Sir Mojo This may sound crazy but it seems to me that of you take Sorce theory, synthesize it with zero point energy field theory, (my intuition suggests they are mostly equivalent) add in consciousness and non-dual philosophy then that's about all there is to it. I believe that this is pretty much what Erwin Schroedinger thought was the case. Does that mean anything to you at all?
Indeed. There will likely be some great correspondence between the two and Schrodingers original interpretations of his own equations were most accurate. His original thought was that the wave equation modeled a pressure density and it was later determined by Born that it was merely a "probabilility distribution" for the position of the "point-particle" electron which is meaningless wrt causality or actual physical reality. The electron is actually a density gradient in basic continuous matter. Understanding this concept thoroughly, entirely eliminates the wave/particle duality and all the paradoxes plaguing the standard model. ~~~ Though there will likely be some overlap, and I do believe that the quantum vacuum models are onto something, but there is a great deal that they are missing. If you read through the material on my site you should be able to catch a glimpse of the vast paradigm gap which must be crossed from the extensionless point-particle in the nonexistent void to the continuum of material filling all "space" as existence or causality itself.
Re: The Fundamental Question Of course the question is nonsense. It questions why "substance" itself exists, which makes no sense given that all concepts are based the existence of at least something. We can easily see that something is eternal, since it is the only logical conclusion we can make. However, it is a much simpler explanation to assume something physical is that eternal thing, rather than some undefinable mode of consciousness or "god". IOW, postulating some non physical eternal entity provides no better an answer to the question than a physical explanation.
Re: Re: The Fundamental Question You can postulate a physical or a mental monism, but each has its own set of problems. I used to be a physical monist, but now see the value in Spinoza's "neutral monism". From: http://members.tripod.com/~BDSweb/en/107.htm "II MATTER AND MIND But what is mind, and what is matter? Is the mind material, as some unimaginative people suppose; or is the body merely an idea, as some imaginative people suppose? Is the mental process the cause, or the effect, of the cerebral process?—or are they, as Malebranche taught, unrelated and independent, and only providentially parallel? Neither is mind material, answers Spinoza, nor is matter mental; neither is the brain-process the cause, nor is it the effect, of thought; nor are the two processes independent and parallel. For there are not two processes, and there are not two entities; there is but one process, seen now inwardly as thought, and now outwardly as motion; there is but one entity, seen now inwardly as mind, now outwardly as matter, but in reality an inextricable mixture and unity of both. Mind and body do not act upon each other, because they are not other, they are one. "The body cannot determine the mind to think; nor the mind determine the body to remain in motion or at rest, or in any other state," for the simple reason that "the decision of the mind, and the desire and determination of the body . . . are one and the same thing." [55] And all the world is unifiedly double in this way; wherever there is an external "material" process, it is but one side or aspect of the real process, which to a fuller view would be seen to include as well an internal process correlative, in however different a degree, with the mental process which we see within ourselves. The inward and "mental" process corresponds at every stage with the external and "material" process; "the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things." [56] "Thinking substance and extended substance are one and the same thing, comprehended now through this, now through that, attribute" or aspect. "Certain of the Jews seem to have perceived this, though confusedly, for they said that God and his intellect, and the things conceived by his intellect, were one and the same thing." [57] If "mind" be taken in a large sense to correspond with the nervous system in all its ramifications, then every change in the "body" will be accompanied by—or, better, form a whole with—a correlative change in the "mind." "Just as thoughts and mental processes are connected and arranged in the mind, so in the body its modifications, and the modifications of things" affecting the body through sensations, "are arranged according to their order" [58]; and "nothing can happen to the body which is not perceived by the mind," and consciously or unconsciously felt [59]. Just as the emotion as felt is part of a whole, of which changes in the circulatory and respiratory and digestive systems are the basis; so an idea is a part, along with "bodily" changes, of one complex organic process; even the infinitesimal subtleties of mathematical reflection have their correlate in the body. (Have not the "behaviorists" proposed to detect a man's thoughts by recording those involuntary vibrations of the vocal cords that seem to accompany all thinking?)"
Yeah, who cares for efficiency in thought, or for that matter, who cares for reality? You cannot get more efficient than the processes of causality and occams razor is simply a tool that can be used or abused like any other to get our models to the level of efficiency of causality.
