We don’t even know what matter is. And we start with immaterial experience in the first place.

Man, I love these conversations!!

Scientists have been arguing for the material creating consciousness for hundreds of years and haven't gotten anywhere. Why not look at it from the other perspective, that consciousness creates the material world. Most people understand that you create your personal material world with your thoughts, attitude and will...all immaterial in nature. As Max Planck is quoted as saying, *“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”* Max was one of the leading pioneers in quantum physics and he says that matter comes from consciousness. Why don't physicists (and philosophers) who are all in on quantum theory look into his theory that consciousness came first and the material world came as a result of life being conscious?

Are we only material is running in my head, There is so much about this already said, If you listen with your ear, The answer is quite clear, Consider the difference between the living and the dead.

The existence of perceptions (awareness) is solid evidence to prove that a person is not all material but rather dual ie., a combination of physical matter and nonphysical free soul)... ...the reason is because, for the existence of perceptions to be possible, it requires the existence of observing non-physical SUBJECT free from physical laws and the OBJECT being observed... The observing non-physical SUBJECT must be free from physical laws to be able to have FREE TIME to focus and be aware which would be impossible to have if driven by physical laws all the time.... In other words, the fact that we are able to be aware screams loudly that we are not all physical. Therefore, DUALISM offers the better logical answer to explain our true being.

Yes.

I like David Deutsch's idea that human consciousness resulted from a slight (and so biologically plausible) tweak to the meme-replication mechanism in our common ancestor with chimpanzees. I am thinking that this tweak resulted in a capacity to recursively embed mental models of behavioural processes within each other (recall Chomsky's 'Merge' operation), which in turn allowed for the simultaneous modelling of not just these processes but also their counterfactuals, thereby giving us the capacity for explanation (ie: answers to 'how' [processes] and 'why' [counterfactual] questions). The uppermost levels of these complex hierarchies of stitched-together simpler concepts are what we call the conscious mind, and are what we usually attach words to to think and talk. The deeper levels are what we call the subconscious. An example of the distinction between these two kinds of ideas would the difference between the conscious linguistic thought, "smoking is bad for me" and the subconscious craving for a cigarette, which manifests at the conscious level as the feeling alongside the thought. I'm no expert so I'm probably wrong here, but hey; why not make an attempt? Critiques encouraged!

The gift of freedom bestowed upon us allows for individual paths to be forged, but it also carries the responsibility to consider the well-being of all beings, not just our own. By adhering to the rules and principles governing the universe, we can promote harmony and balance. The state of the world reflects our collective desires and actions. Rather than blaming a higher power, it becomes our shared responsibility to protect and preserve what we have been given. By embracing a more realistic and conscious mindset, we can identify solutions to the problems we face, ensuring the inclusion and well-being of all.

I am a dualist. A dualist, in the context of philosophy, is someone who believes in dualism, the idea that the mind and body are two fundamentally different types of substances or realities. This viewpoint often posits that the mind (or soul) is non-physical, while the body is physical. One of the most famous dualists was the 17th-century philosopher René Descartes. He believed in substance dualism, also known as Cartesian dualism, arguing that the mind is a non-physical substance distinct from the body. However, dualism can take on various forms and can be found in many philosophical, religious, and cultural traditions around the world. It's worth noting that these perspectives may differ significantly in their details and implications.

Could somebody give me the name of Descartes' follower uttered by Peter? I couldn't catch it.

7:00 A process is a non material property of matter. Processes are able to maintain and communicate information. In brains most of that information is in the form of representations. This representational information is maintained in coded form in the discharge timing of neurons (i.e. thoughts) where it can be adjusted by other neurons via the synapses. Since the thought that represents my self is my self and it is my self that is conscious... you can see where this is going.

Awareness is known by awareness alone.

