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It is undeniable that our concepts of consciousness are intrinsically embodied. But that applies only to the reproduction of consciousness, NOT its existential primacy. Our earliest intuitions were that there had to be an ether within which all that we consider part of our reality manifested. All that my view suggests is that the "ether" is actually the consciousness field of God within which ALL manifestations exist. This primal consciousness field is NOT embodied, but our contributions to it are.
As usual, I find that our deepest intuitions concerning metaphysics are so close that we seem to be at least on adjoining pages, if not on exactly the same page. And yet these seemingly minor differences seem very important to me - like a grain of dust in my eye almost invisible but sometimes feeling like a "mote"
I think that what you refer to as the "existential primacy" of consciousness is what I might want to characterize as something more like the primordial ("brute-fact-ish") conditions for the possibility of experience of any sort. It is what I think of as the underlying structure of experience. I see this structure as abstract/logical in nature. This structure determines the "what-it-is-like-ness" of experience, but I hesitate to say that this structure is "God". I even hesitate to say that this structure "exists" because I'm not sure that the concept of "existence" applies here. Experiences happen and they seem to be "unified" and "coherent" in some deep way, even when they feel utterly pointless and random. I think the structure is uncovered retroactively via self-reflective methods, but I just don't think the structure "exists" in any metaphysically substantial way. The structure is more like a "how" than a "what". It is a "how we make sense of" the coherence of experience, and part of the way that we do this is to attribute "existence" to things. But when confronting this structure, I think the knee-jerk habit of consciousness whereby it attributes "existence" to things is misleading because what experience is confronting, in this particular case, is not a "thing" - it is the underlying - "pre-thing-ness" structure of consciousness itself - "that which makes the experience of thing-ness" possible. Basically: "That which makes the experience of thing-ness possible" is not, itself, a thing.
A key point is that I'm talking about experience in the most general sense. If there is a conscious being who fits any notion of "Divine Creator" or who "feels love" in any way, then the structures I'm talking about apply to God as well. If that is the case, then "God" is not any sort of "solution to" the deepest mysteries of "why this structure" but, rather, the concept of "God" is just one way to express one's way of confronting the mysteries.
Last edited by Gaylenwoof; 10-13-2018 at 09:08 AM..
A key point is that I'm talking about experience in the most general sense. If there is a conscious being who fits any notion of "Divine Creator" or who "feels love" in any way, then the structures I'm talking about applies to God as well. If that is the case, then "God" is not any sort of "solution to" the deepest mysteries of "why this structure" but, rather, the concept of "God" is just one way to express one's way of confronting the mysteries.
that's why I use the word "living".
a "living" biosphere explains, offers a mechanism, and predicts your views." It also predicts how proteins running around in the system can misrepresent "living" as big god thing.
the biosphere created us. ultimately the universe created us. in the end, a small volume of the universe is "doing us". I just don't know why people reject such simple notions.
I also wonder why people suppress such simple fundamental facts because they don't want 'theist" to use it can't see that approach as dishonest.
The real problem, Arq, is that the very method we use to investigate our reality relies on illusory measures because of the requirement for our "instantaneous" conscious awareness to form BEFORE we can measure and investigate anything.
I think I have to acknowledge that there does seem to be an implicit "who" (or, at least, a "proto-who"?) associated with the "primordial structure" of experience that I referred to in my previous post. I'd say this is the "Self" that I've said is "One Self" or an "Aristotelian universal" - meaning shared by all instances of experience, but not existing independently of individual embodied actual experiences (in contrast to a "Platonic universal" which would continue to exist even if there were no embodied instances of it). It is the "perspectival" nature of all experience that conscious beings experience qualitatively as the feeling of "being me". I'm insisting that the "feeling of being me" only exists when there is an embodied being who is constituting that experience. Without the embodied aspect, I find no reason to think that "feeling of being me" exists. Embodiment of the right sort and the "feeling of being me" go hand-in-hand. Not every embodied process experiences its existence, but if you have embodiment "of the right sort" then you will have the "feeling of being me." Without embodiment of the right sort, there is no such feeling. Indeed, no "consciousness" of any sort worth categorizing as "conscious." Basically, unless God is "embodied" in some actual way, in some actual universe or other, there is no God in the sense of a conscious being who can love or experience a "feeling of being me."
But, if God is actually embodied in some way then it seems that there should be some possibility, at least in principle, of science of some sort discovering evidence pointing to the existence of such an entity. And if/when this were to happen, we would have the basis for a "non-magical" conception of God. I will grant you that if such evidence were to be found, it would probably be in the form of what current physics would call a "universal field". But I'm inclined to characterize this field as the way in which we consciously account for what I've been calling the primordial "structure" of experience. It would be one of the ways in which we characterize the embodied nature of God, but I would hesitate to refer to the field as "God".
The problem with materialists is that in order to preserve their metaphysical commitment to a materialist ontology, they have to deny the existence of something that is, so to speak, staring them in the face, namely, the subjectivity that is always presupposed in every observation and every measurement. For materialism to work, it would need to account for subjectivity in a way that makes the account not really materialist anymore. Basically, the success of materialism would be the death of materialism.
My proposal (dual aspect theory) explicitly acknowledges the fundamental nature of subjective qualitative aspects of reality. Objectivity is inter-subjectivity. Reality is "first-person plural". The "feeling of being me" is a universal, but this feeling is always felt from a unique perspective because the feeling is always the feeling of an embodied being, and each embodied being is spatiotemporally unique.
I like how you quoted a textbook. "takes up space and has mass"
You won't find any textbook quote stating this.
I would post what my Physics book states about matter but since this is the religious forum we can take it to the Science forum if you want to continue this discussion.
Is there any debate as to whether or not nothing is solid & everything is energy?
How can there be a debate on this when we are a solid and there are solids all around us? The property of a solid is the reason we can't walk through walls.
How can there be a debate on this when we are a solid and there are solids all around us? The property of a solid is the reason we can't walk through walls.
Tightly bonded/packed atoms are the reason we can't walk through walls.
Tightly bonded/packed atoms are the reason we can't walk through walls.
Exactly which is the fundamental property of what constitutes a solid and is what distinguishes a solid from a liquid or a gas. The atoms are packed so tightly and this property is what maintains the shape of the solid.
We can't walk though solids due to those properties. BTW there are other properties of solids but I won't go into them.
Really? Then what is gravity exerting its force on with respect to us not being flung off into outer space?
Answer: Gravity exerts a force on you because you have mass. This force causes an acceleration towards the Earth's mass. Matter is material that occupies space and has mass.
Why do you think there is no such thing as matter? There is no way gravity could exert it's force on us if were were matter-less, mass-less beings.
What is the mass of a photon? Gravity exerts its force on light photons and bends them.
Mensaguy has made repeated warnings in this thread. Take science discussions to the Science forum.
For what it's worth, my post regarding the issue is based on what some may say is evidence for intelligent design...'the web' that binds atoms and creates our reality.
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