It is the simplest one-sentence argument for physicalism! If consciousness is a purely physical phenomenon, then it should be no surprise that everyone with a healthy brain has one, including you. If it isn’t, then what supernatural event caused it to appear specifically in you?
Matter isn’t like that though. Consciousness is unique in being a phenomenon that is totally singular and unique. There are no phenomena in the physical world that aren’t considered as part of a wider collection of other physical phenomena. Eg this atom in relation to that. There is no this and that subject, there is only One. Not even getting into the fact that mental states are already non physical
""Consciousness is unique in being a phenomenon that is totally singular and unique""
I think the problem with the argument is that you are giving way too much credit to consciousness. You are giving an opinion on its uniqueness from the point of view of a Conscious entity that itself hasn't grasped it's own Consciousness.
The really exciting part of all the latest AI tech, you can prove 'state of a neural net' is the 'state of experiencing the phenomena'.
For Brains. They can now do an MRI on a brain, and re-construct what image it is thinking about.
So, State of Neurons = Phenomenal Experiences.
The Phenomena you are saying is not physical, is really the physical state of the brains neurons.
The experience of seeing something is completely different from the physical state of the neurons that see though. You have to be "in" the physical state in order to have the actual experience. Any physical description of the neurons does nothing to capture the actual experience of being those neurons, and that's the gap.
But if you have one person reporting an experience and can capture the 'physical state'.
And then take someone else and have them report an experience, and capture the 'physical state'.
And they match, then you can start making the relationship.
Then if my mind is captured, and I'm thinking something that correlates, then I can 'assume' i'm experiencing what the other person is.
It will always be imperfect. I agree the experience of each person is unique.
But-> The whole problem of the 'eye-can't-see-the-eye' means the eye doesn't exist is also kind of just playing with logic.
So just because we can't embody the experience of another person, doesn't mean we can't reason about how that experience is being generated.
I agree there might be a relationship between the physical state and the actual experience of it, but ultimately they cannot be bridged. There's only one way to bridge that gap and it's to "be" the physical state, and that's a concept that has absolutely no analogy in physical phenomena.
But it's even worse than you say, because those relationships are generated purely within the mind, we don't find them outside the mind, so really all physicality is an illusion, it's all ultimately internal.
Or even worse, the phenomena doesn't exist internally or externally. They are a combination of the processing of the sensory inputs and the internal model. So the 'phenomena' is really the processing of the inputs, no substance at all because it is the processing itself.
Kind of what was described in 'Being You', by Anil Seth. Our reality is a 'controlled hallucination'. Though I don't like the terminology because it is to easily misunderstood.
But. Guess, I fall on side that we can still study how Phenomena is generated internally. And still be able to understand it. Just because we can't experience the exact same phenomena as someone else, shouldn't mean we can't figure out how it is generated.
> so really all physicality is an illusion, it's all ultimately internal.
You don't really believe that. If you did, you would be fine jumping out of an airplane without a parachute, or something even more fatal.. because the physical "doesn't matter", only the internal.
If I do that I think I will have a negative mental experience, therefore it matters. The internal world will become undesirable if I jump out of an airplane. There is no external reason why I don't want to do that. If I could jump out of an airplane without a parachute and not expect it will have a negative impact on my internal world I would be fine with doing it.
Why on earth would doing ANYTHNG in an imaginary, unimportant, realm affect your mental internal world?
You don't want to admit it, but you're basically confirming that you do understand that you can not stand apart from the physical realm. You are playing mental gymnastics to pretend you're in touch with some higher knowledge and understanding... but you're still constrained to the physical world, just like the rest of us.
Well, a story can also affect my internal world, if that’s your criteria of reality, yet I doubt you consider that as real as the physical world. Basically, according to your argument, there is already no distinction between physical and mental, which is the very reason I simply say it’s all mental. The reason I don’t call it all physical is because physical usually means “out there” and not “in here”. No, everything, absolutely everything, is “in here”. There is no “out there”. I perceive reality in this way. If you touch some outside directly that is amazing magic and a contradiction to any Logic I know.
It seems kind of like you can’t really accept that this is how I understand reality. I have a tip for you: others’ views will be much clearer to you if you don’t assume they’re lying about believing them. Maybe they really do see differently to you
There's a recent video you can search, a woman walking out the door of her apartment building. A young man sneaks up behind her and puts a bullet in her head. She died.
She didn't have to have any thought about the bullet. She didn't have to think ANYTHING about the physical world. Nothing about her state of mind affected the outcome.
Physical reality is independent of what we think of it.
