Why this agnostic monist with no taste for the supernatural thinks the materialist picture of reality defeats itself, and why the evidence has started to say so.
Fair enough, it is probably wishful thinking on my part that science may ever be able to explain consciousness as deeply as I would like. I think Spinoza is basically correct but that is just my personal belief. Current science can't truly measure consciousness and what it feels like to be alive and may never actually be able to do so. I do my best to keep an open mind, my beliefs fluctuate over time.
We have proven scientifically that the universe is non local. Everything is actually just a bunch of probability waves stacked on top of each other. Matter is mostly nothing. I am somewhere between a panpsychist and an "god is nature" type , but consciousness being the base root of all reality is what I believe and where I think all of our current scientific research is heading. When quantum mechanics, cosmology and Non dualism all become one discipline seen through different lenses we will have reached the endgame of scientific research for our species.
It was proven enough to win a noble prize. If future science shows something different I am open to updating my beliefs. I started learning about all this from the scientific angle cause I was into cosmology and physics but these days I am mostly into where ancient philosophy and science are intersecting nowadays. The universe literally doesn't match local physics on the cosmological scale, the latest Webb discoveries might even disprove the big bang model altogether. Its not controversial to say we are very wrong somewhere about our current understanding of reality.. But if we can one day prove scientifically what the hindus knew 2000 years ago holistically about the nature of our reality I would see a great beauty and symmetry in that. I love science and philosophy equally, but I don't believe consciousness is just an accident of evolution either. Manifesting creatures capable of perceiving itself seems to be the end goal of the entire universe existing in the first place from my perspective.
A Nobel Prize on this account does not impress me, since my argument, as laid out in this essay, is that science cannot tell us, in principle, what things are. It can only tell us what they do.
Fair enough, it is probably wishful thinking on my part that science may ever be able to explain consciousness as deeply as I would like. I think Spinoza is basically correct but that is just my personal belief. Current science can't truly measure consciousness and what it feels like to be alive and may never actually be able to do so. I do my best to keep an open mind, my beliefs fluctuate over time.
We have proven scientifically that the universe is non local. Everything is actually just a bunch of probability waves stacked on top of each other. Matter is mostly nothing. I am somewhere between a panpsychist and an "god is nature" type , but consciousness being the base root of all reality is what I believe and where I think all of our current scientific research is heading. When quantum mechanics, cosmology and Non dualism all become one discipline seen through different lenses we will have reached the endgame of scientific research for our species.
Is that what we’ve proven? Or is that our interpretation of the models we have, based on unexamined priors?
It was proven enough to win a noble prize. If future science shows something different I am open to updating my beliefs. I started learning about all this from the scientific angle cause I was into cosmology and physics but these days I am mostly into where ancient philosophy and science are intersecting nowadays. The universe literally doesn't match local physics on the cosmological scale, the latest Webb discoveries might even disprove the big bang model altogether. Its not controversial to say we are very wrong somewhere about our current understanding of reality.. But if we can one day prove scientifically what the hindus knew 2000 years ago holistically about the nature of our reality I would see a great beauty and symmetry in that. I love science and philosophy equally, but I don't believe consciousness is just an accident of evolution either. Manifesting creatures capable of perceiving itself seems to be the end goal of the entire universe existing in the first place from my perspective.
A Nobel Prize on this account does not impress me, since my argument, as laid out in this essay, is that science cannot tell us, in principle, what things are. It can only tell us what they do.