For investigating the nature of the world and the entities contained within it we need to possess one very important quality: *_a pure intellect uninfluenced by bias_*

On the mind-body problem: From the NAVOMITTO view, the "mind" and "body" arise as perspectives within the universal system of Consciousness. They are not separate substances requiring interaction, but rather different vantage points on the same underlying reality. The qualitative experience of consciousness and the physical machinery of the brain are two manifestations of the same paradoxical illusion. On materialism vs dualism: NAVOMITTO does not take a hard stance on these views. It recognizes that materialism and dualism are perspectives relative to a particular clarion or level of analysis. From the absolute view of Clarion 0, all distinctions dissolve into paradoxical unity. No single perspective captures the totality. On the mystery of consciousness: The seeming impossibility yet actuality of consciousness points to the fundamentally paradoxical nature of reality. Clarion 0 contains all possibilities in potentiality. The emergence of perspectives like consciousness reflects the intrinsic creativity of the cosmos to actualize the potentialities latent within nothingness. The clarity of consciousness arises through differentiation, while its qualitative feel retains the mystery of undifferentiated existence. On the role of God: God represents the entirety, the infinite, beyond all distinctions. Not a separate entity interacting with the world, but rather the Ground from which manifestation arises. Belief in God may point one toward the paradoxical nature of reality, though not necessarily. Ultimately all theorems dissolve back into the inexplicable suchness that is existence itself. drmora.ir/2023/04/06/navomitto/

Start with what he is thinking of? It is difficult to understand how people can be observing without asking first. That is always faster and direct to reduce time to Discovery.

Has it been established that consciousness is immaterial? Or do we simply *believe* that consciousness is immaterial due to the fact that we cannot establish a material framework for it? By "cannot" I mean "have not".

The "person" is a psychic (mental, for humans) force activity of consciousness, that embodies and integrates the somatic congenital personalities, characteristics and positions of the soma in samneness. Hence, the "person" is then "becoming", and not just "being".

Awareness is the ONLY constant of ALL experience what could be more fundamental to reality than that?

The whole is more than the sum of its parts

I think RLK hopes one of his guests can convince him that he'll have an afterlife. Don't we all? But, since it's impossible to prove- it might be worth considering if we don't and how that's not so terrible, all things considered. That we play our role- all the world's a stage as Shakespeare said, then the world goes on without us. So what. Either there is something after death- and whatever it is- it's gotta be good- or there isn't and we won't know. I don't think many philosophers go down this road- one admitting that we don't and can't know. They'd rather speculate.

14:37 well, that look was closer to truth.

Consciousness presumably arrived because it bestows survivability advantage.

A person is an abstract program necessarily physically instantiated in a material form. It can cause things to happen because reductionism is false; emergent levels of physical reality are just as real as lower ones. See David Deutsch!

How can anyone who observes our world still be a materialist?

Sedated, I am _gone._ No internal clock; time stops. No memories form. I experience no other plane or realm of existence during that time. Seems to me that clinches it. Beyond that, our mental capacities developed over time as an evolving species, such that we find similar traits to those of human consciousness in many animals. Great guest, btw.

Next time on Closer to Truth: does Robert Lawrence Kuhn ever change clothes?

You would expect someone to fix things for you and then stop thinking if there is anyone left behind. When abundance is there. That's what happens. Dualism is really a theologian concept as those in the ground won't understand what people are thinking with all these concepts.

It is interesting that they didn't talk about person as persona. The persona seems to be a construction which exists in the mind and in the nervous system of the biological human but is also largely a social construction.

Not even the material is all material. Nature repeats.

I think science has progressed to the conclusion that the individual human is a physical being with a brain that has evolved and is conscious just like others in the animal kingdom. The Mind Body problem will continue to be studied and I believe that mind and awareness are evolutionary products and an emergent property of the complexity of the human brain.

Imagine being able to construct a fairly simple physical system that can provably perform any conceivable mathematical calculation. Such systems can generate and transform information endlessly with incredible sophistication. They can perform intricate iterative and recursive calculations, can analyse their own programs and data. They can even create copies of themselves that work together, and even modify their own instructions to transform their behaviour. Such systems can in principle simulate any physical process of lesser complexity than themselves, and at a statistical level such systems sitting on a desk can simulate physical processes spanning continents, and generate real time visual representations of alien worlds. More complex versions can ingest huge swathes of human knowledge and encode a thousand times more information that a human could know, and answer any question about it in perfect text. The above is a description of what computers can do today. Are we really sure we can put a definite limit of how much the ultimate version of such a system could know and understand about the world, about us, about itself and about it's own informational processes and what they mean?

