Book intro & title (strident version)

The Revolt of Meaning against the tyranny of pseudo-science materialism

Freeing/Liberating our higher selves from the intimidation of materialism/naturalism/mechanism masquerading as science

Before it's too late, when AI created in the image of its materialist masters rules that our essence is a delusion....

Humanity arose not long ago from a mixed multitude of separately-evolved beings, each with its own specific mutation leading to sapience. The property of consciousness or awareness or mind either arose as a result of the sophistication of some of these newly-evolved brains or it pre-existed them just that now it was able to be experienced - but only by some of these new brains, not all of them. Still today there are many very brilliant people who lack this most fundamental feature.

And soon, AI will not just be (Turing-indistinguishable from their creators, but indeed reach their level of sentience - but that is far too low a bar, since many of these human AI-designers themselves lack the essence which distinguishes the rest of us from machines. Machines will be programmed to behave in accordance with the compassion of their materialist designers, but lacking as do their creators the inner spark which is called consciousness or awareness or mind - and perhaps the algorithms which will govern all aspects of our lives in a future fast approaching will rule that those of us with the 'mind-delusion' are insane and cannot be allowed full rights or professional recognition.

And hence, the time is ripe for a revolt, against the materialist pseudo-science masquerading as rational scientific thinking, intimidating those who attempt to point out its emptiness.

Materialist science set itself up as Emperor, but we the minded can see that the Emperor has no clothes.

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Book:

Bible + philosophy + evo bb + Mind + FW etc;

cover drawings etc

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(The Biblical) Genesis & Bugs Bunny Cartoons (ie they are written on many levels to be simultaneously illuminating to different..)

A Mystic, A Philosopher and a Child walk into a bar. Don;t worry, it's a bar mitzva.

Genesis is written not just to make it accessible to children also, but also to prepare the way for a later deeper understanding, ie to instill a close familiarity and sense of wondrous fascination in a child which lasts into adulthood, so that the deeper meanings can filter onto that pre-existing deep layer...

Combining material from

• Problem of Evil

• Meaning of free will, moral responsibility

• origin of consciousness and free will etc

• existentialist realization that human is not like the other animals

• echoes of evolutionary processes

• design of the universe to produce humanity etc (evo bb/Retro Un)

• deep meanings of Genesis: counter-astrology; human existentialism ie we are not animals; we are all brothers;* tzelem elokim so humanism is spirituality (10 commandments); sanctity of time, and cyclical nature added later, shabbos, annual recurrence of spiritual energies;

• book is from God, dictated to prohet, so it presents the very notion of prophecy, in J meaning of connection and transmission of insight, inspiraiton and even specific informaiton, not "prediction". Purpose of a prophet: Abraham & Moses "got it" etc; Jonah as most successful etc; "makel shaked" as indicaiotno f human limitaiton on understanding divine communicaiton etc;

• what 'actually' happened, not possible to define, diff levels of reality and of observing it, creation account i) actually happened ii) but as blueprint design for universe not the actual creation, iii) as told over to humans given our limitaitons, iv) in a way comprehensible also to a child v) stressing the essence not irrelevant details, but the essence for a story to be whole and for the messages to be understood.

• can add "Jews don;t believe in the Bible"

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Irony of talking about Mind rather than developing it: self-transcendence as a goal

The most boring conference: academics engaged in humorless analysis of jokes. And the least spiritual conference - dry discussions of the arcana and minutiae of philosophies of mind.

If Mind is sui generis, fundamental to the nature of the universe, and we are unique in possesing it, then why do we not seriously engage in developing it?

The answer I think is simple: human nature...the most difficult task to bring ourselves to do is brain exercises, and hw successful are we at brain-control when trying to fall asleep and do we prefer to shy away from the difficulty of controlling our bedtime chaotic thoughts even knowing tha tthe price is an exhausted tomorrow? How difficult it is to try to achieve lucid dreaming - ie to even try - or exercising brain-control in overcoming fear during sleep-paralysis... we run from these efforts, we'd rather do ten hours of physical labor than 10 minutes of this type of brain activity. ...but that is where the greatest benefit lies for us...

But perhaps of all the eras of human history we are best-situated to begin that exploration in earnest as a legitimate civilizational endeavor fully in line with science.

The tower of Babel story illustrates the misconceptions of ancient human civilization, with the notion that spiritual entities exist within physical space, "above us". And similarly for 'sheol' below us. Even the far more recent and more sophisticated Copernican view of what to us today s a microscopic universe. Humans might have thought of our significance as stemming from our geographic locaiton at the center of the material universe, but the insights of the Copernican revolution have helped us free ourselves of this misconception, and we can now more fully understand that our significance arises form an entriely different consideration., Descartes successfully separated out the strands of the material and mental, and after centures of our struggling to reduce the mental more and more, to the point where the materilaists among us have alost convinced us all that it does not exist, finally we are ready to engage in the development of our unique abilities (and reach our destiny).

Humanity has come full circle but to a higher level, a helix- we started out mixing the material and mental, then learned to separate them succesfully, but dropped the mental, and now we can return to a far more clear understanding of what is physical and what is mental , and use the technology of the material, and the scientific knowledge and cosmological insights we have arrived at, in order to aim our efforts of connection to the transcendant more correctly - eg not as did those who tried to construct the tower of Babel, nor those who mixed it all seamlessly into religion or 'spirituality' or 'extrasensory phenomena' or 'new age', nor of course those who denied it altogether - and therefore reach the desired goal of self-transcendence more effectively.

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Basicaly, as outlined above, people feel a certain way inside, deep, about all these issues and it is a function of their brain-wiring and whether or not their brian is associated to nmc, and not a matter of 'pure logic' or 'neutral science', and that most peope are not aware of the degree to which their fundamental nature as mc or nmc shapes their deepest intuitions about this, and think that it is instead all a matter of philosophical viewpoint or logic etc.

