Can we have a science of the non-material

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Let's take a little poll.

Picture yourself back at your childhood home, where you lived around the ages of 5 to 8. Imagine a view of the front of your house from about a 45-degree angle to the left. From what height are you viewing your house?

I am viewing it from about 20 feet off the ground.

~~ Paul

[P_Synthesis]

I'm viewing mine from the height of a car window.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Note that I had no way to view my house from that angle and 20 feet off the ground.

~~ Paul

[Kim]

That's interesting Paul. Did you have an NDE as a child, or were you just OBE a lot? Do you remember the circumstances in which you gained this view of your house?

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by Kim

That's interesting Paul. Did you have an NDE as a child, or were you just OBE a lot? Do you remember the circumstances in which you gained this view of your house?

I do not think any experience did it, because that is the view I take of any location that I try to imagine in my mind. I think that's just the way my brain works.

What I'm trying to point out is that I don't think viewing oneself or a scene from "above one's body" is anything special.

~~ Paul

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

I do not think any experience did it, because that is the view I take of any location that I try to imagine in my mind. I think that's just the way my brain works.

What I'm trying to point out is that I don't think viewing oneself or a scene from "above one's body" is anything special.

~~ Paul

If you did have something like an NDE, it would be interesting if you related it - whatever interpretation you want to put on it. These things are presumably often very personal, but I am sure others would respect that in any subsequent discussion.

David

[P_Synthesis]

Originally Posted by Paul

What I'm trying to point out is that I don't think viewing oneself or a scene from "above one's body" is anything special.

You're not viewing the scene, you're viewing the memory of it, reconstructing it from that height. You also have no impression of having left your body.

[Elysiumfire]

Unfortunately, I have arrived late to this thread, so I hope you'll all forgive me my non-reading of the whole thread. I'll catch up over the next few days, but for now, I want to concern myself with David B's initial starter post, and the question on how 'an immaterial thing can interact with a material thing'?

From my own perspective 'immateriality' cannot interact with anything, let alone materiality. I believe we have to make a shift in our perception and understanding of the meanings we apply to certain conceptual descriptions. By this I am not appealing to semantic argument, but to logical reasoning bordering on the philosophical.

David supplies two candidates for immateriality...maths and musical composition, and I think he is almost right, but is not quite articulating his true meaning. The best candidate for immateriality is that which Chalmers describes as the 'hard problem' of philosophy...the 'experiencing moment' of 'things'. In other words...qualia, and the best and most ideal candidate is mind, because mind is nothing more than the quale experience of perceiving oneself conscious. We do not have a mind that is conscious, but a conscious that is perceived as mind. Mind, is nothing more than a mental mirage and is therefore, truly immaterial.

The post following David B's by Paul C states a requirement where immateriality must in some way interact with materiality through some interactive law, and that he later states the 'essence of music to be sound', which is not quite right. Sound is a quale experience, arising from air disturbance and perturbation where pressure waves impinge upon the outer and inner ear causing electro-chemical signals to be sent to the brain from the cochlea. Once in the brain, the signals somehow transpose into the experience of sound.

This is not the whole story, though, the Canadian neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield was able to elicit memories of sound experiences in patients whose brains he was electrically stimulating. Certain areas of the brain electriclly stimulated caused the patients to re-hear music and singing and conversations from their past. Thus, the experience of sound is not wholly contingent upon the presence of air disturbances impinging upon the physical ear.

Qualia are true candidates for the term immateriality, being the end product of a chain of physical cause and effect interactions. I believe that qualia are so tightly interwoven with consciousness that they are not aspects occurring 'in' consciousness but are aspects 'of' consciousness. I do not think you can separate the two, because our experience of being conscious is itself a quale experience, and we term that experience as mind. Qualia are immaterial because there is no further causation leading or arising from them, and thus they are not interactive...they are caused, but not causative.

I must leave it there at this point, but will come back to it later...apologies

[P_Synthesis]

Thus, the experience of sound is not wholly contingent upon the presence of air disturbances impinging upon the physical ear.

After listening to Beethoven's ninth, I think we knew that.

Qualia are [...] caused, but not causative.

I see what you are saying. When you imagine licking a lemon, though, and your saliva comes, the causation is happening in the mental--->physical direction. There are plenty more examples of that, less trivial ones.

[Elysiumfire]

P_Synthesis:

After listening to Beethoven's ninth, I think we knew that.

Are you being flippant? Just wondering?

When you imagine licking a lemon, though, and your saliva comes, the causation is happening in the mental--->physical direction.

I disagree. Causation always occurs in the material, never the mental. Our mental life is not causative, but reflective. This may seem contradictory, but it isn't once you fully understand what I stated earlier...

...qualia are so tightly interwoven with consciousness that they are not aspects occurring 'in' consciousness but are aspects 'of' consciousness.

We believe that intentional or volitional thinking is causative upon our motor neuronal circuitry, that we do not imbue motion in our limbs without first thinking the movement, thus believing that causation is occurring from the mental. Yet if our mental life consists entirely of qualia experience then it cannot be causative, something other must be the cause of the causation. What that 'something other' may be, is yet to be determined and agreed upon.