This guy nails it. So many people WANT to believe there is more. They feel themselves wiser than the religious but make the same error. Material reality is over 14 billion years old, but we only have recent very short lived examples of consciousness. Like evolution it is a failure of imagination to understand the duration of time, only here a failure to see how consciousness can emerge.

Some canceled Peter Van coz he believes in God . I see many athiests act like religious radicals!?

Of course because when the resources is limited or if we want to reduce spending and not waste money it is always a quick response that can help alot. Of course that works. I don't think without even testing I know it works. But is it necessary? Humans created problems and we fix humans and not expect some machine. Fix it.

well ... the last Nobel prize in physics went to people who have shown that at the core matter isnt material at all or at least not in the same way of all the rest of the universe...so this interview is already old in many aspects.

This contradiction is the same as the wave vs. particle contradiction: matter vs. light, as in Einstein's famous equation.

Or is it all a play in the universe of consciousness? Consciousness creating material reality looks more plausible than material world creating immaterial consciousness.

It is worth pointing out that there's "consciousness" and then there's "self-consciousness." Robert is routinely bad at even acknowledging the fact that there's a difference in any of his videos. Whenever they say "consciousness," the rest of what they say is clearly about "self-consciousness." All animals in their waking states are "conscious" as that word just means "awake." But only humans have an awareness of themselves, self-awareness. Now that we've gotten that administrative detail out of the way, let's focus on what is self-consciousness? It is a product of mind, in a being that has a personality. It is an awareness of the fact that we have a personality. And our personality is aware of other personalities. And we have inter-personal relationships. Can self-consciousness be reduced to mere physical phenomenon? Of course not! Is there a physical organ that is responsible for personality? Identical twins each have their own personality, do they not? So clearly genetics cannot be deemed responsible for it. Other animals have mind, yet no personalities. Some scientists fantasize that the mind is a product of the brain, as the brain can more or less clearly be demonstrated to be a product of evolution, which they do understand. The trouble is, mind is involved in problem solving, which goes on in every living cell in the body (per biologist Michael Levin). Slime mold exhibits intellect and yet has no neurons. So the idea that mind comes from the brain, is warrantless. In my experience, it is my mind (where "will," and for humans "freewill" is), that tells the brain what to do, as it is what's responsible for coordinating bodily functions, including movement. One of my favorite quotes about consciousness is this: "Human consciousness rests gently upon the electrochemical mechanism below and delicately touches the spirit-morontia energy system above." www.urantiabook.org/111-The-Adjuster-and-the-Soul/#111_1

"Is a Person all material?" The short answer No. The long answer Yes. Only because our species that being Human Kind seem to have an impact on ourselves as well as our environment the cause and effect thing and all that. Wherever we go and however we do it we directly or indirectly effect someone else's perspective on a great many thing's this being one of them. The only reason I say yes to the question posed is because we are in a paradoxical physical philosophical state of being that we hold ourselves to a higher standard of existence than the other species that inhabit our World. I myself would like to think that most if not all animals have at least a rudimentary form of consciousness. A survival instinct only heightened by their own environments. The question posed does preclude an argument on so many levels and a dialog as well. I will not try and site chapter and verse or anything else like that to try and dissuade you from your respective views and opinions of this subject matter. The other reason I said yes to the question is that we are fragile and frail we break pretty easily and any number of external trauma can in fact cause very serious internal issues, that being brain damage that causes us the Human Being to lose that connection to our consciousness and we become trapped in a vegetative state for however long. With the likelihood of never regaining said consciousness to any level of self coherence and understanding of the outside world. All the "ism's" are like it was mentioned prior are just labels to be read. But sometimes you pick up a book on the shelf and the title "Self" comes into view in bold Gothic with a latin conscript. It's all dusty and old with cracks running down the spine, the leather jacket worn and faded by the sun, it's pretty heavy for such a small book, it's caught you're eye and now your curiosity has taken over. You scan for a price and don't see one marked. You take it up to the cashier for a price, the cashier does a quick look, "just a second, Luv! Let me look that up on the computer... ...don't worry Luv. Take it. It's free." You get home after running some errands you finally get a moment. You light the fireplace make some coffee/tea, then you pour a glass of wine open the curtains to let the afternoon light in you watch as the first snowflakes start to fall. You grab the glass of wine and reach for the book and settle down for what you hope is a great read. Then you open the book of self and discover that all the pages are blank." You take a moment just to realize that the number of pages in the book are the same number of day's you have been alive and you think looking back at the question you heard someone posed so many years ago. " Are we all material"