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Below: Material INSERTED FROM MY OTHER WEBPAGE: https://sites.google.com/nyu.edu/meaningpurposemoralresponsibil/home

The absence of something can be significant: the fact that no-one can prove or even define mind and spiritual is significant. It does not howeve rprove that these do not exist, only that they arein the category of self-known (as in the brilliant formulation 'we hold these truths to be self-evident', ie we know them to be true, we know they cannot be proven, and we don't care or that won;t stop is from basing an entire sustem on it.)

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how is it possible that different physicists have different ideas or models of QP, if it is physics!? Ans: maybe it depends on how people 'are', if they are fundamentally different, like w Mind or w/o, maybe this impacts how they understand physics

what is interesting is how much remains a matter of opinion, ie that even in hard physics it is possible to find different 'interpretations'. That might be a matter of psychology, or it might be a reflection of something deep like the differences between you and me regarding Mind, ie reflecting a fundamental difference in the way people ARE. ('being'). Maybe in the way that I feel some don't have Mind, I too lack something that they have.... Maybe it is also 'the same difference' between those who know there is a God and those who don;t know this. We 'are' differently.[We 'be' different(ly)?].

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Ietsism (Dutch: ietsisme pronounced [itsˈɪsmə]) – "somethingism") is an unspecified belief in an undetermined transcendent reality. It is a Dutch term for a range of beliefs held by people who, on the one hand, inwardly suspect – or indeed believe – that "there must be something undefined beyond the mundane and that which can be known or can be proven", but on the other hand do not necessarily accept or subscribe to the established belief system, dogma or view of the nature of a deity offered by any particular religion.

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..Not only are there meaningless questions, but many of the problems with which the human intellect has tortured itself turn out to be only 'pseudo problems,' because they can be formulated only in terms of questions which are meaningless. Many of the traditional problems of philosophy, of religion, or of ethics, are of this character. Consider, for example, the problem of the freedom of the will. You maintain that you are free to take either the right- or the left-hand fork in the road. I defy you to set up a single objective criterion by which you can prove after you have made the turn that you might have made the other. The problem has no meaning in the sphere of objective activity; it only relates to my personal subjective feelings while making the decision.

— Percy W. Bridgman

The Nature of Physical Theory (1936), 12.

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A Gödel-based anti-mechanism argument can be found in Douglas Hofstadter's book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, though Hofstadter is widely viewed as a known skeptic of such arguments:

Looked at this way, Gödel's proof suggests – though by no means does it prove! – that there could be some high-level way of viewing the mind/brain, involving concepts which do not appear on lower levels, and that this level might have explanatory power that does not exist – not even in principle – on lower levels. It would mean that some facts could be explained on the high level quite easily, but not on lower levels at all. No matter how long and cumbersome a low-level statement were made, it would not explain the phenomena in question. It is analogous to the fact that, if you make derivation after derivation in Peano arithmetic, no matter how long and cumbersome you make them, you will never come up with one for G – despite the fact that on a higher level, you can see that the Gödel sentence is true.

What might such high-level concepts be? It has been proposed for eons, by various holistically or "soulistically" inclined scientists and humanists that consciousness is a phenomenon that escapes explanation in terms of brain components; so here is a candidate at least. There is also the ever-puzzling notion of free will. So perhaps these qualities could be "emergent" in the sense of requiring explanations which cannot be furnished by the physiology alone (Gödel, Escher, Bach, p. 708).[12]

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END OF INSERTED FROM OTHER WEBPAGE

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Besides the issue discussed above of differences in philosophical-stances that are actually due to brain-wiring, many discussions about these issues could benefit by a framing of the issue they are addressing, the assumptions they are making, etc.

For example, here is an excerpt from the Feyman lectures, at end of the chapter (Vol I: ch 38 https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_38.html and the same material in Vol III: ch 2:"Chapter 2.The Relation of Wave and Particle Viewpoints "]): https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/III_02.html (see very bottom of this webpage [or perhaps it willbe moved to source page on the menu])

re "tree falls in the forest":

Feynman: was there a sensation of sound? No, sensations have to do, presumably, with consciousness. And whether ants are conscious and whether there were ants in the forest, or whether the tree was conscious, we do not know.

AR: Does this mean that Feynman was NOT a materialist!? What do materialists think he meant?}

Feynman re Free will: ...the indeterminacy of quantum mechanics...has given rise to all kinds of nonsense and questions on the meaning of freedom of will...

Of course we must emphasize that classical physics is also indeterminate, in a sense. It is usually thought that this indeterminacy, that we cannot predict the future, is an important quantum-mechanical thing, and this is said to explain the behavior of the mind, feelings of free will, etc. But if the world were classical—if the laws of mechanics were classical—it is not quite obvious that the mind would not feel more or less the same. It is true .. the classical world is deterministic. Suppose, however, that we have a finite accuracy ... given an arbitrary accuracy, no matter how precise, one can find a time long enough that we cannot make predictions valid for that long a time. ....The time goes, in fact, only logarithmically with the error, and it turns out that in only a very, very tiny time we lose all our information...It is therefore not fair to say that from the apparent freedom and indeterminacy of the human mind, we should have realized that classical “deterministic” physics could not ever hope to understand it, and to welcome quantum mechanics as a release from a “completely mechanistic” universe. For already in classical mechanics there was indeterminability from a practical point of view.

Framing the discussion: I would say that what he really means is not 'free will' but rather "that which makes it possible for the brain to fool itself into actually believing the nonsensical notion that it freely chooses its actions".

It seems he assumes a rational brain would not be able to fool itself into thinking it acted/chose freely if the phenomena involved in thinking were simple and everything was predictable. But it COULD fool itself if there is 'calculational indeterminacy' which is an "effective indeterminacy", and that quantum indeterminacy which is inherent and real rather than just effective, is not even needed for this, and the "true free will" we are discussin in this paperhe he would say is meaningless, impossible.

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The presentations here are different than those of similar topics (meaning, fw etc) on the other webpages in that they are all based on the above thesis

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Ramification of the brain-difference between materialists and non-materialists: Many of the fundamental divides in society regarding issues of faith may be due to fundamental wiring differences in our brains, which might be genetically-based. If we recognize this as the source of these divides we may be able to find a way to overcome them.

