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Mind/Matter Duality versus Matter only
Whoknows
Australia Veteran
Hi all,
I would like to discuss mind matter duality versus matter only.
Mind/Matter duality:
By direct experience mind appears to exist, subjective events are directly experienced, these events may correspond with, and have relationship to, physical events; yet this does not deny the experiential component of being. In fact all empirical processes first rely on direct experience as at least a partial basis, in this way, as is quite clear in Western Philosophy, empiricism is an offshoot of idealism. All our scientific theories, of which we rely on to formulate our theories of reality, exist initially and completely in the domain of mind, for what is a scientific theory other than a mental creation created to answer some question of phenomenal reality.
Matter only:
Mind does not exist, experience is merely an emergent property of matter / energy. All scientific experiments have only been able to detect material evidence for mental events and it is clear that future discoveries will prove once and for all the final physical reality of mind. There is no reason to invent the term Mind to refer to something that can be explained in physical terms.
That'll do for starters, please add to / or refute as desired.
Cheers, WK
I would like to discuss mind matter duality versus matter only.
Mind/Matter duality:
By direct experience mind appears to exist, subjective events are directly experienced, these events may correspond with, and have relationship to, physical events; yet this does not deny the experiential component of being. In fact all empirical processes first rely on direct experience as at least a partial basis, in this way, as is quite clear in Western Philosophy, empiricism is an offshoot of idealism. All our scientific theories, of which we rely on to formulate our theories of reality, exist initially and completely in the domain of mind, for what is a scientific theory other than a mental creation created to answer some question of phenomenal reality.
Matter only:
Mind does not exist, experience is merely an emergent property of matter / energy. All scientific experiments have only been able to detect material evidence for mental events and it is clear that future discoveries will prove once and for all the final physical reality of mind. There is no reason to invent the term Mind to refer to something that can be explained in physical terms.
That'll do for starters, please add to / or refute as desired.
Cheers, WK
0
Comments
Would you believe the scientist or your own mental experience?
So what is our fundamental basis for understanding? A construct? Or direct experience? I don't directly experience synapses. That we are epiphenomenon of synapses does not have any supporting evidence.
Mind and body are not two. They interpenetrate. Hence skandas.
"I think its pretty clear that our subjective experience can be changed by changing matter." I don't have a problem with this, but that doesn't prove that the only cause of subjective experience is brain.
I have a problem with the idea that increasing complexity can reach a point where it can become capable of generating subjective experience. Obviously one or two neurons could not generate subjective experience, why would 10, or 100, or 10^6, 10^9 neurons all of a sudden become sentient? At one point you have combined electrical, magnetic and chemical fields, at another point it is suggested we have sentience or experience. I don't believe that a matter of numbers can make the difference between inertness and sentience.
How does a photon hitting the retina end up as the visual perception of light? Why does the triggering of neurons generate perception?
* Mind exists
* Matter exists
* Mind does not exists
* Matter does not exists
* Mind and Matter neither exists or not exists
Mind is the cause of matter
Matter is the cause of mind
Mind is matter
matter is mind
So tell me, does this really matter when we are still deluded?
Hi @fivebells , my personal interest is with our societies' unexamined belief of the nature of mind/matter. IMO Buddhism is more effective if you can get past the matter only mindset (see below) as I know from experience that things became much easier when this fetter, if you like, is broken. Yet its not easy to think so far outside the conventional square and this topic is a chance to discuss this issue in relative isolation from other Buddhist issues. As to mind and matter operating independently of each other I must confess to being somewhat an idealist in this matter. (pun only realised after the typing)
@NOTaGangsta , "does this really matter when we are still deluded?" yes, it is directly related to the ability of a Buddhist to see beyond their conceptual limits. The fetter of "mind is brain" is responsible for limiting the mind to the conceptual boundaries of the head. Believe it or not, by overcoming this fetter mind becomes freed, at least from a subjective point of view, from the spatial limits of the head. This helps with understanding anatta as the mind is freed from the limited perspective of the internal reference point.
The Heart Sutra says "Emptiness is form and form is emptiness; form is not separate from emptiness, and emptiness is not serparate from form."
Do you understand? Then you know this is also a true statement: "Form is also form, and emptiness is also emptiness."
The Sutra does not say there is no form, or say that there is no emptiness. It does not say "There is only emptiness (mind) or there is only form (matter).
Mind is not separate from matter. Matter is not separate from mind. But mind is still mind, and matter is still matter.