It's basically the same as saying mind and matter are two aspects of the same thing. However, one of those aspects may be more fundemental than the other. The question then is, can the mind exist without matter? And, can matter exist without the mind?? To a physicalist, the answer is that the mind cannot exist without matter, but matter can (and did for billions of years prior to the existence of anything conscious) exist without any mind being present. An idealist might think the opposite is true.
Neither of the aspects are fundamental at all. They are simply "descriptive protocols" for the modes of causality. They correspond to the objective and subjective point of view. The point was that there are not two substances mind vs. matter. They are one and the same thing viewed from different points of view--one internal and one external. So of course they cannot exist one without the other. It is important to note the differences in the definitions of the terminology. In Spinoza, "matter" is simply that which is percieved by the mind as extended substance. It is also possible and easily so, to conceive of matter as the essence of causality itself, but this is reserved for the term "substance" in Spinoza. I agree with the physicalist view as it requires a shift in definitions. But in Spinoza the matter that existed for all those eons also had an internality, or immanent causation, which is the viewpoint of mind. He says that the "mind" of matter in this sense is directly proportional to the "excellence" of the mode doing the thinking. This whole way of conceiving of mind renders the continuum of mind as it fades into "mere mechanism". Since there is no percievable line where mechanism emerges as consciousness then once you understand what Spinoza means by "mind" you can see the value of his monistic system. He simply means that the objective point of view is not sufficient to understand reality and it is important to consider the intrinsic experience from the internal perspective even though this perspective wrt a rock, for instance, is nothing comparable to that of a human brain/mind.
That's missing the root of the question though. Sure, all our concepts of phenomena are just descriptions of our experience, but we can extend still ask whether they have anything to do with reality. For instance, we have a concept of matter, and we label it with certain properties we believe it has. Then we have our concept of consciousness, also with properties. Obviously, the concept of a rock is not the same concept of a conscious being. The question is, does there actually exist in objective reality, something that has all the properties we ascribe to matter? And, can such a thing exist in objective reality without having the properties something conscious has? Yes, it does come down to at what point you would consider something to be conscious or not. Regardless, any attempt for a monist explanation that is based on a physical field or substance is going to be labeled physicalist. That's because they are indentical upon closer inspection.
Did I say otherwise? Of course we can and should question our conceptions continuously. We lable it thus because we OBSERVE these properties or they enable higher level properties to "emerge" from the substance. It is not just an arbitrary assignment. Quite obviously...was there a point to this point blank? Unless our senses lie, then the answer must be yes, but the properties we assign are necessarily abstractions of the actual causal mechanisms of these properties. They can never be the same thing. I would say NO. There is a deeper underlying or immanent causation beneath the illusion of the mind/matter duality. Obviously. Spinoza, however, does not base his substance on a physical field, but a causal substance. This is not to say that it is not physical and that it is also not mental. It is the immanent causation of both. Yes, the physical is identical to the physical... point blank.
Sir Mojo My reference to Schroedinger was not so much to do with his physics as his non-dual philosophy. He concluded that Advaita Buddhism was a true way to explain existence. "Nirvana is a state of pure blissful knowledge....It has nothing to do with the individual. The ego or its separation is an illusion. Indeed in a certain sense two ‘I’s’ are identical, namely, when one disregards all their special content—their Karma.....When a man dies, his karma lives and creates for itself another carrier. (Erwin Schroedinger). Thus his thinking was in line with any theory such as Sorce or ZPE fields, since these allow a monist conclusion to any physicalist or idealist reductionist regression, all the way back to emptiness (as opposed to nothingness). On the possible equivalence of these theories - is the mathematics of fluid dymnamics of the same kind as that of EM fields?
Sir Mojo My reference to Schroedinger was not so much to do with his physics as his non-dual philosophy. He concluded that Advaita Buddhism was a true way to explain existence. "Nirvana is a state of pure blissful knowledge....It has nothing to do with the individual. The ego or its separation is an illusion. Indeed in a certain sense two ‘I’s’ are identical, namely, when one disregards all their special content—their Karma.....When a man dies, his karma lives and creates for itself another carrier. (Erwin Schroedinger). Thus his thinking was in line with any theory such as Sorce or ZPE fields, since these allow a monist conclusion to any physicalist or idealist reductionist regression, all the way back to emptiness (as opposed to nothingness). On the possible equivalence of these theories - is the mathematics of fluid dynamics of the same kind as that of EM fields?