> Maybe they really do see differently to you
I appreciate you think you see it differently. But your actions show you don't believe it as deeply as you think you do. You are a prisoner of the physical realm, not an inhabitant of a higher, more spiritual, plane. What good is it saying something is imaginary, if it affects everything you do, and you can't escape it. That sounds like something very real indeed.
I can’t really infer anything about the internal world of the woman. Also according to Buddhism the state of her mind would affect into which realm she was reborn after death, and arguably getting shot itself was a manifestation of her mental state. Yogachara philosophy of Buddhism says that all appearances of external reality is created by our internal world
The point of the video, is that she had zero awareness of the bullet. It all happened in 2 seconds without attracting her attention. I'm sure if you're honest, you can think of 1000 other examples as well.
Physical reality proceeds without your thoughts, it will continue after you and I die, it doesn't need our feelings or thoughts to exists and persist.
> Physical reality proceeds without your thoughts, it will continue after you and I die, it doesn't need our feelings or thoughts to exists and persist.
My belief is it is unfounded and ultimately based in narcissism.
"I am so important that I create the external reality, I really am
the center of the universe, it wouldn't exist without my mind"
It's an appeal to self-importance.
It can't account for something like the fossil record, that existed
before any human was on the planet; other than to say, "I dreamed
that up in my own special imaginary fiction!!"
Perhaps the primal nature of the world isn't physical matter, but
to pretend that we create reality with our mind, is not only silly,
it's dangerous and flies in the face of how everyone, even those
who claim to believe otherwise, actually act in the world.
Well, only deluded beings (including myself) act that way. Buddhas and bodhisattvas don’t. Indeed they can bend so called “physical reality” to their will, manifesting physical bodies and appearances in the minds of others. It’s just simply the following: form is emptiness, emptiness is form
That is NOT what the Buddha taught. It is expressly the opposite.
Promoting these types of wrong understandings really distract people from further learning.
This turns people away from further investigations that might help them.
People that might be aided in their suffering by learning more about buddhism, read some weirdness posted about "buddha can earth bend, whoooo, I learned about buddhism from watching Avatar, I'm a bender", and are completely turned away.
Read and meditate further before promoting something that is incorrect.
Yes he did, it’s in the Lotus sutra and Lankavatara sutras, to name two. Perhaps you’re a Pali canon fundamentalist or something but thats not my problem, what I’m saying is orthodox Mahayana: Buddhas can create bodies and are basically omnipotent in the Mahayana. The lotus sutra even says that the Buddha faked his appearance on this Earth so that the sravakas would have a nice narrative to believe in
Also the fact you said meditate makes me think you are quite ignorant about Buddhism. Most Buddhists don’t meditate, the idea that most do is a western misconception. I’m a pure land Buddhist, which is the most popular in the world, and we mainly engage in recitation and offerings and bowing
EDIT and I understand it may just be ignorance but it’s highly offensive to characterise traditional Mahayana Buddhist beliefs as some kind of children’s show. This is effectively slandering the Dharma
To tell people that buddhas have supernatural powers, and take that literally, is turning people away from the teaching.
'Faking' his appearance? Being omnipotent in this physical world? Able to manipulate this world?
You are supposed to understand that those are metaphors. Stories, not truth.
Language is imperfect and only points the way, not to be taken literally. A core teaching is how imperfect language is, and that even the sutras should be only taken as a rough guide and eventually abandoned when they no longer serve a purpose.
You can cite sutras, that doesn't mean you understand them. I fear that publishing these concepts as if an authority is damaging to people.
Meditate, prayer, recitation/mantras. Call it what you want.
Concentration/Samadhi is part of the 8-fold path.
That you would say that is not part of Buddhism is frankly making me think this whole thing is a Troll. Maybe you can make some argument that concentration in every moment is meditation, so you don't need to sit. But to say most Buddhist don't? Come on.
You know enough Buddhist terms to Troll someone on the internet. But this is damaging. Someone could read what you say and think that is Buddhism and be turned away or mislead.
Also, there is no such thing as slander to Buddhist, like there is some god in a Church that is taking offense. I guess we all get offended by things, and what I said was offensive, wrong speech. Just not technically 'slander'.
> To tell people that buddhas have supernatural powers, and take that literally, is turning people away from the teaching.
No it isn't, it's literally the sutras say and what a vast majority of Buddhists actually believe.
> You are supposed to understand that those are metaphors. Stories, not truth.