Guest is spot on! Lifeforms are a BIG mystery 100% true, but bringing in the non-material aspect only complicates matters. 😮

Materiality is conceptual. We’re just as much in the dark about material as we are about the non physical. Scientists are stuck on materiality because they need to start somewhere.

Is it possible that awareness and sense of self, the non-material realities, emerge at some point when the complexity of the brain reaches a threshold level and that the “soul” emerges from a sufficiently complex self-awareness?

There is no such thing as a material person. Only adjectives (properties) and verbs (their changes) can be material. Everything perceivable by physical senses is included in adjectives and verbs. All nouns are souls, and all souls are persons, although persons can behave like objects. For a detailed explanation, see "What is the Soul in Vedic Philosophy," at Shabda Journal.

We're making it harder than it needs to be... Your body is like 158,760; the human spirit is like 2, 3, 5, 7, and 9; and your spirit is like 2(3)^2 x 2(7)^1 x 1(5)^1 x 1(2)^3. Is the person all material? Yes. Is the spirit just the atoms? No. The material contains the spirit the same as a chunk of material contains an instrument, and an instrument contains a song.

If we had built less, would we have reached car by carbon neutral already. 😅 But it's still cool.

Who works in things without any predetermined outcome? Set the target timeline observe and if it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen. At least it's a structured study not a simply cooled up need to know. It's like economics, if it doesn't works it doesn't work. Looking at lines up and down without knowing what it measures doesn't make sense. We were supposed to help each other when one is looking from above. One on the ground, my field of view definitely is smaller. If you look from above you can see more. So it's again a necessity to do a separate job and be efficient and effective. Having 1 million people to answer my question totally didn't help right? So I wasted funds again.

Is pizza real, or just my imagination?

I dunno, dont look at me for any answers, I'm just part of the furniture

Most likely we are all material, almost no evidence to suggest otherwise.

A simple mistake is to think of matter (material) as inert. E=mc2. Matter and energy are equivalent. So a self-organizing structure could include a domain of awareness which is a manifestation of physical events. This manifestation might have the impulse to call itself “I”, since it is responsible for choosing. Everything about it is physical including its choosing. And so is its need to cry itself to sleep when it wakes up to the truth.

it's funny to me when some people claim their consciousness is "non-spatial" what in the world are they experiencing

The persistence of this kind of questions makes me wonder if is just the questioner desire... that the person is not all material and somehow a part of it is beyond meat. I find no evidence compelling that argument, rather people trying to find some kind of evidence of the contrary. What is wrong with being all material?, does matter diminish life it self? I find matter to be as awesome and amazing as any kind of spiritual or non material life. Some people find it doll and stupid, and desire to be more than matter, they want to be more than matter because they see matter as doll and stupid, soulless. I would say matter has much soul in it, it has intelligence and logic, consciousness, thats fine.

These are not mysteries... Functionalism and Nominalism solves the hard problem of consciousness. Conscious states are specific physical events. Peter makes a category error. There is only a physical substance and physical events i.e. motion, change. He conflates becoming with being and that is why he believes there is a nonmaterial Substance.

