From an intellectual standpoint, pointing to Freud, Marx and the usual motley assortment of 19th century characters is intriguing. I just read a passage in Kingsnorth's "Against the Machine" in which he traces the modern "Machine" (ie physicalist) mentality to Dons Scotus.
On the other hand, Sri Aurobindo and Jean Gebser both point to the beginning of the "Deficient" stage of the mental structure of consciousness (which itself emerged around 500 BC) somewhere at the beginning of the common era, as the West (Europe in particular) began to rely increasingly on the analytic intellect alone, whereas with the development of intellectual philosophy in India, China and elsewhere in the East, it was always understood that intuition was the true source of knowledge, and the intellect only a kind of shaping mechanism to give voice to the intuition.
For myself, I'm interested more in experience (professional musician for many years, then clinical psychologist). I would say if you asked just about anyone (Bernardo Kastrup, if you catch him in an honest moment of self reflection, and certainly David Bentley Hart) even if they have worked out the most refined antiphysicalist arguments in theory, in striking contrast, in practice, people have all kinds of physicalist beliefs underlying their thoughts and actions
Dopamine high?
You have to have drugs for a "chemical imbalance?"
Menopausal women simply can't sleep without hormone supplements?
It's impossible to deal with hunger without drugs?
This is why I love B. Alan Wallace's anti-physicalist arguments so much. He can easily deconstruct Frankish, Dennett and the rest with his metaphorical arms tied behind his metaphorical back. But far more important, he offers various contemplative practices to undo the EXPERIENCE of physicalism (I know that sounds like an oxymoron; i just mean the visceral sense that there's a dead non living meaningless purposeless world out there, and a bunch of chemicals and nervous system activity - trauma sensitive, anybody? Fix your vagus nerve and all will be well)
My two favorites:
(1) Sunyata, or emptiness, applied to physicalist assumptions.
(2) Tibetan Dream Yoga - when you realize it's virtually impossible to tell a vivid dream (made of mind) from the waking state (allegedly made of dead physical stuff) that can be enough in itself,
without the antiphysicalist philosophy, and even without the analysis of emptiness, to thoroughly undo physicalism, as you realize all scientific experiments could be conducted within the dream world, thus there is simply no need for the physicalist presumption of an addition, non empirical, faith based, unfindable, sub natural, purely abstract physical stuff!
Another moment of praise after all that - you bring together SO many fundamentally important points in the antiphysicalist argument. I really really hope you either have already or will start making videos. Long essays reach very few people, and videos under 5 minutes covering one or two simple points may have the potential to reach millions. You're very good at pulling this together and our times desperately need more of this (and if you don't mind one more complement, I had the somewhat unpleasant experience of finally looking at Paul KIngsnorth's "Against the Machine - FULL of what the poet Owen Barfield called the "residue of unresolved positivism" - your essay is SO much better than what I've seen from him. Do take a look on Amazon at Marco Masi's latest book, Meaning and Purpose in a Conscious Universe." You two are on a very similar wavelength.
Thanks Don, I really appreciate it, and there's some really interesting thoughts here. I'll definitely check out that Marco Masi book, it looks really interesting.
This is great Fish! Good job pointing out physicalist tendencies across the political spectrum that are leading us to a nihilistic, techno dystopia future, where love is considered “just a bunch of atoms”. You are the canary in the coal mine, as the rest of society will not realize this until many years from now.
Feels like dudes fall in love with their LLMs when they add the ghost into the machine, not the other way around. I do think there's an antagonist behind a lot of your concerns but it is only incidentally correlated with physicalist vibes.
A complete physical account of the brain will never include what what coffee in the morning or grief actually feels like. Maybe we could stop pretending that gap is going to close. 💭"
Vardaman, you made a deep exporation into the consequences of the intentional ignorance of physicalism. We are at least as threatened by the intentional ignorance of the religious fundamentalist. The abrahamic religions when interpreted through zealots mindset, are literally threatening to mankind on every continent on earth. In the Americas, Africa, the East, Christian fundamentalism is used to objectify many of the inhabitants they share a country with. Islamic fundamentalism oppresses millions and threatens social order.Jewish fundamentalism has turned a culture that was for 2000 years the moral voice of Western society, into a vicious oppressor of other human beings.
Even Hindu fundamentalism threatens the Muslim minority on the Indian subcontinent.
What do all Of these disperate religions have in common? Is their a common philosophical belief or cognitive structure that makes them act so similarly? I think so.
A radical philosophical duelism, combimed with the surrender of personal intellectual autonomy, is common to each. The dualistic interpretation of all phenomena as Good or Evil leads to objectification, creating the other. The other can then be dehumanized and oppressed.
Just wonderful. So many good points.