This teaching must be comprehended in some manner. Mind is mind. Mind is not-mind. What does it mean?
The cool breeze from the open window behind me smells like rain.
Hope this helps.
Neuro scientists might be able to cause certain emotions or memories or whatever in the brain by stimulating certain neurons, but this only shows a correlation between the two and does not really explain in depth what is going on. Alan Wallace compares it to a light switch that makes a light bulb turn on. You might break the switch while the bulb is still fine and from that wrongly conclude the light itself is broken. You can keep staring at the switch for years and still not find this out because you don't look in your own mind.
Of course body and mind are connected -taking care of one is taking care of the other- so I would not call it dualism, but also the purely material view (brain=mind) is incorrect if you ask me. For me Buddhism is the only philosophy that really tackles the hard problem of consciousness and I wonder why this is not more often looked at in science.
With metta,
Sabre
Cos everything is empty of an inherent independent existence that could exist or not exist
Nothing exists as an entity in and of itself
Matter, defined as the four elements, aka the first skandha,Mind, defined as all mental activities, I.e. The next four skandhas, all interdependently originate
None is the cause of another
They arise when requisite conditions for the manifestations are present
Like ear, air, soundwaves, drum, stick, drummer, all are requisite conditions
The auditory consciousness of drumbeat is the manifestation
None of the conditions, like air, in and of itself is the cause of auditory consciousness
But when all requisite conditions come together, this auditory consciousness manifest as something new and complete, without external cause nor does it arise spontaneously
@Ric you must find it interesting that there are so many idealists here? Does that mean we're all gullable or suffering from the same delusions of reality?
@Sabre , I love B A Wallace's books though I still found them a bit of a hard slog the first time. In Choosing Reality he covers so much ground that he really doesn't have much time to spend on any one topic. Its funny the first time I read this book I remember saying to myself "so what" many times. The next time I read this was after another several years of practise and was able to take more in that time.
In my own journey I really had to hammer away at the brain is mind issue. My tools that I used were:
1) the fallacy of a fundamental particle - this helped me to understand that I could find no physical basis for physical reality, electrons are self defining as a fundamental particle which means they are made of nothing. The same goes for quarks. I used to think that quatum physics told us what an electron was, but then after investigating it further QM only tells you where an electron is, not what it is, the same goes for all fundamental particles. You need to move onto M theory, string theory, or other hypothetical unproven theories to find out what these fundamental particles are made of. But even then this is just a matter of shifting the goal posts so that we can't confirm their validity. No matter what, a fundamental particle is something impossible as it must consist of something.
2) Circular arguments, lack of absolute foundations - this helped me realise that there is no grounding for any absolute foundations, as all theories rely on foundations that allowed me to adopt a theory on its usefulness and apparent effectiveness knowing that these theories are not absolutely correct.
3) Idealism, knowing that all knowledge is imputed from experience of our bodies and the outside world. It is also interesting that philosophy of science particularly empiricalism acknowledges idealism as a basis for scientific thought. I never realised this until a few days ago when reading up on Western philosophy.
Why did I have to hammer away at the mind is brain issue? Because in meditation every time I experienced something I tended to equate it to the physics of the act of perception. If I was seeing a wall I would be thinking something like this-
"photons are bouncing off the wall, the wall is absorbing some of the photons and bouncing others back, these are focused through the lens in my eye on the retina. On incidence in the retina the photon will enter a cone or a rod and if it is the correct wavelength it will trigger a neuron to fire which will create a path through the brain to the visual centre from where the visual perception is experienced."
Compare that to this simple idealist response:
"I see a brown wall"
If both are equally valid I think that the second one seems much more conducive to meditation than the first. However, the first one could be a better representation of interdependence at the cost of mental noise.
(snip)
Nature also teaches me by the sensations of pain, hunger, thirst, etc. that I am not only lodged in my body as a pilot in a vessel, but that I am very closely united to it, and so to speak so intermingled with it that I seem to compose with it one whole. ... I consider the body of a man as being a sort of machine so built up and composed of nerves, muscles, veins, blood and skin, that though there were no mind at all, it would not cease to have the same motions as at present, exception being made of those movements which are due to the direction of the will and in consequence depend on the mind (as opposed to those which operate by the disposition of the organs). (Rene Descartes, Meditations 6)
If the body is a machine, like Descartes postulates, then the mind is also a machine, and so is the universe. So really we should say there is a machine (mind) in a machine (body) which are both part of one machine (the universe). To understand this it is necessary to realise that matter is a wave structure of the universe, so is mind (this is why we can see and interact with the rest of the universe - it is a part of us).
