SteveKlinko wrote: ↑May 6th, 2022, 11:39 am A Physicalist is a Physical Monist or Material Monist. They Believe that all Conscious Phenomena can be explained by Physical Material Phenomena. Some Physicalists go so far as to discount Conscious Phenomena as even Existing at all. The Physicalists have complained about three basic statements that I have made. They seem to show an emotionalism in their replies that reveals a hidden frustration with their inability to address the statements in any coherent way. They are getting more and more Delirious. They are self appointed Guardians of the knowledge base of Science but that knowledge base is empty with regard to questions about Consciousness. They will not admit that there is Zero Scientific understanding of Consciousness so they resort to Insults and other Diversionary tactics that only reveal their ignorance. If Science cannot deal with Something then that Something can only be Supernatural or Religious in their way of thinking. They therefore need to make that Something go away rather than trying to study it more and come up with a Scientific Explanation. This necessarily implies that they think that Science has obtained all the knowledge that it will ever obtain. But this is not the Science that I know. I have been taught and expect that Science is discovering New Phenomena all the time. Here are the three statements that annoy the Physicalists to the point of mental breakdown:The battle between physicalism and idealism may be futile. Existence may be about understanding the various aspects of the human being and other forms of life, in which both mind and consciousness come into play. It is likely that science and other disciplines, including the arts and religion come from different angles.
1) Science has Zero, I repeat Zero, understanding with regard to Consciousness.
2) Conscious Experiences are in a whole different Category of Phenomena than any known Scientific Category of Phenomena.
3) The Conscious Experience of Pain can give an Organism or Animal a statistical Evolutionary survival advantage that can affect the Evolution of that Organism or Animal.
As for the first statement, the Physicalists say things like: The Neural Activity IS the Conscious Activity and then they say that Explains it, end of discussion. This is Naive and Shallow beyond all reasonableness. It isn't even a good Scientific guess. It is Pure Belief. It's so bad I have to think the Physicalists are not really serious when they say things like this but are just messing with me. They think that Measuring Neural Activity IS the same thing as Measuring the Conscious Activity. They are Measuring the Neural Correlates of Conscious Experience not the Conscious Experience itself. They treat the actual Conscious Experience as if it did not even exist. I can not understand how they get to this point in their Physicalist delirium. To perpetuate the Physicalist Belief they must Deny the actual existence of the Conscious Experience. The Conscious Experience of something like the Redness of Red is a Self Evident reality of the Universe, and they deny it. The Conscious Experience of Redness is something that Science cannot Explain. The Self evident reality of it is that it exists only in the Mind. They know the Redness exists in the Mind because they See it too but still they must deny this Self Evident Phenomenon of Consciousness because if it did exist Science would have to Explain it. But Science cannot Explain it at this point in time.
The second statement points out how the Physicalists might come to understand that Science doesn't have any Knowledge of what Conscious Experience could be. If Conscious Experience could be found to be in any known Category of Scientific Phenomena then Science would have had a lot to say about Consciousness by now. Instead we get Silence. Conscious Experience is in a Category all by itself and this new Category of Phenomena has not been integrated into the Scientific knowledge base yet. Science does not know what to do with this Category of Phenomena. Since Science does not know what to do with this Category of Conscious Phenomena the Physicalists say it is Supernatural or Religious. It's neither of these, it's simply not understood yet. Don't be afraid you little Physicalists, those scary Conscious Experiences will not hurt you.
I think the third statement is completely sensible from even the most basic understanding of Evolutionary mechanisms. The Physicalists completely oppose this statement however. I don't know how they can justify thinking that the Conscious Experience of Pain will not actually increase the statistical Evolutionary survival advantage for an Organism or Animal and thus influence Evolutionary outcomes. And it is not just Pain but all the multitudes of other Conscious Experiences that exist in the Universe. It is a logical conclusion to state that even primitive Consciousness can influence Evolution. Evolution is not a completely Mindless, Bio Electrical Chemical, DNA Mutating, Environmentally Influenced process. Rather, Evolution is driven by a combination of primitive Conscious Desires, Bio Electrical Chemical processes, Random DNA Mutations, and Environmental Influences. I suppose the opposition to this is because it admits the existence of Conscious Experience which they Deny. So because they have to Deny Conscious Experience they must Deny a basic premise of Evolution. They say that Evolutionary literature does not mention Conscious Experience so therefore the Conscious Experience of Pain cannot influence Evolutionary outcomes. This takes Shallow thinking and fear of what's outside the Box to extremes. I'll go so far as to say that if Evolutionary literature does not take into account Conscious Experience then Evolutionary literature needs a Big Update.
To call one or the other 'delerium' may not help this at all. Perhaps, it would be more useful to try to understand the different approaches, as part of a greater multidisciplinary synthesis rather than the for or against position towards science. It may be about reason, logos, or the symbolic, mythos, as complementary ways of understanding in a more holistic consideration of the nature of consciousness, which may not be easily attributed simply to mind or matter. Dualism may have initiated this split in the first instance. Part of the problem may be viewing consciousness as separate, rather than imminent in nature, including human nature.