Then why don't we see this reflected in traditional teachings? This is a modern western reinterpretation, so called "secular Buddhism". Supernatural powers are well documented in Buddhism and even today in Tibetan Buddhism.
> Concentration/Samadhi is part of the 8-fold path.
A vast majority of Buddhists are relying on Amida's path for salvation through the Pure Land and/or producing merit for a better rebirth though, they don't practise such things in this lifetime.
> You know enough Buddhist terms to Troll someone on the internet. But this is damaging. Someone could read what you say and think that is Buddhism and be turned away or mislead.
Well, I'm right, and it sounds like I've actually researched, studied, and practised Buddhism more than you.
> Also, there is no such thing as slander to Buddhist
Yes there is, it's even included in Amida's 18th vow:
> Excluded, however, are those who commit the Five Gravest Transgressions and slander the right Dharma.
and is mentioned throughout the Lotus sutra. For example the whole basis of Nichiren's theology is that those who slander the Buddhadharma will be reborn in avicci hell.
What you are presenting is a very inaccurate view of the Buddhadharma. Let me set some facts in order:
* The sutras do teach extensively of supernatural powers
* The sutras do teach extensively of both mind-only philosophy and anti-physicalism (in both the sravakayana and the Mahayana!)
* There is no evidence that those aspects of the sutras should not be taken literally
* Those aspects of the sutras are indeed taken literally by most Buddhists historically
* Most Buddhists in the world follow paths that don't involve meditation/samadhi/concentration
* Buddhism ultimately even has no concept of metaphor vs. literal, since everything is emptiness anyway, so already it denies the fundamental reality of anything
If you are actually willing to learn about Buddhism, not just some western misconception of it, I am willing to point you to resources...
however from what you say I have a feeling you will just abuse the teaching, and likely be reborn in Hell, due to your fundamentalist religious belief, therefore I will not pass on any resources to you beyond what I did unless you can somehow prove to me that you won't abuse it
It's okay if YOU don't want to believe those things, but going around and telling others that they are wrong for accurately portraying the Dharma is unwise. Please do more research, ideally with an actual teacher
Well. I certainly agree that arguing on the internet about who is a Buddhist, and who is not, is hurtful and not helping anyone. I just happen to think you are the one leading people down the wrong path. But so do you, of me.
Seems like we understand words differently. Have different definitions of same words.
You say I'm 'fundamentalist' even to point of going to Hell, then in return say the most scary extreme 'fundamentalist' things. Maybe we just mean different things by that word 'fundamentalist'.
You say you are Mahayana, then say things that are not very Mahayana.
Then you say for me to get a teacher. And I'm thinking, man your teacher isn't doing you any favors, you should find another.
Who is right? No way to know?
So. Guess there is nothing else. I think you are wrong, you think I am wrong.
We can quote the same sutras endlessly and both have opposite interpretations. Can quote demographics, and 'who meditates', 'who doesn't', what is it, what is it not, as some kind of proof. Using sutras to disprove sutras, then cling to them, is kind of blowing me away. I haven't encountered something like this.
I guess I just have to say, to try and help. Try to understand the sutras a bit more and less.
You are very wound up in conceptual thought. And it seems to be blinding you. Sutras are to be abandoned when their purpose is done, not clung to.
""Though others may talk of the Way of the Buddhas as
something to be reached by various pious practices and
by sutra-study, you must have nothing to do with such
ideas.
"" - Huang Po
Ultimately, I am actually saying things that are in line with the traditional teachings and is what Buddhism actually is among most people in the world today. You said I was perpetuating falsehoods, and all I care about right now is stating that actually I am not. All this stuff about "conceptualisation is a barrier on the path" is not really relevant. We don't even believe it is in my tradition, in fact.
Next time just think a little before you accuse someone of what you did. You are the one that insisted I was wrong about the concepts of Buddhism, that's why I called you a fundamentalist. The previous comments are still there, you know? We can actually just go back and check this.
Now, what do we plan to achieve in this discussion? You accused me of perpetuating falsehoods, I showed that I'm not, now you are upset. Why? I guess it's just human to not be able to accept when you are wrong. Quite sad but that's just how it is I guess. I won't reply again, for your sake. I don't want you to hurt yourself even more. I hope you have taken some education from my information at least, and have dispelled some ignorance for you.
> Not even getting into the fact that mental states are already non physical
Conjecture, at best. All thought experiments purporting to show this non-physicality are deeply flawed. We literally have no reason to conclude that mental states are non-physical.
You're saying that people shouldn't be surprised that they're conscious. That may be true, but it's irrelevant to the argument I was talking about. The relevant fact there isn't merely that you're conscious, but that you are (consciously) the particular person that you are.