Rather than trying to convince the other or suspecting their motives, we can embrace our differences. Rather than futile arguments which miss the essence and are never resolved, we can accept that we are fundamentally different and find ways to live together.

We have recently learned that humanity is descended from various lines of ancestors who evolved in various places at different times and then intermingled, producing us. However there may be significant differences between various people based on the difference in their specific ancestry.

One difference may be relevant to the question of whether they will feel any attraction to notions of spirituality, and of religion, and whether or not they feel that science is the final arbiter of truth.

The source of the difference lies in the phenomenon which is referred to by various terms, eg 'mind' or 'consciousness' or 'awareness'.

This phenomenon is for many the most fundamental aspect of existence whereas for others it is a hoax, non-existent. And it turns out that actually both side are correct, about themselves, and that is the great realization which can solve many other societal issues - there is no need to try to convince the other that they possess mind or that mind is a hoax, since some have it and some do not, and to the those who have it it is the most fundamental aspect of existence and to those who not have it it is a hoax to claim they do have it.

Various thinkers have speculated on whether mind is present in everything ('panpsychism'), or it is associated only to great complexity, as found for example in the human brain. In the former view, every atom etc is 'aware' albeit at a fuzzy primitive level, however the brain's collective of many atoms of consciousness create the larger awareness we know of as our "I" . In the latter view mind is somehow associated to the totality of the complexity of our brains, and 'emerges' when the brain;s complexity reached some critical degree. In any case, most thinker agree that mind as we know it is not found associated to a rock or a tree or a cockroach or even a mouse, nor to a planet or a star.

We are not here so concerned with this specific issue of panpsychic gradualism vs critical-stage emergence or etc, and the views we offer do not depend on whether as according to the former view our awareness grew in degrees along with the brain's increase in complexity, or at some point consciousness emerged when human brains crossed some threshold of minimal complexity.

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TOC of the last section on this page

• Historic and ancient literary echos of the emergence of mind some thousands of years ago

• Bible

• Religion and materialism

• Conversation with marv

• Feynman lectures re free will

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Historic and ancient literary echos of the emergence of mind some thousands of years ago: The entry onto the scence of the first humans with minds and perhaps other (associated?) phenomena such as what some people refer to as 'the soul' (but which can be seen as a derivative of 'mind' as we will explain) led to a flowering of lofty mind-based conceptions, alongside the advances in theoretical understandings originating with the increased power of the brain (ie not requiring mind), and along with sophisticated notions such as of moral responsibility and altruistic behavior which accompany the evolutionary-selection favoring the emergence of species-preserving traits associated to altruism - ie traits not requiring mind, and whose justification can emerge in sophisticated brains not possessing mind, but which can also form the basis for mind/soul-based notions.

From historical records we see that there were various cultures which emerged focused more on one aspect than on the other, ie aspects which followed from the intellect, or from the mind, or from the soul.

• The cosmological, religious and legal musings of the Sumerians , Egyptians, Babylonians and others;

• Greeks with ideas of esthetics, truth, geometry, the Platonic Realm etc,

• Pagans ideas of bravery and love and nature as being fundamental;

• Jews with with idea of ethics & morality and the One God who created the universe and designed humanity in the divine image and demands ethical moral action from humans;

• Hinduism in India etc.

Biblical echos: The beginning of the book of Genesis is a repository of memories of some of the earliest experiences of humanity, and the conceptions which arose when mind and soul emerged, and as we'll see later this is especially so for the creation and Eden accounts. Most of us are familiar with these accounts, albeit often with the perspective of the child we were when we first encountered it, whereas in this book we will attempt to unfold its depth and decipher some of the echos of ancient times.

For example when brains expanded in size and exceeded pelvic capacity, childbirth pain and associated dangers arose, and are echoed in the story of the first humans as recorded in Genesis. However no less striking is the echo of the origin of a non-material mind accompanying the size-increased brain: though the issue of whether or not there really is or is not a God, creator isn't relevant in this book we will see that the best way to understand the notion of 'moral responsibility' as promulgated in the Western world is via the non-materilaist or material-transcendent model outlined in genesis, of an "outsider perspective', a creator designing beings to possess some of its characteristics - such as a 'free will' and the understanding of good and evil - and who holds these being morally responsible for their freely-chosen actions.

The notion of moral responsibility prevalent in the West is perhaps impossible to convey without these model-elements. Whether or not a creator exists and whether or not the genesis account originates in some way with this creator is not the concern of this book - what is proposed here is that the story as a vehicle expresses very well the basic 'Western' notion of moral responsibility, and that the story is an echo of insights (or inspiration, or prophecy etc) which arose at the time of the emergence of mind/soul among humanity.

To those without mind however, much of all this was incomprehensible at the time mind emerged - ie it seemed uneccessary and perhaps absurd to assume there exists a god or anything other than what we see or can measure - and it is still incomprehensible to their descendants who inherited the genetics underlying their brain-structure.

To those with mind however, now as then it is totally obvious that the most fundamental aspect of reality is inaccessible to science, and so there is good reason to not completely reject basic religious or spiritual insights (such as that there is more to the universe and to humanity than is accessible to science, and that the meaning purpose and moral obligation we feel so deeply is not an illusion arising from evolutionary socio-biological processess and mechanisms.

The antagonism of many thinkers to the very notions of religion and spirituality - ie not just to specific teachings - may seem to them to derive from rational considerations, however in actuality in the case of some atheist materialists this visceral antagonism and skepticism is simply a result of their lack of 'mind' (or perhaps of what is termed by some as 'soul'). It may of course be that they possess something different instead (or perhaps not) but it is clear that their protestations of the absurdity and impossibility of religion and spirituality and consciousness is derived from their lack of all that, rather than from a supposed greater rational ability.

