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I once read a comment on here that I found interesting but haven't been able to find it again. Basically it flipped the problem on its head. We're arguing how
by losvedir 5mo ago
I once read a comment on here that I found interesting but haven't been able to find it again.
Basically it flipped the problem on its head. We're arguing how you start at the physical substrate and get to consciousness. They argued that you could start with consciousness and argue how you get to the physical side (experimentation via your conscious experience, etc). It was from a religious individual who called the conscious experience God and went further into how we all share this sliver of godhood.
Does anyone who knows philosophical "camps" know the terms for what I'm trying to remember? I guess I've leaned "materialist" for most of my life, but what other common philosophies (as in the academic discipline) are there?
- Joker_vD 5mo agoThis side is traditionally called "idealist", and it usually very quickly collapses into solipsism of different varieties. There is not much you can show against the "there is a single existing soul that has many different persons (as opposed to each person having a different, personal soul) that dreams about the 'physical' reality" hypothesis except "I don't think my imagination is that good", really.
- visarga 5mo agoWhat I reject most about idealism is that it is free. Life is hard and expensive, but soul is free. How come? Is our soul understood like a spherical cow?
- mjburgess 5mo agoYes, it's called idealism. And the whole field of it is a pile of fallacies of ambiguity that can take years to see and treat with caution.
- StackBPoppin 5mo agoI don't think I've shared my thoughts on here, but this sounds a lot like my thought process: what if you start with nothing but consciousness, then find a path to a physical universe? Consciousness is inherently about awareness, so at some point the consciousness would be aware of itself. Now it has the concepts of before/after, and from that opposites, incrementing, subtracting, 1 dimensional space etc. Eventually through this process you could "spawn up" other consciousnesses each expanding their individual bubbles of experience and understanding, eventually getting complex enough to create an entire universe with physical matter that can be experienced by other consciousnesses.
- squidbeak 5mo agoThe problem with this line of thought is that consciousness can be damaged when it's physical container is damaged. A piece of falling masonry can be enough to shear off large parts or all of it. If consciousness was fundamentally distinct, this wouldn't be the case, would it?
- teodosin 5mo agoIs it consciousness that gets damaged, or just its contents? If you destroy an object, can you say that you've destroyed the space it occupied?
- hnfong 5mo agoThere is a "The Matrix" (the movie) argument where we posit these: 1. Whatever you believe is true is true (this is how the consciousness builds worlds before there is any physical existence) 2. Our consciousness built the physical world and runs it like a simulation. 3. The reason our minds and consciousness are highly correlated to the physical situation is to make the simulation feel real. It's a specifically designed feature that to a large extent synchronizes the "host" and the simulated objects so that despite being outside of the simulation, the "host" feels like they are inside the simulation. 4. The corollary to 3 (and 1) is that if you are damaged or die in the simulation, that effect is mirrored outside the simulation too (to some extent). ---- (Never thought my adventures in metaphysics would be useful in a HN discussion thread!)
- amelius 5mo agoOne thing is certain: we are talking about consciousness. This means that the world does not work like this: there is physics, and above it there is consciousness which is merely monitoring the physics. This cannot be true (or is unlikely), since we are discussing consciousness and therefore the physical act of talking is driven by something that knows that consciousness exists. There must be a link back from consciousness to physics. A simpler way is to assume that physics IS consciousness. Physics as a science is a kind of introspective activity.
- mjburgess 5mo agoThe link is called causation, and it is not simpler to assume its absence. It seems simpler only because no one ever works through the full consequences, because the project of doing so always fails very quickly or terminates in an inexplicable bag called "god" (or the trasncendental ego) or similar which serves to do all the work of things which cannot be explained. This kind of simplicity is a very deceitful on, because it offers to seem to explain everything with nothing, and having phrased nothing in pleasant-sounding ways, concludes that this simplicity is a virtue.
- noutella 5mo agoIt does offer beauty and relief to the fact that the observable universe is something like 10^80 the volume of a humain being. At that incomprehensible scale, I think poetry and spirituality is a rather nice placeholder while loads of brilliant minds work on our understanding of physics
- visarga 5mo ago> There must be a link back from consciousness to physics. Yes, and it is trivial to prove. One second lapse of attention and you could get bitten by a snake, or run over by a car. If the top level (consciousness) fails, the neurons die too. Cells depend on this centralized decision point to exist. There is no way to have humans without consciousness because ... they would not be able even to put the thing into the other thing to make more of us without it ... excuse the language, but the argument is solid.
- svnt 5mo agoClosest thing is probably Bernardo Kastrup’s analytic idealism.
- namero999 5mo agoThis is at the same time one of the most solid metaphysics and one of the least known or studied. At least for now.
- bobson381 5mo agoAdvaita Vedanta or Alan Watts style looking - essentially the idea that there are no separate things or events, sort of like Whitehead's process philosophy. Trippy stuff and a little bit out there, but consistent with some other ways of looking at things. What is real by Adam Becker goes into some underpinnings here too.
- vidarh 5mo agoWhat you describe sounds like variation of Berkeley's subjective idealism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_idealism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_idealism
- qsera 5mo ago>Basically it flipped the problem on its head. I thought it was me[1], but I don't remember making the "shared godhood" argument https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47999867 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47999867
- erythro 5mo agoPanpsychism? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism
- karol 5mo agoGet familiar with Donald Hoffman - plenty of good podcasts with him.
- dwd 5mo agoI feel like Hoffman's core idea really tries to pull string theory into our understanding of reality. If reality has 10, 11, or 26 dimensions and we can only perceive 4 of them then there are dimensions where other things could exist. I like his interface theory and the idea that our perception is an evolutionary fitness for purpose, but his conscious agents is straight out pseudo-religious/panpsychism.
- dwd 5mo agoAnother "camp" is panpsychism, which is often seen as a polar opposite of materialism. David Chalmers and Philip Goff are the two most prominent people pushing it. They espouse consciousness or subjective experience is fundamental and contained in all matter. There's a long history of anti-dualism in Kabbalist traditions, Christian Mysticism and Gnosticism. For example, the Gospel of Thomas sayings #3, #77 and #113.
- perfmode 5mo ago[flagged]