Bowsamic orignally posed a question that gets at the relevant fact: "Why am I me and not someone or something else?" However, the argument here doesn't rest on this question being puzzling. The argument is simply that the relevant fact of personal identity (whether puzzling or not) does not seem to reduce to any specifiable set of physical facts.
The form of the argument is exactly like a Platonist argument against physicalism: "2+2=4" is a fact and does not reduce to any set of physical facts; therefore not all facts are physical facts. This argument does not require the assumption that truths of arithmetic are surprising or difficult to explain. However, I think the irreducibility claim is more compelling in the case of personal identity than for mathematical truths.
To a physicalist, the only way to interpret the question "why am I me and not someone else?" is "why is my physical body identical to my physical body and not identical to another physical body?". The framework simply doesn't allow alternative interpretations. This interpretation is a tautology, because in the universe, things are identical to themselves, and only to themselves.
If you are using an abstract definition of "yourself" (such as your brain's internal representation of you), you are no longer talking about physical objects, so of course your question can't be answered using physical facts alone. Similarly, "2+2=4" is a statement about our abstract representation of the world, not the real world itself. That we can reason about integers without relying on facts about the real world doesn't mean that integers are any more "real" than unicorns - or for that matter, your concept of "self".
That's why it's a good argument against physicalism. According to what you just said, everything we ever experience is talking about "not the real world itself" according to physicalism, therefore why does it ever make sense to assert the "real world itself" over what we actually experience? It's like watching a movie and believing in the movie more than the fact you are sitting watching a screen.
> According to what you just said, everything we ever experience is talking about "not the real world itself"
I don't know how that follows from what I said. When someone says "the floor is slippery", that refers to a very much real physical property of a very much real thing. When someone says "the floor is lava", that means we're playing a game. We have no problem distinguishing between the two.
If you define yourself as the set of atoms that currently make you up, you are talking about the real world. If you define yourself as the set of your memories and experiences, you are not. The former definition has a lot less issues than the latter - firstly because you don't have to define anything further, you can just point at yourself; and secondly because a perfect clone of you would have the same set of memories and experiences, and that doesn't make them you. This is why "Why am I myself?" is much easier to answer when we're talking about your atoms. Now, if a theory can answer a question with ease, how is that question an argument against it? I've certainly never heard anyone say "If global warming is real, why are my car tires melting into the asphalt?".
> Now, if a theory can answer a question with ease, how is that question an argument against it?
Bowsamic may have a different take on this, but in my version of the argument, the point is not to answer the 'why' question. The 'why' question is just used to gesture at the relevant non-tautologous and apparently non-physical fact. So it doesn't really help with anything to redefine the terms of the question until it becomes a tautologous statement about atoms. All that shows is that physicalism doesn't have a problem with the concept of two physical things being the same thing – which isn't in dispute.
>If you define yourself as the set of atoms that currently make you up [...]
I don't see how I'm going to do this without some prior notion of who I am. Otherwise, one set of atoms is as good as any other.
> The 'why' question is just used to gesture at the relevant non-tautologous and apparently non-physical fact
Yeah, but to clearly define what that fact means, you'd have to introduce a bunch of intermediate definitions, and eventually you might just end up in physics-land again. It isn't physics' fault that the human brain is complicated.
> I don't see how I'm going to do this without some prior notion of who I am
Protip: if you pinch it and it hurts, it's probably yours :) Well, that or a very angry cat.
To be more serious: having prior notions of things is fine. Required, even. We can't reason about things without having at least a vague understanding of the language. It can't be turtles all the way down.
>and eventually you might just end up in physics-land again.
Sure, anything might turn out to be explicable by future physics (or indeed, future astrology, future phrenology, or any possible future knowledge). There are no knock-down arguments in this domain. The point is that the fact of your personal conscious identity is apparently not a physical fact, which is a prima facie argument against some of the stronger forms of physicalism.
>To be more serious: having prior notions of things is fine.
You can't use the physical definition to dispense with other notions of personal identity if you need those very notions to bootstrap the physical definition (and maintain it over time, as your 'set of atoms' is constantly changing). To point out that your informal notion of self is connected somehow with a loosely-defined lump of physical stuff isn't really to succeed in reducing anything to physics. It's just to say what pretty much everyone agrees with: that humans have physical bodies.