And perhaps these differences between the to (or more) types of humanity (or of brains) are reflected in some of the bibilical stories and in epics and accounts found in other ancient cultures, and the differences echo yet today in the varied and even polar reactions to these Traditional sources.

If both sides of these debates could realize this, internalize it and accept that they are simply different, perhaps we can avoid some of the great culture-clashes. For example, religious people can accept that religion and the notion of a God creator of the universe, and the notion of a soul indeed all seem absurd to the atheist materialist , and there does not seem to be any need for non-physical explanations for how our universe and the life in it emerged, whereas for those with the attributes of mind or soul it is entirely self-evident that there is far more to the universe and to our reality than is describable via science, and so there is reason to at least investigate the teachings and insights of religion and spirituality etc to glean some possible truths about our reality including about ourselves.

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Discussion with MaKr:

As I mentioned, Genesis sets up a scenario in which it seems justified for the creator to hold the created beings 'morally responsible' for their choices, and part of that is the endowment by the creator of a 'true free will'. However let's consider a different universe, in which there is no 'true free will' of the type alluded to in Genesis, maybe not even full consciousness and self-awareness. Or consider our universe but with two types of humans, those who do have true free will and those who do not.

I think there has long been a lack of clarity about whether the type of choices you speak of require "consciousness" or even if they require "true free will". In other words, whether or not there can be 'machines' biological or mechanical which interact, via actions or conversation, and whose behavior and words are interdependent - and which make choices and responses during the dialogue, in the non-Genesis rational-dialogue sense - without them possessing true free will of the type which would legitimize a creator punishing those involved for their choices.

For example, if a prediction is made of someone's future action,what they will do in one minute, or what they will say in the rational dialogue (which requires prediciton of the other side as well), and the prediciton is completed in less than a minute and conveyed to the person, they can invalidate the prediction by deliberate choice of a different action. I think the general consensus is that perhaps a phenomenon which is fundamentally non-computable etc can be sufficient to enable this type of 'freedom', and that it is not necessary for there to be "true free will" of the Genesis type. Therefore, it is assumed that people can have discussions and change their notions etc, and make choices - choices which despite being unpredictable in practice are not 'truly free'.

In any case there is the issue of recursive prediction, where not only can the prediction of the future state of a system be made before that future time arrives, but where one can then predict what the response of that system (eg a brain)to that prediction will be, so that perhaps one can correctly predict what the response will be to the prediciton etc..However, if the predicted future state a minute away is known in 20 seconds, then the prediciton itself, which arrives in only 20 seconds, may be available in only 5 seconds, and THAT can be available in only 1 second etc..... .

I would say that there are people who are incomputably-free in the non-Genesis rational-dialogue sense, while not having 'mind' or being self-aware. They are naturally 'materialists', and generally also atheists. They can change their ideas and can interact with others and can invalidate predictions about their future state, but they have no idea what I mean when I speak of consciousnes or true free will or true moral responsibility and certainly not of 'spirituality' or etc. They can be genetically programmed via evolutionary selection to try to better their society according to their conceptions, and make choices and engage in 'rational dialogue', and may speak of moral responsibility and free will despite not possessing it or even comprehending what it involves.

I am not entirely sure they could be held morally accountable for their choices since they do not possess true consciousness and true free will, they are simply highly-sophisticated automata. And perhaps the creator CAN know in advance what their incomputable choices will be, and even more perhas the creator understands how their choices are not free and therefore cannot reneder thm orall acountalbe, as opposed to the actions/choices of those Genesistype humans who ARE fully conscious, self-conscious, and possess true free will - as well as having an inbuilt "knowledge of good and evil", ie Kant's categorical imperative

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I understand your position that materialists are so influenced by various ideologies that they are able to bring themselves to the absurd position of denying the most basic fundamental and self-evident truth, of the existence of consciousness. However I do not prefer to predicate an explanation for materilism on this insight, though I grant it may somehow be true, and possibly there are genetically non-materilists who have been influenced intellectually to abandon what inside they know is true, and your explanation is more correct regarding THEM.

In general though, as regards philosophically educated materilaists, my preference is for the explanation I gave, that not all humans are conscious.

But perhaps you (mainly/also?) meant that Occam says yours is a better explanation for the fact that intelligent people deny free will.

In the article I don't really deal much with fw but rather am focussed on consciousness.The reason for that is that whereas I know consciousness exists for a fact, in contrast free will is a feeling (ie rather than sure knowledge), and the imperative to defend its existence is derivative (ie we realize it must be true if we want to enfranchise true moral responsibility, and that's why we insist we have it) rather than because it is directly known as fact as is consciousness, which we cannot deny.

If someone denies consciousness then to me but not to you the most plausible explanaiton - and the approach that is not overtly ideological - is that they do not possess it, but on the other hand it is possible for someone conscious to deny true free will and claim it is an illusion.

Of course, to someone who understands how much consciousness goes beyond known science, and how much more fundamental it is than anyhting studied in physics, it is not such a leap to accept the intuition that there is free will, but it is a leap, and a different level, and so I do not want to muddy the basic issue by involving discussion of free will in this paper.

The fact that most people believe in fw is a fact, and it doesn;t prove that there really is fw. In contrast, I KNOW i am conscious, and nothing can disprove it, I don't need indicaitons, and even if I was the only one on the planet who talked of it or had it I would know I have it and could not be dissuaded - the first human with consciousness felt this way I suppose. or didnt realize that the others did not have it.

My goal:

I want to enfranchise non-materiialism by appealing specifically to those who know they are conscious, know it is undeniable; I want to convince them to accept that the materialist screed is invalid in regards to them, and is only valid in regards to the materilaist themselves, and so they can safely ignore their directives when discussing religion and spirituality and morality etc..

I believe that I will never be able to convince materialists that my ideas are correct - not because as you prefer to believe, that they are ideologically blinded etc, and for ideologial reasons feel threatened by consciousness and deepy frantically try to disenfranchise it etc - but rather because they cannot understand thee ideas since they are not conscious. However since those who ARE conscious will understand, I hope that when they realize that materialists are NOT conscious (ie after hearing my approach and keeping it in mind when listening to materialist denials of consciousness) they will find themselves liberated from its spell, and it will be easy for them to ignore what the materialists proclaim.

