ignorance need to be removed from the illusory physical body in order to perceive the atman?
The Atman is self-revealing, but the jiva covers this up with superimpositions, when the superimpositions are removed, the thing acting as the basis of the superimpositions naturally reveals itself; just as when you perceive a tree stump to be a person, and then correctly perceive ‘aha, it’s not a person but a tree stump’, the removal of the false superimposition of the concept of the human being onto the tree stump is simultaneous with the correct perception of the object as tree stump, when the false perception of human is removed, the tree stump reveals itself as such.

>>17394829
Are you Hindu? Or just learned this?

the thread is proof that analytic philosophy is a crime if done by the wrong people.

>>17393833
>Actually solves a major contradiction in neuroscience, too
Could you elaborate on what you mean? I’m curious

It is not possible to explain subjective conciousness within the limits of physical material, so we need to explain the physical & material to be within conciousness rather than the other way around.

>>17394829
How many different jivas are there?

you can't all at once:
1. hold that consciousness is causally inert
2. believe in an evolutionary origin which manifests traits according to their causal influence
3. not be a solipsist
without positing a major improbability.

you also cannot deny that consciousness is not fully reducible to "brain states" without some strange monism or panpsychism. well you can, but then you're denying the very obvious nature of your own experience.

the problem requires a plausible understanding of brain states, room for evolutionarily origin, and an acceptance of human phenomenology. there isn't anything beyond resolution here. it's just hard.

>>17395539
No I’m not a Hindu, although I agree with Advaita Vedanta and think what they say about the universe, God, consciousness etc is correct. I may travel to India some day so I can receive an authentic initiation into one of the schools of Hinduism that will still allow me to be a householder and raise a family unlike Advaita where monasticism is required, some of the other schools have very similar metaphysical positions to it. I learned all of that just through reading translations of the the writings of the Hindu philosopher/theologian Adi Shankara in my free time.

>>17395963
1 and 3 are compatible, and i don't see how 2 is related to 3, or how 2 contradicts 1.

>>17393978
What is north of the north pole?

>>17395950
The Upanishads don’t specify that, so I would say an indefinite amount.

>>17393174
Physicalism is compatible with mysterianism.

>>17396828

Nothing.

>>17393023
The "hard problem of consciousness" is really just a problem of physicalists, since their commitment to a physicalist ontology forces them to search for a reductionist account of consciousness. If you are a property dualist for example there is no hard problem, the brain has irreducibly mental features that are caused by the physical base.

>>17393023
Unsolvable and proof that materialism is retarded and that the soul indeed exists. The answer is right under your nose the whole time.

A single molecule doesn't have awareness or make decisions. Many molecules coming together to form a brain doesn't make any single one of those molecules aware or give them the ability to decide what to do. Molecules just exist and submit to the laws of the physical universe. The witness to what your eyes see and what your ears hear isn't a molecule, it's your soul. A molecule isn't deciding what you think say or do, it's your soul.

Okay, let's start with a few simple assumptions and then try a few thought experiments.
1) There is a continuity to consciousness. You are the consciousness moment to moment, day after day.
2) Consciousness is attached to or has its source in a physical substrate. Because consciousness can go on/off it must be intertwined with a substance of some kind.

Thought experiments
1) Where does one person begin and the other leave off, if consciousness is attached to brain matter? If I slowly replace target A's neurons with target B's neurons, is there a point where target A's consciousness switches bodies?
2) Imagine reconstructing a brain using an analogue structure to produce artificial consciousness. Split the city sized brain into two, and take them to separate corners of the world. Also, have a team of scientists "write" their conscious experience through interaction on the nano-scale. You should have a non-local transfer of information, as one consciousness experiences both halves of the brain simultaneously.

What could the solution be to these thought experiments? What if there was a non-local field, that integrated the soul and the matter of the brain(the powerhouse of the soul). It would explain how matter can be inter-related with consciousness.

>>17398747
Consciousness is the soul and the soul doesn't turn on or off. The vessel that the soul is connected to has different states of awake or asleep but the soul is constant. Neurons are made of molecules and molecules aren't aware of anything and don't decide to do anything. Molecules just exist and submit to the laws of the physical universe. The iron in the earth's crust doesn't decide to do anything and neither does the iron in your blood. The same is true for all the elements in the human body, not a single molecule in your body does anything on its own.

>>17398605
It looks like you haven't even read Chalmers, who came up with the phrase.

>>17398612
I love it when people use the term "materialism" instead of "physicalism" because you can just dismiss them as retards who've read nothing.

>>17400061
There's literally no difference you fucking autist. Have sex.

>>17393023
It's a non issue
>>17393225
/thread

Feser explains it all for you.

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/05/mind-body-problem-roundup.html

>>17398747
>1) Where does one person begin and the other leave off, if consciousness is attached to brain matter? If I slowly replace target A's neurons with target B's neurons, is there a point where target A's consciousness switches bodies?

Once you've disrupted whatever cognitive processes are in charge of creating this continuity. Check Maurice Merleau-Ponty for examples of when a psychopathology may actually affect the ontological biases of our natural attitude.
Consciousness is the act of weaving the various "sub-acts" of mental activity into a singular whole, and any number of disruption could prevent that.

>>17393044
This quote is wrong, cognitive closure is not the same as mysterianism and it is not even about complexity.

The world has two aspects: will and representation. Idea and desire. The human mind has access to both aspects of the world. Matter is an idea.

