Mod+ 248. BERNARDO KASTRUP SAYS MATERIALISM IS BALONEY

My thoughts exactly. It surprises me that Bernardo so emphatically embraces such an arbitrary conclusion.
Well of course, his book is entitled, "Why Materialism is Baloney".

I suppose the best refutation of Dualism, is that it is inconsistent - you have two realms that are meant to be distinct, and yet which must obviously interact! As for Panpsychism - there doesn't seem to be much evidence in its favour. Also, if you take it down to the level of fundamental particles, it seems to be in contradiction with QM.

However, my feeling is that science is absolutely built on theories that are strictly speaking obviously false. Take Ohm's law. If you push the voltage on a resistor too high, the thing will burn, but even at smaller voltages, it will heat up, which will in turn change its resistance! Ohm's law is useful because in many practical situations, those problems can be neglected. Taking Dualism as a real theory in the same sense would be a decent step forward because it would be far more testable than Idealism. In a very real sense many ψ experiments can be seen as tests of Dualism - thus for example, ESP can be seen as an interaction in the mental realm that is not mediated by physical processes.

David
 
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-fine-tuning-of-universe-to-one-part.html
Many people have wondered how the universe could be so mathematically precise: how natural laws could follow mathematical rules, and how the universe could be so fantastically, improbably, fine-tuned to permit the existence of life. There is a simple answer for that.

First, consider the analogy that the universe might be a simulation running on a computer. That would explain how it could operate with such mathematical precision. All the laws and fine-tuned parameters could be specified in the program. But that is just an analogy. I am not suggesting the universe is a computer simulation. However, it may be that the universe was created in the mind of God. In which case God is analogous to the computer and the universe is analogous to a program running on the computer.

Mathematics consists entirely of ideas. God is pure mind. God creates through thought. All that can exist is mind. But your consciousness is not part of the "simulation". Your brain and body are part of it, but you, your consciousness, is not physical. You would still exist if the "simulation" ended. But the physical universe of space and time may exist only in the mind of God. This may be what mystics mean when they say everything is part of God.

If this is right, then God can create miracles with a thought. He can cause improbable events such as the origin and evolution of life with a thought.

It also makes sense of quantum mechanics. If the physical universe exists as thought in the mind of God, then there is no ultimate reality to explain quantum mechanics or to explain what a wave function is. There are only mathematical formulas that describe how our reality will behave. It is exactly what you would expect if you found natural laws that obeyed mathematical rules that made no physical sense. It might be because there isn't anything physical behind them. There is only a mathematical engine (consciousness, the mind of God) behind them. It could explain wave/particle duality, quantum entanglement, and the quantum Zeno effect. It is also consistent with the theistic and mystical belief that the continued action of God is necessary to keep the physical universe extant.


http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/physics/2015/04/great-math-mystery/
The puzzle of the power of mathematics is in fact even more complex than the above examples from electromagnetism might suggest. There are actually two facets to the “unreasonable effectiveness,” one that I call active and another that I dub passive. The active facet refers to the fact that when scientists attempt to light their way through the labyrinth of natural phenomena, they use mathematics as their torch. In other words, at least some of the laws of nature are formulated in directly applicable mathematical terms. The mathematical entities, relations, and equations used in those laws were developed for a specific application. Newton, for instance, formulated the branch of mathematics known as calculus because he needed this tool for capturing motion and change, breaking them up into tiny frame-by-frame sequences. Similarly, string theorists today often develop the mathematical machinery they need.

Passive effectiveness, on the other hand, refers to cases in which mathematicians developed abstract branches of mathematics with absolutely no applications in mind; yet decades, or sometimes centuries later, physicists discovered that those theories provided necessary mathematical underpinnings for physical phenomena. Examples of passive effectiveness abound. Mathematician Bernhard Riemann, for example, discussed in the 1850s new types of geometries that you would encounter on surfaces curved like a sphere or a saddle (instead of the flat plane geometry that we learn in school). Then, when Einstein formulated his theory of General Relativity (in 1915), Riemann’s geometries turned out to be precisely the tool he needed!
...
NOVA: The Great Math Mystery
Is math invented by humans, or is it the language of the universe? NOVA takes on this question in a new film premiering April 15, 2015 at 9pm on most PBS stations.

NOVA: Describing Nature with Math
How do scientists use mathematics to define reality? And why? Peter Tyson investigates two millennia of mathematical discovery.