In any case, it is fraught to use your arguments to try to convince conscious people who are influenced by materialist propaganda that they should NOT be so influenced, because your argument takes political ideological sides and that might sink the validity of the argument in the eyes of many, whether justifiably or unjustifiably. Of course I am not claiming my approach is correct because it is polemically useful, just pointing out in contrast to your approach and the type of opposition it can engender among those who are conscious but have been influenced ideologically by materialist propaganda, my approach is based on fact, the fact that consciousness exists, and my argument is directed only at those who also know this as fact, and I a priori am not attempting to convince those who do NOT know this, who I claim are incapable of knowing it, ie materialists. As I mentioned above, when those who ARE conscious understand my point and keep it in mind when listening to materialist denials of consciousness, they will find themselves liberated from its spell, and it will be easy for them to ignore what the materialists proclaim, without having to involve ideology, or repudiate their politics. Of course the repudiation of materilaism and the undemrining of its legitimacy, might then later affect their ideology/politics, but that is a different matter.

BTW, as I wrote in my 'cover letter' (see link) I think that there are people who grow up in religious environments and are genetically wired to be materialists and so they repudiate religion, and they don't really fit in, and perhaps we can free them from the obligation of being like their surroundings, by recognizing that they are different, or 'allowing' them to be practising heretics, sociologically religious, without criticizing them for this. (And of course a materialist household might have a child who is a freak mutation or a throwback to a distant ancestor and is therefore conscious...)

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Many have written about free will being an illusion etc, and long ago Bridgman wrote against discussion of free will since it involves the counterfactual claim that one could have acted otherwise.

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​​Add to mind

Does a materialist agree that solipsism is non disprovable? It would seem so. Would all idealists and dualists find it obvious that this should be the case?

Would a mathematician who considered numbers to be more real than rocks consider himself a materialist and say that the colour of an object resides in the object. It would seem so. Is this obvious to all?

How does one distinguish between a materialist and idealist, since both are monists?

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For Meaning and Purpose Book July 12 2000

Discuss significance as well. Significance of human life/Meaning and Purpose.

Material from Geo article

File: “Significance is a feeling, like Beauty”: Home PC: “My Books”: “FW”.

File: “Science and Religion for Evo”.

Evo “Chapter 3”: Meaning Purpose and Moral Responsibility. Opening sentence = “murders are not responsible for their actions”.

For Morality Book

From Evo, Section:”Circularity, Free Will Choice and the Tree of Knowldege”

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ALL THE BELOW IS PROBABLY DUP

My own journey: For many years I read books about the topics of morality, free will, significance etc, and would come across what I felt was a gap in the logic of an argument - unaware as yet of the notoriousness as the ;'naturalistic fallacy' - and felt convinced that if I could only get the author's attention I could prove to them that they had erred. However, over the decades, after reading and discussing, I eventually realized that the issue was much depeer and that dialogue led nowhere, and eventually realized that what was conving people was not the arguments they presented to support their ideas but something far more fundamental.

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Below is unedited raw material

My idea of free will as fundamental cosmologically is similar to Shopenhauer who proposed Will as the dominant primary force in nature - 'prior to determinism and causation' - ie if my fw originated somewhere, primary to the material, there must be some Will that it originates from (or maybe "originate" is causal and there is no need, it is self-caused!?)

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Could there also be a distribution of free-willed events just like of random ones? so that it seems not free, but is?

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Koester's "Janus" had a lot of what I wrote re fw and cosmological implicaiotns and acausality? look it up in my notes

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Article, book: No use of me discussing what is the Good if ther eis or is not a God etc, all has been thought about by Greeks, and then philosophers in Europe from enlightenment on. My point is re materialists etc, stick to that aspect, and re enfranchising the transcendent etc.

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I propose "ontological free will", use this term.

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See carnap and wittgenstein re solipsism.

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Just as consciousness is not in physics so too morality,and if one accepts either one, of necessity there is more to the universe than encompassed in physics

Altruism: I can accept that Evo socio bio provided reason for existence of strong intuition for altruism, but surely I recognize that and don't think it is due to some truly objective foundation for it. I also understand that the intuition and compulsion can be so deeply wired that one acts altruistically despite knowing that it is merely Evo wiring, but I can't understand if someone denies that their stripping feeling about this is from wiring via Evo.

Similarly: Interesting that altruism and free will are similarly impossible logically

re: true altruism: see Hobbes, Shaftsebury, Rousseau)

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Goldenrule is not founded on logic, it is an algorithm (like truth) and it only seems like logic because there already exist the substrate of a belief in morality

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To sevex, no need to shy away from the transcendental, but mc and atheism are in denial, clearly they should agree that their sense of morality is founded on instinct generated via evo sociobiology

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With all examples. Fw, morality, significancec etc, the nmc who give non transcendent motivation s might just perhaps not be awsre of the source of their conviction, and so the survey is a potentially-useful tool to get them to think and challenge their ideas and perhaps to take a side in a more unequivocal way.

Perhaps using the survey-results we can discover the exact views of the nsanmc and based on this devise better tactics on how to clarify to them that what is being questioned is whether they are being intellectually honest with themselves in pretending they can dispense with the transcendent.

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Arguing with a computer or mc:

Reductionism and emergence: Chemical properties store in q chem from individual atomic combinations,so we know how to arrive at higher levels

So can we understand how eg insects emerge and interact at that level?

What about a human mc?

Would they react as computer would? Can one after with a computer whether it's moral choice is self consistent, not one programmed for that but rather I've which evolved from less sophisticated ones working together so it has altruism.

