FreeTHinker4eva
Advocate
mind is metaphysical.
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Is consciousness physical or nonphysical?
- Thread starter Gambit
- Start date
same difference....just word play
Haven't we covered this? First, the standard interpretation holds that quantum systems are irreducibly statistical and the "wave-like properties are probabilities that cannot and should not be understood as in any sense corresponding to a real system. Second, this is a carry-over from classical physics language, much like the fact that quantum systems can have momentum, only instead of a value momentum (like every observable) is an operator that acts on the mathematical entity that is the only system which can exist in QM according to the orthodox interpretation. How many more papers and monographs do i have to upload/attach and/or cite?
Runewolf1973
Materialism/Animism
Agreed. The simple fact that it is something "of" matter means that it is physical, whether is a product of, or an activity of, or an emergent property of does not matter.
jchristopher
Member
It depends. If you mean "consciousness" as in the opposite of being unconscious or "knocked out," then I'd say it's physical (neurological). If referring to one's conscience or moral compass, then not physical.
Runewolf1973
Materialism/Animism
But if one's conscience or moral compass affects their physical actions, then yes, it is physical. For something to affect a physical system, even a thought, it must in some way be physical. At least that's how I see it.
jchristopher
Member
I believe the ability to discern between right and wrong is an independent spiritual component (I can further explain why if needed). However, that spiritual component must interact with our minds in order to translate that knowledge into decision and physical action.
Rick O'Shez
Irishman bouncing off walls
I think it does matter. Saying that consciousness is an emergent property of a central nervous system doesn't mean that it's identical with that central nervous system.
Generally speaking, an emergent property is defined in some sense by the fact that it isn't identical with the parts that make it up (e.g., consciousness as an emergent property can't be identical or reduced to the neuronal activity that it emerges from).
Runewolf1973
Materialism/Animism
[/QUOTE]
I am an animist and I believe that anything we might label as "spiritual" is just another unexplained aspect of that which is entirely physical.
I am an animist and I believe that anything we might label as "spiritual" is just another unexplained aspect of that which is entirely physical.
Runewolf1973
Materialism/Animism
It doesn't need to be identical, nor do we need to entirely understand how it works for us to know that it is physical simply by default because it is derived from that which is physical.
MD
qualiaphile
Everyone is wrong except you eh Bunyip? Even if there are experts in their fields.
Go join the YECs and CC deniers, you belong with them.
Sapiens
Polymathematician
Fire is entirely a physical (chemical) process and is dependent completely upon matter.
Sapiens
Polymathematician
... and I'd thought it was the bottom of my foot all this time.
I'm not sure how we could ever know that?
Our human manifestation doesn't (as far as I'm aware!) provide the capability to identify or recognise consciousness outside of a physical framework, if it did exist.
PS.... I voted 'both'. It's a great question and one that I mainly draw on Buddhist nondualism ideas to think about.
Robert Landbeck
Member
Robert Landbeck
Member
Whatever polls may say, it doesn't move us any closer to a resolving the question. But such a answer must begin with another question: what function was consciousness intended to play within the human condition? Certainly there could be no morality or conscience without the awareness of self that consciousness provides. Thus the only means to discover such an answer would require moral insight, knowledge not of human intellectual origin, perfectly objective to the human condition. What religion has historically failed to offer. But there is a group on the web I've come across who think they have discovered it? More at The Final Freedoms
We are spiritual entities. As such, we are pure consciousness. But we (our consciousness) is isolated from the spirit and we reside in our brains. By doing so, we feel the hold on the body through muscle tension. This is the only thing that actually creates the 'physical'. And also by doing this we lose ~99% of our actual conscious awareness.
Gambit
Well-Known Member
And you haven't furnished with any scientific evidence that consciousness is physical. What's stopping you?