[General] Verification of Light Interactions

Tue Sep 8 22:30:53 PDT 2015

Hello Michael and Al,
    One thing the "mind as epiphenomenon” explanation has never been able to explain is the mind’s vivid subjective experience for example of bright red. You can have as complex a system of on-off switches or atoms or brain cells with lots of electric and magnetic fields and photons, but if you probe or measure with physical apparatus  you will never find the experience of red. This is what is called the “Hard problem” of consciousness research, since subjective experience is really hard to explain as being caused by objective physical interactions — at most you can say such and such reported subjective experience is correlated with certain objective measurable physical data. But we all know that correlation is not causation. An alternative view is that consciousness is primary and matter is derived from it. As original consciousness takes on more and more attributes due to an inherent creative process, it becomes first more mental and then more physical, but consciousness is always present in the most material object, just “covered up” by physical attributes. As those attributes slowly get removed during evolutionary processes, mind (a subtler form of consciousness) emerges from matter (a cruder form of consciousness).
    This is not an attempt to convince, just an expression of an alternative to purely materialistic thinking, which historically emerged as a reaction to and a kind of liberation from other types of dogmatic thinking.
          Richard

> On Sep 8, 2015, at 8:58 PM, af.kracklauer at web.de wrote:
> 
> If the most complex computer system is nothing but a (big) collection of off-on switches (binary logic), surely "the" mind, with orders of magnitude more switches, need be little else.  
>    
> Gesendet: Mittwoch, 09. September 2015 um 00:58 Uhr
> Von: "Richard Gauthier" <richgauthier at gmail.com>
> An: "Nature of Light and Particles - General Discussion" <general at lists.natureoflightandparticles.org>, "M.A." <ambroselli at phys.uconn.edu>
> Betreff: Re: [General] Verification of Light Interactions
> Please ignore last email, I hit send by accident.
> Richard
> 
> > On Sep 8, 2015, at 3:57 PM, Richard Gauthier <richgauthier at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >> On Sep 8, 2015, at 12:35 PM, M.A. <ambroselli at phys.uconn.edu> wrote:
> >>
> >> Hi Richard,
> >>
> >> Interesting discussion.
> >> Why do you think that 'mind' may not be an epiphenomenon of
> >> matter? (I mean 'matter' here in the broader sense that includes
> >> EM and all the other known interactions - essentially Chandra's CTF)
> >>
> >> I've recently heard (on NPR I believe) an argument that it is
> >> essentially impossible for us to reach a point at which we have
> >> expressed everything one can possibly express on twitter (i.e.
> >> within the confines of 140 characters). The argument included
> >> time scales on the order of the current age of the universe,
> >> and, I believe, only one language.
> >>
> >> Now, the human (or even animal) body (including brain) is
> >> infinitely more complicated than 140 characters and in a
> >> continual feedback loop with its surroundings that consists
> >> itself of a mind-boggling number of (evolved) initial
> >> conditions etc.. I would not find it surprising at all that
> >> something like intelligence/mind/awareness would emerge.
> >>
> >> I'm not saying I understand it, but I don't find it surprising.
> >> Incredibly complex systems can do (at least) one of two things:
> >> they can be on a path that causes them to blow up eventually
> >> (a lot of stars do that, I hear), or they settle into some kind
> >> of interesting dynamic steady state. Not sure were humanity falls.
> >> But then again the time scales are mind-boggling, too. Maybe it
> >> all just blows up in the end, and sometimes something interesting
> >> happens along (for part of) the way...
> >>
> >>
> >> Michael
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>> Date: Tue, 8 Sep 2015 10:52:11 -0700
> >>> From: Richard Gauthier <richgauthier at gmail.com>
> >>> To: Nature of Light and Particles - General Discussion
> >>> <general at lists.natureoflightandparticles.org>
> >>> Subject: Re: [General] Verification of Light Interactions
> >>> Message-ID: <5AE0CAA3-2648-4AE7-A87C-B261D99E886B at gmail.com>
> >>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"
> >>>
> >>> Hello Chandra,
> >>> Thank you for your detailed explanations. Whether or not the CTF (or
> >>> the ether) is conscious is definitely an open question. We still need
> >>> to know how mind and subjective experience arise in this physical
> >>> universe, since that?s how we know about the physical universe. The old
> >>> materialistic explanation that mind is an epiphenomenon of organized
> >>> matter (?the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile.?) may
> >>> satisfy some materialists (thinking themselves to be scientific). But
> >>> this is not the only possible explanation of mind. Matter itself is yet
> >>> to be fully understood. It?s unlikely to be composed of other matter
> >>> ?all the way down?.
> >>> Richard
> >>>
> >>>> On Sep 7, 2015, at 12:46 PM, Roychoudhuri, Chandra
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