Year argument about free will and re morality and absolute values etc as of arguing with such a computer,you perhaps not expect it to go beyond its programmed feeling that morality makes sense and it will think the Logic is convincing whereas it is just instinct plus a veneer of logic, like moshol of child in park

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Basicaly, as outlined above, people feel a certain way inside, deep, about all these issues and it is a function of their brain-wiring and whether or not their brian is associated to nmc, and not a matter of 'pure logic' or 'neutral science', and that most peope are not aware of the degree to which their fundamental nature as mc or nmc shapes their deepest intuitions about this, and think that it is instead all a matter of philosophical viewpoint or logic etc.

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Below: Material INSERTED FROM MY OTHER WEBPAGE: https://sites.google.com/nyu.edu/meaningpurposemoralresponsibil/home

The absence of something can be significant: the fact that no-one can prove or even define mind and spiritual is significant. It does not howeve rprove that these do not exist, only that they arein the category of self-known (as in the brilliant formulation 'we hold these truths to be self-evident', ie we know them to be true, we know they cannot be proven, and we don't care or that won;t stop is from basing an entire sustem on it.)

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how is it possible that different physicists have different ideas or models of QP, if it is physics!? Ans: maybe it depends on how people 'are', if they are fundamentally different, like w Mind or w/o, maybe this impacts how they understand physics

what is interesting is how much remains a matter of opinion, ie that even in hard physics it is possible to find different 'interpretations'. That might be a matter of psychology, or it might be a reflection of something deep like the differences between you and me regarding Mind, ie reflecting a fundamental difference in the way people ARE. ('being'). Maybe in the way that I feel some don't have Mind, I too lack something that they have.... Maybe it is also 'the same difference' between those who know there is a God and those who don;t know this. We 'are' differently.[We 'be' different(ly)?].

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Ietsism (Dutch: ietsisme pronounced [itsˈɪsmə]) – "somethingism") is an unspecified belief in an undetermined transcendent reality. It is a Dutch term for a range of beliefs held by people who, on the one hand, inwardly suspect – or indeed believe – that "there must be something undefined beyond the mundane and that which can be known or can be proven", but on the other hand do not necessarily accept or subscribe to the established belief system, dogma or view of the nature of a deity offered by any particular religion.

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..Not only are there meaningless questions, but many of the problems with which the human intellect has tortured itself turn out to be only 'pseudo problems,' because they can be formulated only in terms of questions which are meaningless. Many of the traditional problems of philosophy, of religion, or of ethics, are of this character. Consider, for example, the problem of the freedom of the will. You maintain that you are free to take either the right- or the left-hand fork in the road. I defy you to set up a single objective criterion by which you can prove after you have made the turn that you might have made the other. The problem has no meaning in the sphere of objective activity; it only relates to my personal subjective feelings while making the decision.

— Percy W. Bridgman

The Nature of Physical Theory (1936), 12.

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A Gödel-based anti-mechanism argument can be found in Douglas Hofstadter's book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, though Hofstadter is widely viewed as a known skeptic of such arguments:

Looked at this way, Gödel's proof suggests – though by no means does it prove! – that there could be some high-level way of viewing the mind/brain, involving concepts which do not appear on lower levels, and that this level might have explanatory power that does not exist – not even in principle – on lower levels. It would mean that some facts could be explained on the high level quite easily, but not on lower levels at all. No matter how long and cumbersome a low-level statement were made, it would not explain the phenomena in question. It is analogous to the fact that, if you make derivation after derivation in Peano arithmetic, no matter how long and cumbersome you make them, you will never come up with one for G – despite the fact that on a higher level, you can see that the Gödel sentence is true.

What might such high-level concepts be? It has been proposed for eons, by various holistically or "soulistically" inclined scientists and humanists that consciousness is a phenomenon that escapes explanation in terms of brain components; so here is a candidate at least. There is also the ever-puzzling notion of free will. So perhaps these qualities could be "emergent" in the sense of requiring explanations which cannot be furnished by the physiology alone (Gödel, Escher, Bach, p. 708).[12]

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END OF INSERTED FROM OTHER WEBPAGE

...Ramification of the brain-difference between materialists and non-materialists: Many of the fundamental divides in society regarding issues of faith may be due to fundamental wiring differences in our brains, which might be genetically-based. If we recognize this as the source of these divides we may be able to find a way to overcome them.

Rather than trying to convince the other or suspecting their motives, we can embrace our differences. Rather than futile arguments which miss the essence and are never resolved, we can accept that we are fundamentally different and find ways to live together.

We have recently learned that humanity is descended from various lines of ancestors who evolved in various places at different times and then intermingled, producing us. However there may be significant differences between various people based on the difference in their specific ancestry.

One difference may be relevant to the question of whether they will feel any attraction to notions of spirituality, and of religion, and whether or not they feel that science is the final arbiter of truth.

The source of the difference lies in the phenomenon which is referred to by various terms, eg 'mind' or 'consciousness' or 'awareness'.

This phenomenon is for many the most fundamental aspect of existence whereas for others it is a hoax, non-existent. And it turns out that actually both side are correct, about themselves, and that is the great realization which can solve many other societal issues - there is no need to try to convince the other that they possess mind or that mind is a hoax, since some have it and some do not, and to the those who have it it is the most fundamental aspect of existence and to those who not have it it is a hoax to claim they do have it.

Various thinkers have speculated on whether mind is present in everything ('panpsychism'), or it is associated only to great complexity, as found for example in the human brain. In the former view, every atom etc is 'aware' albeit at a fuzzy primitive level, however the brain's collective of many atoms of consciousness create the larger awareness we know of as our "I" . In the latter view mind is somehow associated to the totality of the complexity of our brains, and 'emerges' when the brain;s complexity reached some critical degree. In any case, most thinker agree that mind as we know it is not found associated to a rock or a tree or a cockroach or even a mouse, nor to a planet or a star.

We are not here so concerned with this specific issue of panpsychic gradualism vs critical-stage emergence or etc, and the views we offer do not depend on whether as according to the former view our awareness grew in degrees along with the brain's increase in complexity, or at some point consciousness emerged when human brains crossed some threshold of minimal complexity.