The Washington Post: The Structure of Everything
Learn more about the “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics” in this review of Mario Livio’s book “Is God a Mathematician?”


http://math.northwestern.edu/~theojf/FreshmanSeminar2014/Wigner1960.pdf
The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences
Richard Courant Lecture in Mathematical Sciences delivered at New York University,
May 11, 1959
EUGENE P. WIGNER
Princeton University
 
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/physics/2015/04/great-math-mystery/
The puzzle of the power of mathematics is in fact even more complex than the above examples from electromagnetism might suggest. There are actually two facets to the “unreasonable effectiveness,” one that I call active and another that I dub passive. The active facet refers to the fact that when scientists attempt to light their way through the labyrinth of natural phenomena, they use mathematics as their torch. In other words, at least some of the laws of nature are formulated in directly applicable mathematical terms. The mathematical entities, relations, and equations used in those laws were developed for a specific application. Newton, for instance, formulated the branch of mathematics known as calculus because he needed this tool for capturing motion and change, breaking them up into tiny frame-by-frame sequences. Similarly, string theorists today often develop the mathematical machinery they need.

Passive effectiveness, on the other hand, refers to cases in which mathematicians developed abstract branches of mathematics with absolutely no applications in mind; yet decades, or sometimes centuries later, physicists discovered that those theories provided necessary mathematical underpinnings for physical phenomena. Examples of passive effectiveness abound. Mathematician Bernhard Riemann, for example, discussed in the 1850s new types of geometries that you would encounter on surfaces curved like a sphere or a saddle (instead of the flat plane geometry that we learn in school). Then, when Einstein formulated his theory of General Relativity (in 1915), Riemann’s geometries turned out to be precisely the tool he needed!
...
NOVA: The Great Math Mystery
Is math invented by humans, or is it the language of the universe? NOVA takes on this question in a new film premiering April 15, 2015 at 9pm on most PBS stations.

NOVA: Describing Nature with Math
How do scientists use mathematics to define reality? And why? Peter Tyson investigates two millennia of mathematical discovery.

The Washington Post: The Structure of Everything
Learn more about the “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics” in this review of Mario Livio’s book “Is God a Mathematician?”


http://math.northwestern.edu/~theojf/FreshmanSeminar2014/Wigner1960.pdf
The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences
Richard Courant Lecture in Mathematical Sciences delivered at New York University,
May 11, 1959
EUGENE P. WIGNER
Princeton University



Hello Jim Smith
I have not had time to follow up on the links etc but I want to ask your opinion on something re math

I agree with your analysis that pure consciousness is not part of the physical universe
I call it 'presence-awareness' to indicate two of its essential qualities - beingness and awareness
It also has the essential quality of intelligence

Presence-awareness is a primary or essential reality - ie Divine

The body and its nervous system is part of the objective physical universe

What we experience as human mind is an effect or product of the encounter between presence-awareness and the nervous system
Mind is a sort of holographic emergence from that encounter; an effect of incarnation

Human mind is not a primary or essential reality - ie not Divine

The qualities of human mind are a mix of those it derives from physical reality (specifically the nervous system)
and from presence-awareness or pure consciousness

Math I suggest is a product of human mind
The reason it maps onto physical reality is because human mind and therefore math is partly a product or effect of matter
The other part or aspect of human mind being presence-awareness or pure consciousness

If we examine the neuron, the basic operational component of the nervous system, we find it is functionally a biological digital device
in the sense that it either fires or it does not fire - the action potential

The nervous system and the brain is functionally a biological digital mechanism

Math is a mental product made possible by the inherent digital nature of the nervous system

Not sure if I have presented that clearly

Any thoughts?
 
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Hello Jim Smith
I have not had time to follow up on the links etc but I want to ask your opinion on something re math

....

Any thoughts?

Those links were not really needed to understand the post they are more for people who liked the quote and want more of the same.

Regarding consciousness, I think you have to experience it to understand it:
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2015/03/realizing-ultimate.html

I like the comb analogy:
He saw this Beingness as something like a comb. He was at the spine of the comb and all the teeth fanned out from it, each one thinking it was separate and different from all the other teeth. And that was true, but only if you looked at it from the tooth end of the comb. Once you got back to the spine or source, you could see that it wasn't true. It was all one comb. There was no real separation, except when you sat at the tooth end. It was all in one's point of view.

It's true and it's not true. Duality is not exactly right and oneness is not exactly right. But they're both right but they're both wrong.

What's it like when your awareness moves to the spine of the comb? I think it is like remembering, it is not loss of self, not annihilation. It is gaining something like knowledge not losing something.

I think the filter model of the brain has a lot of merit.

I'm not sure if I'm answering your question or not ... I see consciousness and individuality existing apart from the brain with the brain as an interface between an individual consciousness and the physical universe and biological body. My opinion is that mathematical concepts do not originate in nature they originate in consciousness that uses them to produce the physical universe.
 
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