Well now I have even more respect for him. Thank you. From the intro to my website: "It is becoming more and more apparent that even in the darkness of the abandonment of causal understanding, the “Standard Model of Physics” appears to be steadily groping its way unconsciously toward the fluid-dynamic nature of fundamental physical reality—the dynamic “ether” vaguely and confusedly intuited by Albert Einstein. Despite coming from a faulty conceptual paradigm which it must eventually abandon altogether, Physics is slowly and blindly modeling its path, by experiment and equation, toward the alternate fluid-dynamic route that it did not have the initial framework to sufficiently formulate or accept at the crucial historical bifurcation point of the Michelson and Morley experiment. Physics is undergoing a slow oscillation back towards the distant beginnings of the ungrasped thread of understanding that it had lost sight of with the revolution of “Modern Physics”—the un-grasped concept of the fluid ether as the physical medium of the wave nature of all matter and “space”. As Sorce Theory will demonstrate, however, the actual “thread of error” goes much deeper than the simple error exposed in Part I of this introduction and briefly mentioned above. This thread “permeates all the branches of the existing tree of knowledge”. [4] It goes right down to the ancient Greek foundations of science—to the very coalescence of the fundamental framework of the standard paradigm of physical reductionism itself—straight to the core kinetic-atomic foundation and the never-ending ‘quest for the fundamental particle of matter’—the a-tom existing and acting in the always-hypothetical ‘void’. [5] This thread of error manifests itself as a wide-spread and self-limiting set of incorrect and artificial categories and concepts that render the most qualitatively simple of subjects, not only impossible to truly understand, but also extremely difficult to discuss and theorize about. Take for instance this quote from G.E. Volovik in “The Universe in a Helium Droplet” [6] . “According to the modern view the elementary particles (electrons, neutrinos, quarks, etc.) are excitations of some more fundamental medium called the quantum vacuum. This is the new ether of the 21st century. The electromagnetic and gravitational fields, as well as the fields transferring the weak and the strong interactions, all represent different types of collective motion of the quantum vacuum." [...] Fluidity in the Fundamental Equations Despite all of the various manifestations of the deep qualitative, interpretive, errors of Modern Physics, the equations which have been custom fit to model the results of our experimental contact with physical reality, actually tell a quite different story. The equations directly model the fundamental level as a frictionless fluid yet the Standard Model consistently denies that this fluid physically exists. The claim is that fundamental reality consists merely of probabilistic wave-equations defining the likely positions of its fundamental, extensionless “point-particles” which paradoxically exhibit a “wave-nature”. To admit that the fluid nature of the quantum level physically exists would be anathema to the dogma of the denial of the ether initiated by the patron saint of Physics himself, Albert Einstein, who, unknown to most people, later said that the ether must exist and it must be dynamic—in Einsteins peculiar, confused and ill-informed sort of "dynamics". In “The Big Bang Never Happened” [8] , Eric J. Lerner writes, “... since the nineteenth century it’s been recognized that the equations of electromagnetism are almost identical with the equations of hydrodynamics, the equations governing fluid flow. Even more curious, Schrödinger’s equation, the basic equation of quantum mechanics, is also closely related to equations of fluid flow. Since 1954 many scientists have shown that a particle moving under the influence of random impacts from irregularities in a fluid will obey Schrödinger’s equation. “More recently, in the late seventies, researchers found another curious correspondence while developing mathematical laws that govern the motion of line vortices—the hydrodynamic analogs of the plasma filaments .... The governing equation turns out to be a modified form of Schrödinger’s equation, called the nonlinear Schrödinger equation. [This equation is a central part of the study of ‘quantum liquids’ as well. The interesting coincidence is that it is a modified form of the equation describing the shell structure of an atom. How this fluid-dynamic medium gets "quantized"' into the shell structure of the known electronic “orbits” is a key concept illustrated in Sorce Theory.] “Generally in science when two different phenomena obey the same or very similar mathematical laws, it means that in all probability they are somehow related. Thus it seems likely that both electromagnetism and quantum phenomena generally may be connected to some sort of hydrodynamics on a microscopic level. But this clue, vague as it is, leaves entirely open the key question of what the nuclear particles are. And what keeps them together? How can fluids generate particles? [Sorce Theory fills in these crucial gaps as well.] “But the idea of particles formed from vortices in some fluid is certainly worth investigating. (This is a real return to Ionian ideas: the idea of reality being formed out of vortices was first raised by Anaxagoras 2,500 years ago!) …However, I think there are additional clues, some developed from my own work, which indicate that plasma processes and quantum mechanical processes are in some way related. “First and foremost are Krisch’s experimental results on spin-aligned protons. [9] Qualitatively, the results clearly imply that protons are actually some form of vortex, like a plasmoid. [10] Such vortices interact far more strongly when they are spinning in the same direction-which is certainly the behavior Krisch observed in proton collisions. Because vortex behavior would become evident only in near-collisions, the effects should be more pronounced at higher energies and in more head-on interactions—again, in accordance with Krisch’s results. “A second clue lies in particle asymmetry …. Particles act as if they have a “handedness,” and the simplest dynamic process or object that exhibits an inherent orientation is a vortex. Moreover, right-and left-handed vortices annihilate each other, just as particles and antiparticles do.”
