materialism refers to the belief that matter comes first, and that consciousness and experience came after millions of years of matter developing into life and life evolving and so on.
I'm not denying this is a reasonable possibility, or that you're wrong or crazy to take that assumption. What I'm saying is that that's what it is, an assumption. Too many times materalists forget this.
The discussion of whether we "go" "somewhere" when we die is complicated, in part perhaps because you're assuming that anyone that questions whether there's total annihilation of experience after death, you assume those people believe some preconceived notion such as heaven, ghosts, etc. And probably operating on assumptions about what we mean by "we". For example, our bodies don't disappear when we die, the matter that composed them is still part of the world, it just spreads and loses the recognizable pattern of "John" or whatever. I see no logical reason why the same can't be true for the mental faculties. Why would information simply disappear into nothingness?
Wine has an effect on the mind because there is an obvious interaction between matter and experience. If you are driving a car and I throw dark paint at the windshield, that will affect the operation of the car even if I don't affect you directly. The fact that your driving is affected does not mean that you are the car.
As for the brain as the center of consciousness, that would be akin to believing earth to be the center of gravity, without understanding that gravity can act in less obvious, more subtle ways across the universe. But we have no way of measuring consciousness objectively, and we possibly will never have, and this is why I think it's important to highlight how many of the things people take for granted about what we are and our place in the universe, are assumptions and beliefs, not facts.
I'm not denying this is a reasonable possibility, or that you're wrong or crazy to take that assumption. What I'm saying is that that's what it is, an assumption. Too many times materalists forget this.
The discussion of whether we "go" "somewhere" when we die is complicated, in part perhaps because you're assuming that anyone that questions whether there's total annihilation of experience after death, you assume those people believe some preconceived notion such as heaven, ghosts, etc. And probably operating on assumptions about what we mean by "we". For example, our bodies don't disappear when we die, the matter that composed them is still part of the world, it just spreads and loses the recognizable pattern of "John" or whatever. I see no logical reason why the same can't be true for the mental faculties. Why would information simply disappear into nothingness?
Wine has an effect on the mind because there is an obvious interaction between matter and experience. If you are driving a car and I throw dark paint at the windshield, that will affect the operation of the car even if I don't affect you directly. The fact that your driving is affected does not mean that you are the car.
As for the brain as the center of consciousness, that would be akin to believing earth to be the center of gravity, without understanding that gravity can act in less obvious, more subtle ways across the universe. But we have no way of measuring consciousness objectively, and we possibly will never have, and this is why I think it's important to highlight how many of the things people take for granted about what we are and our place in the universe, are assumptions and beliefs, not facts.