> You can't use the physical definition to dispense with other notions of personal identity if you need those very notions to bootstrap the physical definition
Now that you mention, I don't need to. "I" simply means "the person who is currently speaking" (or in this case, writing). This already determines, beyond reasonable doubt, which physical body we're talking about. No other definition needed, since you can't say "I" without speaking. QED. Sorry, I should have noticed this 4 comments earlier.
(Caveat: this definition doesn’t feel satisfying, which might be the source of our disagreement, but I can’t put my finger on why - perhaps you can)
> the fact of your personal conscious identity is apparently not a physical fact
The human brain is astonishingly good at BS-ing itself, so I wouldn't attribute much to how you intuitively feel about your own conscious self. To me, this smells like a more abstract and philosophical version of the puddle analogy.
> "I" simply means "the person who is currently speaking"
But on this definition you can raise the question of why the person who is currently speaking is the person who is currently speaking (which by alternating de re and de dicto interpretations can be understood in the same non-tautologous ways as e.g. "Why is the person who is currently the President the person who is currently the President?") So this linguistic analysis doesn't succeed in dissolving facts about personal identity into nothing. You still have the fact that you are who you are and not someone else. And the intuitive notion of personhood (on which your definition depends and which you haven't in any way reduced to physics) is intimately connected with the idea of a more-or-less uninterrupted stream of first-person conscious experience.
> I wouldn't attribute much to how you intuitively feel about your own conscious self.
If we set 'intuitive feelings' aside, then of course the whole problem of conscious experience disappears immediately.
> And the intuitive notion of personhood (on which your definition depends and which you haven't in any way reduced to physics) is intimately connected with the idea of a more-or-less uninterrupted stream of first-person conscious experience.
"person": a member of the genus Homo
"speaking": phenomenon wherein the previous object vibrates its own vocal chords and moves its own mouth to produce sound waves
"currently": a point in time in which the aforementioned act occurs
Notably missing are: any references to continuity of experience, conscious action, or even thought. Suggestion: I have, in fact, completely reduced it to physics.
> You still have the fact that you are who you are and not someone else
Please describe to me a hypothetical universe where that statement doesn't hold true. If there is none, then we must accept that this "fact" does not require any explanation, and therefore can be dismissed as trivial.
Your linguistic analysis of 'I' doesn't work if understood in purely physical terms. Lots of people are speaking at any given moment, but I don't refer to all of them if I say 'I'.
Consider the absurdity of the question “who am I?”, uttered by an amnesiac, if it means simply “Which lump of physical stuff is currently speaking?” Even if we ignore the problem mentioned in the first paragraph, the answer is trivial – the same lump that’s making the noises. But it’s difficult to accept that the amnesiac is confused over a triviality: they really don’t know who they are; they lack a key piece of non-trivial, non-tautologous knowledge.
>If there is none, then we must accept that this "fact" does not require any explanation
As I've tried to emphasise, I do not claim that the fact is puzzling or requires an explanation, only that it is a fact. By analogy, it is not puzzling that the sum of two and two is four, and no non-trivial explanation of this fact appears to be required, but it is still a fact. Now of course you can try to make such fact dissolve via various forms of philosophical therapy. For example, there are some philosophers of mathematics who would try to argue that all mathematical facts are tautologous. You are trying to do something similar with facts of personal identity. However, philosophers of mathematics who claim that all mathematical truths are disguised tautologies can point to lots of actual work that has been done to show that this position is more plausible than it might first appear.
> Consider the absurdity of the question “who am I?”, uttered by an amnesiac
In that context, that question would just mean "what was my life like prior to losing my memories?", wouldn't it? So in this instance, the missing non-trivial knowledge is their long-term memory, not a problem with understanding the definition of "I".
> For example, there are some philosophers of mathematics who would try to argue that all mathematical facts are tautologous. You are trying to do something similar with facts of personal identity.
I'm not arguing that the subjective experience of personal identity is tautologous, I'm arguing that it's a chemical reaction (EDIT: and that the underlying objective truth is tautologous). Any feeling about the intuitive concept of "myself" having some kind of esoteric component above the physical matter (which I also share, don't be mistaken) would, presumably, also be given voice to by a computer simulation of your brain. That would be your brain being caught red-handed in the act of lying to itself about how special it is. And if this turns out not to be the case, then we have rock solid evidence that something is indeed missing from our simulation, which gives us an opportunity to measure that something, which in turn makes that something physical.
> Your linguistic analysis of 'I' doesn't work if understood in purely physical terms. Lots of people are speaking at any given moment, but I don't refer to all of them if I say 'I'.
Valid point. Refinement: in any speech, "I" refers to the person making that speech.