>>17400057
Who cares about Chalmers, I know what the hard problem of consciousness is and it's really a problem for physiclists. I guess we can add the substance dualists too, since they can't explain the mind-brain interaction. But property dualists have no problems here.

>>17401391
The Thomist account has the exact same problem with substance dualism, because it conceives the intellect as having no material organ, and so is unable to explain how it can interact with the body without breaking the law of the conservation of energy.
(Of course, Thomists have no problem explaining how memory, sensation and imagination can affect the body, since they agree that all of these have bodily organs. But not the intellect, which is purely immaterial, like Descartes' res cogitans.)

>>17402030
"purely immaterial" according to Thomists, that is

>>17402030
hmmm no Thomist are not substance dualists just like Platonists. unless you keep insisting on an August arbitrary definition of substance monism in which nobody ever believed
.

>>17401989
>But property dualists have no problems here.
yeah they just have the more obvious problem of mental causation

>>17393023

>>17393044
I guess we can throw all rationality out the window then. Platinga was right

>>17400061
They are often used interchangeably in the literature see the SEP article on physicalism.

>>17403605

Make that a square inside a circle if you want to be anal.

yall need to start solving the hard problem of how to get some bitches on yall dicks lmao

>>17404513
I first need to solve my dick's soft problem

>>17404564
Lmao
We were born the best generation, lads.

body and soul, corporeal and incorporeal, can only communicate through the pneuma. they are unified through the pneuma.

>>17393073
computers can perfectly emulate other computers though, so that's a dumb comparison

>>17404513
kek

is this not just the same thing hegel said but in a more ""scientific" language?

>>17393023
consciousness does not exist. it makes sense for us to distinguish mental phenomena from physical phenomena but only linguistically, so as to deal in like terms, not to produce a true description, a true description of mental phenomena will always be physicalist, that is, presuming a correspondence theory of truth, as idealists will posit a primacy of mental phenomena over physical phenomena... but that's frankly a fools errand, it's stupid, to assume mental phenomena has a foundation just because it's experienced, or just because it's experience is different from unconscious matter, that it somehow separates us from animals or even moon rocks.

let's say that, if consciousness does happen to exist, it's a feature of the universe rather than something possessable by anything... it's like gravity or thermodynamics... but then i'm reducing it, making my point moot. see how this works. anything said about consciousness needs to affirm it or else it's considered to have sidestepped the problem or evaded the question, when in reality the question relies on false premises, namely the distinction between experience and reality, which are really the same thing. if i experience a chair i'm not seeing some mental projection of a chair, i'm seeing the chair directly. there's no need for a middleman called experience and so no need for a notion of consciousness distinct from just the activity of the brain... controversial point but whatever posting anime girl.

>>17393117
But theists are always saying things like "you can't understand god's plan bro, you'd have to be god"

>>17407458
What do you think about what I said here?
>>17398655
>>17398809

>>17407526
since you already agree that particles just obey the laws of physics, what makes the soul necessary here? it sounds like you're saying the soul is what directs these particles, which would otherwise just fall apart?
i think we should just dispense with the notion of a soul, consciousness, experience, whatever you want to call it, after all, consciousness is just the last vestige of what they used to call the soul. there's no room for these things, no definition that corresponds to something. it's just not a fruitful idea, it denotes nothing, it has no consequence with regard to the actual material reality we inhabit, which is all that exists. the vividness of experience isn't proof of its independence from what produces it, it's all explainable and attributable to a set of material interactions and these interactions dont transcend materiality or anything they just produce more interactions. it's hard to wrap your head around it, but everything you experience doesn't belong to you in the sense of taking place inside some self-reflective prism, it's merely phenomena, it's all external in that sense, it's just an externality that has learned to simulate an internality by being self-referential, that's it.

The definition of free-will implies mystery, for if you could measure a choice it would become determined and not a choice.
Same problem with qyantum indetermenism, if it was measurable it wouldn't be what it is.

>>17407742
>What makes the soul necessary
Because molecules aren't conscious and we're wondering where consciousness comes from, it isn't a molecule. Right now you're seeing what your eyes see and hearing what your ears hear but "you" aren't a molecule because molecules can't do that, they can't witness anything. Individual molecules can't witness anything and molecules coming together forming a human brain doesn't make any individual molecule able to witness anything. I'm repeating everything I said in my first post. Nothing in the physical universe does anything on its own. That's why the non physical soul is necessary. Without a soul then the human body and brain is just an organic robot that does what it's programmed to do. The molecules wouldn't do anything that "you" decided they should do, free will wouldn't exist because nothing physical has free will. We demonstrate free will all the time. Were demonstrating free will with this conversation. Which molecule is deciding to type these words? Which molecule is witnessing the words on the screen? Molecules don't witness anything or decide anything. The soul does. Think about this, god existed before God's creation. First there was god, then god created the physical universe (light, matter, etc). So God isn't anything physical. You can search every cubic foot of the universe and never find a man in a cloud or a spaghetti monster because God isn't a person or thing. The scientific method is just the steps we take to observe the physical universe objectively. It doesn't matter how much we observe the physical universe and apply those steps because we won't find a physical god. Our soul is similar in that sense. Our soul isn't physical and can't be observed in the physical universe. But I can understand that something is witnessing everything and deciding everything and it isn't a molecule. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, all the elements in the human body, they all are just molecules that when observed anywhere else obviously don't do anything on their own. The physical universe doesn't witness or decide. Our soul does. Throwing out the notion of the soul is throwing out the notion of a god.

>>17393023
problem? take meds schizo.