From an intellectual standpoint, pointing to Freud, Marx and the usual motley assortment of 19th century characters is intriguing. I just read a passage in Kingsnorth's "Against the Machine" in which he traces the modern "Machine" (ie physicalist) mentality to Dons Scotus.
On the other hand, Sri Aurobindo and Jean Gebser both point to the beginning of the "Deficient" stage of the mental structure of consciousness (which itself emerged around 500 BC) somewhere at the beginning of the common era, as the West (Europe in particular) began to rely increasingly on the analytic intellect alone, whereas with the development of intellectual philosophy in India, China and elsewhere in the East, it was always understood that intuition was the true source of knowledge, and the intellect only a kind of shaping mechanism to give voice to the intuition.
For myself, I'm interested more in experience (professional musician for many years, then clinical psychologist). I would say if you asked just about anyone (Bernardo Kastrup, if you catch him in an honest moment of self reflection, and certainly David Bentley Hart) even if they have worked out the most refined antiphysicalist arguments in theory, in striking contrast, in practice, people have all kinds of physicalist beliefs underlying their thoughts and actions
Dopamine high?
You have to have drugs for a "chemical imbalance?"
Menopausal women simply can't sleep without hormone supplements?
It's impossible to deal with hunger without drugs?
This is why I love B. Alan Wallace's anti-physicalist arguments so much. He can easily deconstruct Frankish, Dennett and the rest with his metaphorical arms tied behind his metaphorical back. But far more important, he offers various contemplative practices to undo the EXPERIENCE of physicalism (I know that sounds like an oxymoron; i just mean the visceral sense that there's a dead non living meaningless purposeless world out there, and a bunch of chemicals and nervous system activity - trauma sensitive, anybody? Fix your vagus nerve and all will be well)
My two favorites:
(1) Sunyata, or emptiness, applied to physicalist assumptions.
(2) Tibetan Dream Yoga - when you realize it's virtually impossible to tell a vivid dream (made of mind) from the waking state (allegedly made of dead physical stuff) that can be enough in itself,
without the antiphysicalist philosophy, and even without the analysis of emptiness, to thoroughly undo physicalism, as you realize all scientific experiments could be conducted within the dream world, thus there is simply no need for the physicalist presumption of an addition, non empirical, faith based, unfindable, sub natural, purely abstract physical stuff!
Another moment of praise after all that - you bring together SO many fundamentally important points in the antiphysicalist argument. I really really hope you either have already or will start making videos. Long essays reach very few people, and videos under 5 minutes covering one or two simple points may have the potential to reach millions. You're very good at pulling this together and our times desperately need more of this (and if you don't mind one more complement, I had the somewhat unpleasant experience of finally looking at Paul KIngsnorth's "Against the Machine - FULL of what the poet Owen Barfield called the "residue of unresolved positivism" - your essay is SO much better than what I've seen from him. Do take a look on Amazon at Marco Masi's latest book, Meaning and Purpose in a Conscious Universe." You two are on a very similar wavelength.
Thanks Don, I really appreciate it, and there's some really interesting thoughts here. I'll definitely check out that Marco Masi book, it looks really interesting.
This is great Fish! Good job pointing out physicalist tendencies across the political spectrum that are leading us to a nihilistic, techno dystopia future, where love is considered “just a bunch of atoms”. You are the canary in the coal mine, as the rest of society will not realize this until many years from now.
Thanks Emma!
Feels like dudes fall in love with their LLMs when they add the ghost into the machine, not the other way around. I do think there's an antagonist behind a lot of your concerns but it is only incidentally correlated with physicalist vibes.
A complete physical account of the brain will never include what what coffee in the morning or grief actually feels like. Maybe we could stop pretending that gap is going to close. 💭"
Vardaman, you made a deep exporation into the consequences of the intentional ignorance of physicalism. We are at least as threatened by the intentional ignorance of the religious fundamentalist. The abrahamic religions when interpreted through zealots mindset, are literally threatening to mankind on every continent on earth. In the Americas, Africa, the East, Christian fundamentalism is used to objectify many of the inhabitants they share a country with. Islamic fundamentalism oppresses millions and threatens social order.Jewish fundamentalism has turned a culture that was for 2000 years the moral voice of Western society, into a vicious oppressor of other human beings.
Even Hindu fundamentalism threatens the Muslim minority on the Indian subcontinent.
What do all Of these disperate religions have in common? Is their a common philosophical belief or cognitive structure that makes them act so similarly? I think so.
A radical philosophical duelism, combimed with the surrender of personal intellectual autonomy, is common to each. The dualistic interpretation of all phenomena as Good or Evil leads to objectification, creating the other. The other can then be dehumanized and oppressed.