(unsnip)
Or in the words of the Heart Sutra: Emptiness is not separate from form, and form is not separate from emptiness.
How can we bring out the Mind into scientific thinking? At the moment the predominant view is pure Materialism? Does anyone else think this is important?
This talk by Dan Seigel explains this really well
Also the scientist/monk Matthieu Ricard has several good you tube videos about this.
So what's next? Well, we have to invent the form, first. Then we can look at the mind and say, how about that. This bit of emptiness is exactly like this piece of form. Until the next one comes along. I think it's a marvelous dance.
I dont think just the number of something makes a system that much more complex. I dont think the complexity of the brain arises just because there is a lot of particles. When we look at the particle level a table has a huge amount of particles and that doesnt make it complex. The brain has a lot more going on.
I also see mental retardation as evidence that the mind is matter. Somebody who has a faulty brain develops a faulty mind. But I dont think this is the end all be all. It just seems like one side has some obvious links while the other is purely speculative. So when push comes to shove Ill go for the side that has something rather than nothing.
At 1:18:20 theres a great explanation of the origin of the skeptism of mind ,or pyshic phenemenon in this case, as something distinct from the brain and a few minutes later he does a nice job of undermining Richard Dawkins and his brand of dogmatic skepticism.
My current view of this, which is definately a work in progress, originates from a combination of neuroplasticity research, the tibetan view of the mind, their process of dying, modern near death experiences, and my own experience as a meditator.
According to the Tibetan Buddhist view of mind there are three levels, gross mind, subtle mind and very subtle mind. At the time of death the gross and subtle minds are said to dissolve and its only the very subtle mind that continues on in between lives and into the next life. (Karmic imprints are said to be planted in the very subtle mind.) Only a very few extremly accomplished meditators are said to be able to have an experience of this very subtle mind. Most of us are living in the world of gross and subtle mind, which has to do with our perceptions, thoughts and feelings, pretty much all of our everyday experiences. So according to this view theres no reason that the gross and subtle minds can't be produced by the brain. At the very least they are heavily dependent on it, the analogy I've heard most often is that the brain is like a TV set and the mind is like the broadcast signal. If you take away the power or the picture tube or any part of the mind/brain system you loose the experience of "TV".
After death the Tibetans say you gain a new subtle body with senses and this seems to be backed up by peoples near death experiences.
As far as my own meditation experience awareness seems to be something outside the everyday mind since I can be aware of my body, thoughts and feelings. Its awareness it seems that allows us to change the habits of the mind/brain by being able to step outside of it and recognize the patterns that trap us.
This has just recently come up in my reading. I am currently reading Confessions of a Buddhist Athiest by Stephen Batchelor and quite early on in his journey he got stuck with the problem of mind, brain and matter. I had the same problems as Stephen, in this respect, but managed to get past this obstruction. If someone is determined enough it is possible to discover that the conventional Western understanding is *not the only valid understanding* in this area.
To reach this result one of the first things that help is understanding that there is never only one correct answer to problems. The unexamined assumption of layman (and some scholars) in relation to Western scholarship is that when a peer based decision is made to adopt a theory they assume that this is the one and only correct theory. Even a half hearted investigation into this field will lead the investigator to realise that it is possible to have multiple theories that are equally valid in their respective context, the most obvious one, in physics, is the coexistence of the two theories of particle mechanics and quantum mechanics, the method of investigation will determine whether quantum effects or particle effects are measured.
A meditator does not have to end up with great belief in the existence of mind, a true open belief should work as well, but I think a closed disbelief may make progression more difficult as experiences could be constantly related back to brain function and perceptive mechanics (at least that was the case in my practise).
Even taking the view that different views are valid in different contexts could work as well. In the "real world" holding a physical view of mind and in meditation holding a mental view of mind as a form of skilful means. The mental view could be considered as a means to an end, in this respect it doesn't matter whether it is ontologically correct or not.
Cheers, WK
Both good points. On the second one though, just because there is no physical evidence for experience does not mean that mental experience does not happen. When you feel pain or happiness you really feel it, the experience is not a scientific or physiological process, even if such a process does occur at the same time. This view (denigrating experience) is just a weakness in our modern Western understanding, we have lost our view of experience in the modern age.
One final point is that Buddhism is about the cessation of suffering, suffering is an experience so it makes sense that Buddhism is based on understanding experience rather than the physiological processes related to experience.
Cheers, WK
mind is first.