At a deep intuitive level it has always seemed to me that there is some kind of intelligent design to the universe. That is not to say I believe in an almighty creator, but rather that there may be some elusive force working behind the scenes that we are not consciously able to directly observe.
That "elusive force" is called immanent causation--the indwelling cause of all things. It is what enables and unites all action and interaction. It is perfect in its actions and infinitely precise. It does fit the broad definition of intelligence because intelligence is the ability to solve problems and causation cannot fail to perfectly solve the "problems" of causation or existence.
Yes, because if you say something conscious has properties that are missing from something like a rock, then you have already made a distinction between the two. IOW, you're saying there is a difference between conscious objects and non conscious objects. Thus, an object that is conscious has different properties that something that isn't. The question of whether an object needs to be conscious in order to exist, should be obvious if you accept that certain objects without the required properties we use to label something conscious can exist in obective reality. There you go. No, a physicalist explanation is identical to what you're labeling as being neutral monism. However, an idealist position is not.
Of course there is a distinction at some level, and that is the key point. At what level are the properties the same? They must be the same at some level in order for the two to interact. They have a common immanent causation thus they occupy the same causal universe and are formed of the same unified substance (the "unified field"). Mind and matter are one at the deepest level. The difference is relative to the level of analysis of the depth of causation. At some level the distinction necessarily dissapears. At some superficial level all ojects are unique in their properties, whether conscious or not. I am operating on a crucial distinction here--that between mind and consciousness. Consciousness is a higher level of organization--an emergent property of complex physical relation. But "mind" in Spinoza's system refers to the inward point of view conceivable for any object or mode. I tend to flip flop between definitions of mind depending on which common metaphysical system is being used. It is thus important to establish a common definitional system to communicate effectively. Not quite. I suggest you read up on Spinoza to understand the difference. You are correct that his system is compatible with "physicalism", but it is also compatible to a proper mental monism (though I don't know any to speak of). This is because a neutral monism operates at a deeper level which is quite difficult to explain. We have been discussing this at length at Mind-x ( http://www.kurzweilai.net/mindx/show_thread.php?rootID=18258#id20066 ). You may want to join in, but I suggest scrolling to somewhere in the middle ... where it gets good.
There are two main concepts of causation: transitive and immanent. Transitive causation if the familiar sort dealt with specifically in physics. The standard salient example is the collision of one billiard ball into another where the motion of the first ball is the cause of the motion of the second ball via the transfer of momentum. Transitive causation can be traced through an infinity of causes but always remaining within a specific range of size. Immanent causation is the indwelling cause of something, such as the the nature of the billiard ball which causes it to transfer its motion in the specific ways. Immanent causation can be traced, via reduction of the object (mode) into its component parts and their dynamics. This direction is always toward the indwelling cause of all things and the only way to avoid the logical absurdity of the infinite regress of immanent causation is the assumption of an underlying infinite continuity (though the arguments for continuity in Spinoza are FAR deeper than this). Immanent causation is the ultimate causation of everything--the unified field from which all particles, waves, atoms, molecules, networks, organisms, ecosystems, planets, etc emerge. Thus we can see the two types of causation as two perpendicular directions tracing causation through hierarchy of causality. Transitive is the tracing of a line of causality horizontal among the branches. This line gets no closer toward the root, but is always jumping from branch to branch never following the branches downward to their ultimate source. Immanent causation, however, is always directed in a radial line down the branches toward the root which is the ultimate immanent causation of continuous substance. Since consciousness, as defined previously, is an emergent property of complexity, it is necessarily a modification of substance and ultimately finds its immanent causation and unification with everything else in the root of the tree. The modes, in this analogy, are the branches and substance is the very root... where this analogy breaks down is that the root of the tree is actually infinite in extent and continuous, not an infinitessimally smalll trunk.