Material persons produce energy called consciousness. We don't know what this energy is (yet), but we do know it performs work.

in idealism, why is there an appearance of a brain, body, etc? what is a person? why does the person look like a physical human? what does it mean to will your arm to move if there is no physical arm?

Notice how he totally lost the plot when god was introduced into the equation.

I believe the brain can explain consciousness. We are material beings , that through a process have created something that one could describe as immaterial but it is still grounded in the material. Even though you can't say for certain it takes a pretty significant leap for consciousness to be possible and exist outside the material self

The problem with these interminable consciousness-questions...is that they all miss the point. Not only do we not know the answer to the questions...we aren't within light years of answering them. IOW...the questions that we DON'T have answers to are by far the biggest questions that exist...and not only do we not have answers...we don't even begin to have answers. So...constantly asking is beginning to sound like beating the proverbial dead horse. A breakthrough is required...and when it comes...we won't need youtube to let us in on the revelation.

How can a believer believe his delusion dosn't effect his thoughts on any subject. As an atheist non belief forms his thought process.

Most people identify themselves as their bodies. It's only the few who have pursued spirituality sufficiently far, and have made enough moral decisions, who come to be identified as their soul. This, rephrased, comes out like this - the first group, to the extent they even acknowledge spirit, would say they body has a soul. The second group say their soul has a body.

What if we are immaterial beings in a material body

is the person all material? yes.

First: propose a plausible way of finding out they aren’t . That’s got to be the first step

What is material? Well it's the mind's notion of... hahah gotcha.

Metaphysics Joy, beauty and harmony (heaven) has no mass and weight. Neither does misery, ugliness and conflict (hell). Lots of expensive things measure the pride and imagination of a vampires ego. Not intelligence. Unlike earthling human beings and creators of joy...the counting corpses that rule US can't create harmony (real intelligence) because vampires (greed) are ignorant (dead).

Turtle necks on the turtle prowl. Ready to convince everyone that their unfounded beliefs are common sense. HAHAHAHA no.

(6:10) *PI: **_"But I wouldn't align myself with that view because I have no idea what they mean by non-physical property."_* ... Here's an example of *nonphysical property* vs a *physical property:* Let's say I have a 6' x 7' slab of marble. Everyone agrees that this slab is chock full of _physical properties_ such as mass, volume, density, weight, and a crystalline structure consisting of either calcite or dolomite. ... Then I hand my slab of marble over to Michelangelo! Michelangelo carves it into an astoundingly accurate human likeness of the fallen Christ being embraced by his mother, Mary ("The Pieta"). The overall abstract construct (theism) and the intrinsic message it conveys (sacrifice) are *nonphysical properties* that are now equally embedded within the marble along with all of its *physical properties.* The same applies to the physical brain and the abstract information that brain produces.

Consciousness has no mass and that's why is faster than the speed of light.

I'll take two pounds of NON material with ketchup. Your notes state something about a "soul" being necessary to being a person. Sad. Wrong. Please progress beyond your Woo era.

Create, produce, generate, and arise. Regarding fire: Does a match create, produce, generate, or arise fire? Does gasoline create, produce, generate, or arise fire? Does wood create, produce, generate, or arise fire? Does the air create, produce, generate, or arise fire? Does the quality of dryness create, produce, generate, or arise fire? Does paper create, produce, generate, or arise fire? Prior to the existence of fire, where is fire located? Is fire non-being until it's becoming manifested? Where does fire go after having faded and died out? What is this substrata that allows fire to even be? The attributes of fire: where did these come from? What allows fire to shine? What is that, which shines of fire? How does the effilgence of fire permeate an area? Where does the effulgence of fire go after the flame dies?

Consciousness is unnecessary for survival.

Consciousness doesn't do any work...? Ridiculous. It's a feedback loop.

The fact that van Inwagen believes in a god makes all his analytic philosophical opinions farcical & irrelevant.

Peter is full of sound, and fury signifying nothing. I think this is the most boring episode of closer to truth that I’ve ever watched.