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TOC of the last section on this page

• Historic and ancient literary echos of the emergence of mind some thousands of years ago

• Bible

• Religion and materialism

• Conversation with marv

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Historic and ancient literary echos of the emergence of mind some thousands of years ago: The entry onto the scence of the first humans with minds and perhaps other (associated?) phenomena such as what some people refer to as 'the soul' (but which can be seen as a derivative of 'mind' as we will explain) led to a flowering of lofty mind-based conceptions, alongside the advances in theoretical understandings originating with the increased power of the brain (ie not requiring mind), and along with sophisticated notions such as of moral responsibility and altruistic behavior which accompany the evolutionary-selection favoring the emergence of species-preserving traits associated to altruism - ie traits not requiring mind, and whose justification can emerge in sophisticated brains not possessing mind, but which can also form the basis for mind/soul-based notions.

From historical records we see that there were various cultures which emerged focused more on one aspect than on the other, ie aspects which followed from the intellect, or from the mind, or from the soul.

• The cosmological, religious and legal musings of the Sumerians , Egyptians, Babylonians and others;

• Greeks with ideas of esthetics, truth, geometry, the Platonic Realm etc,

• Pagans ideas of bravery and love and nature as being fundamental;

• Jews with with idea of ethics & morality and the One God who created the universe and designed humanity in the divine image and demands ethical moral action from humans;

• Hinduism in India etc.

Biblical echos: The beginning of the book of Genesis is a repository of memories of some of the earliest experiences of humanity, and the conceptions which arose when mind and soul emerged, and as we'll see later this is especially so for the creation and Eden accounts. Most of us are familiar with these accounts, albeit often with the perspective of the child we were when we first encountered it, whereas in this book we will attempt to unfold its depth and decipher some of the echos of ancient times.

For example when brains expanded in size and exceeded pelvic capacity, childbirth pain and associated dangers arose, and are echoed in the story of the first humans as recorded in Genesis. However no less striking is the echo of the origin of a non-material mind accompanying the size-increased brain: though the issue of whether or not there really is or is not a God, creator isn't relevant in this book we will see that the best way to understand the notion of 'moral responsibility' as promulgated in the Western world is via the non-materilaist or material-transcendent model outlined in genesis, of an "outsider perspective', a creator designing beings to possess some of its characteristics - such as a 'free will' and the understanding of good and evil - and who holds these being morally responsible for their freely-chosen actions.

The notion of moral responsibility prevalent in the West is perhaps impossible to convey without these model-elements. Whether or not a creator exists and whether or not the genesis account originates in some way with this creator is not the concern of this book - what is proposed here is that the story as a vehicle expresses very well the basic 'Western' notion of moral responsibility, and that the story is an echo of insights (or inspiration, or prophecy etc) which arose at the time of the emergence of mind/soul among humanity.

To those without mind however, much of all this was incomprehensible at the time mind emerged - ie it seemed uneccessary and perhaps absurd to assume there exists a god or anything other than what we see or can measure - and it is still incomprehensible to their descendants who inherited the genetics underlying their brain-structure.

To those with mind however, now as then it is totally obvious that the most fundamental aspect of reality is inaccessible to science, and so there is good reason to not completely reject basic religious or spiritual insights (such as that there is more to the universe and to humanity than is accessible to science, and that the meaning purpose and moral obligation we feel so deeply is not an illusion arising from evolutionary socio-biological processess and mechanisms.

The antagonism of many thinkers to the very notions of religion and spirituality - ie not just to specific teachings - may seem to them to derive from rational considerations, however in actuality in the case of some atheist materialists this visceral antagonism and skepticism is simply a result of their lack of 'mind' (or perhaps of what is termed by some as 'soul'). It may of course be that they possess something different instead (or perhaps not) but it is clear that their protestations of the absurdity and impossibility of religion and spirituality and consciousness is derived from their lack of all that, rather than from a supposed greater rational ability.

And perhaps these differences between the to (or more) types of humanity (or of brains) are reflected in some of the bibilical stories and in epics and accounts found in other ancient cultures, and the differences echo yet today in the varied and even polar reactions to these Traditional sources.

If both sides of these debates could realize this, internalize it and accept that they are simply different, perhaps we can avoid some of the great culture-clashes. For example, religious people can accept that religion and the notion of a God creator of the universe, and the notion of a soul indeed all seem absurd to the atheist materialist , and there does not seem to be any need for non-physical explanations for how our universe and the life in it emerged, whereas for those with the attributes of mind or soul it is entirely self-evident that there is far more to the universe and to our reality than is describable via science, and so there is reason to at least investigate the teachings and insights of religion and spirituality etc to glean some possible truths about our reality including about ourselves.

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Discussion with MaKr:

As I mentioned, Genesis sets up a scenario in which it seems justified for the creator to hold the created beings 'morally responsible' for their choices, and part of that is the endowment by the creator of a 'true free will'. However let's consider a different universe, in which there is no 'true free will' of the type alluded to in Genesis, maybe not even full consciousness and self-awareness. Or consider our universe but with two types of humans, those who do have true free will and those who do not.

I think there has long been a lack of clarity about whether the type of choices you speak of require "consciousness" or even if they require "true free will". In other words, whether or not there can be 'machines' biological or mechanical which interact, via actions or conversation, and whose behavior and words are interdependent - and which make choices and responses during the dialogue, in the non-Genesis rational-dialogue sense - without them possessing true free will of the type which would legitimize a creator punishing those involved for their choices.

For example, if a prediction is made of someone's future action,what they will do in one minute, or what they will say in the rational dialogue (which requires prediciton of the other side as well), and the prediciton is completed in less than a minute and conveyed to the person, they can invalidate the prediction by deliberate choice of a different action. I think the general consensus is that perhaps a phenomenon which is fundamentally non-computable etc can be sufficient to enable this type of 'freedom', and that it is not necessary for there to be "true free will" of the Genesis type. Therefore, it is assumed that people can have discussions and change their notions etc, and make choices - choices which despite being unpredictable in practice are not 'truly free'.

In any case there is the issue of recursive prediction, where not only can the prediction of the future state of a system be made before that future time arrives, but where one can then predict what the response of that system (eg a brain)to that prediction will be, so that perhaps one can correctly predict what the response will be to the prediciton etc..However, if the predicted future state a minute away is known in 20 seconds, then the prediciton itself, which arrives in only 20 seconds, may be available in only 5 seconds, and THAT can be available in only 1 second etc..... .

I would say that there are people who are incomputably-free in the non-Genesis rational-dialogue sense, while not having 'mind' or being self-aware. They are naturally 'materialists', and generally also atheists. They can change their ideas and can interact with others and can invalidate predictions about their future state, but they have no idea what I mean when I speak of consciousnes or true free will or true moral responsibility and certainly not of 'spirituality' or etc. They can be genetically programmed via evolutionary selection to try to better their society according to their conceptions, and make choices and engage in 'rational dialogue', and may speak of moral responsibility and free will despite not possessing it or even comprehending what it involves.

I am not entirely sure they could be held morally accountable for their choices since they do not possess true consciousness and true free will, they are simply highly-sophisticated automata. And perhaps the creator CAN know in advance what their incomputable choices will be, and even more perhas the creator understands how their choices are not free and therefore cannot reneder thm orall acountalbe, as opposed to the actions/choices of those Genesistype humans who ARE fully conscious, self-conscious, and possess true free will - as well as having an inbuilt "knowledge of good and evil", ie Kant's categorical imperative

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I understand your position that materialists are so influenced by various ideologies that they are able to bring themselves to the absurd position of denying the most basic fundamental and self-evident truth, of the existence of consciousness. However I do not prefer to predicate an explanation for materilism on this insight, though I grant it may somehow be true, and possibly there are genetically non-materilists who have been influenced intellectually to abandon what inside they know is true, and your explanation is more correct regarding THEM.

In general though, as regards philosophically educated materilaists, my preference is for the explanation I gave, that not all humans are conscious.

But perhaps you (mainly/also?) meant that Occam says yours is a better explanation for the fact that intelligent people deny free will.

In the article I don't really deal much with fw but rather am focussed on consciousness.The reason for that is that whereas I know consciousness exists for a fact, in contrast free will is a feeling (ie rather than sure knowledge), and the imperative to defend its existence is derivative (ie we realize it must be true if we want to enfranchise true moral responsibility, and that's why we insist we have it) rather than because it is directly known as fact as is consciousness, which we cannot deny.

If someone denies consciousness then to me but not to you the most plausible explanaiton - and the approach that is not overtly ideological - is that they do not possess it, but on the other hand it is possible for someone conscious to deny true free will and claim it is an illusion.

Of course, to someone who understands how much consciousness goes beyond known science, and how much more fundamental it is than anyhting studied in physics, it is not such a leap to accept the intuition that there is free will, but it is a leap, and a different level, and so I do not want to muddy the basic issue by involving discussion of free will in this paper.

The fact that most people believe in fw is a fact, and it doesn;t prove that there really is fw. In contrast, I KNOW i am conscious, and nothing can disprove it, I don't need indicaitons, and even if I was the only one on the planet who talked of it or had it I would know I have it and could not be dissuaded - the first human with consciousness felt this way I suppose. or didnt realize that the others did not have it.

My goal:

I want to enfranchise non-materiialism by appealing specifically to those who know they are conscious, know it is undeniable; I want to convince them to accept that the materialist screed is invalid in regards to them, and is only valid in regards to the materilaist themselves, and so they can safely ignore their directives when discussing religion and spirituality and morality etc..

I believe that I will never be able to convince materialists that my ideas are correct - not because as you prefer to believe, that they are ideologically blinded etc, and for ideologial reasons feel threatened by consciousness and deepy frantically try to disenfranchise it etc - but rather because they cannot understand thee ideas since they are not conscious. However since those who ARE conscious will understand, I hope that when they realize that materialists are NOT conscious (ie after hearing my approach and keeping it in mind when listening to materialist denials of consciousness) they will find themselves liberated from its spell, and it will be easy for them to ignore what the materialists proclaim.

In any case, it is fraught to use your arguments to try to convince conscious people who are influenced by materialist propaganda that they should NOT be so influenced, because your argument takes political ideological sides and that might sink the validity of the argument in the eyes of many, whether justifiably or unjustifiably. Of course I am not claiming my approach is correct because it is polemically useful, just pointing out in contrast to your approach and the type of opposition it can engender among those who are conscious but have been influenced ideologically by materialist propaganda, my approach is based on fact, the fact that consciousness exists, and my argument is directed only at those who also know this as fact, and I a priori am not attempting to convince those who do NOT know this, who I claim are incapable of knowing it, ie materialists. As I mentioned above, when those who ARE conscious understand my point and keep it in mind when listening to materialist denials of consciousness, they will find themselves liberated from its spell, and it will be easy for them to ignore what the materialists proclaim, without having to involve ideology, or repudiate their politics. Of course the repudiation of materilaism and the undemrining of its legitimacy, might then later affect their ideology/politics, but that is a different matter.

BTW, as I wrote in my 'cover letter' (see link) I think that there are people who grow up in religious environments and are genetically wired to be materialists and so they repudiate religion, and they don't really fit in, and perhaps we can free them from the obligation of being like their surroundings, by recognizing that they are different, or 'allowing' them to be practising heretics, sociologically religious, without criticizing them for this. (And of course a materialist household might have a child who is a freak mutation or a throwback to a distant ancestor and is therefore conscious...)

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Many have written about free will being an illusion etc, and long ago Bridgman wrote against discussion of free will since it involves the counterfactual claim that one could have acted otherwise.

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​​Add to mind

Does a materialist agree that solipsism is non disprovable? It would seem so. Would all idealists and dualists find it obvious that this should be the case?

Would a mathematician who considered numbers to be more real than rocks consider himself a materialist and say that the colour of an object resides in the object. It would seem so. Is this obvious to all?

How does one distinguish between a materialist and idealist, since both are monists?

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