I do not understand your reply. It didn't engage with the arguments I presented.

Yes, I did wonder if I was coming from a rather different angle from you. I would imagine that I do not adhere to idealism in a conventional sense at all, especially to the ideas of Berkeley. I am sorry if I did not seem to have looked at the arguments which you had given. I will give them another read. It is simply that I have read a lot of people's views in the last few days and was trying to put my own thoughts together.

Not a problem, but surely if you're genuinely interested in what's true then you have to listen to reason? Otherwise all you're doing is listening to yourself - that is, you'll just be trying to find a story about reality that you like, or a community of believers that you'd like to join. But none of that is evidence.
Berkeley listens intently to reason and reports what he hears. And you can check whether your reason confirms what his says. And his says that the world our sensations tell us about must resemble our sensations in some way, otherwise they would not be telling us about it.
That's true, yes? It's truth becomes apparent on reflection.
And sensations can only resemble other sensations - that's true too, isn't it?
And sensations can only exist as the sensational activity of a mind - that's true as well, yes?
What follows? That the external sensible world is made of the sensational activity of another mind.

No drugs, no meditation, just cold hard reasoning.

I will just say that I haven't used any drugs in a very long while. The psychedelic experimentation I referred to was when I was a student.

Again, that's a fact about you and isn't relevant to the topic.

That makes more sense than thinking of "mental" and "physical" as opposites of some fundamental kind. I mean, the way it looks to me is that the mental is the outgrowth of physical configurations. Then the mind represents aspects of the world. But we speak of "physical objects", like a laptop or a tree, because we don't think they depend on mind completely, otherwise, we are bound to say that the world is 100% made by me. If it were, why can't I know the nature of physics or psychology just by thinking about them?

I am not a physicist but I believe that we have moved away from the Newtonian model which looks to structures. The quantum physicists are showing that the universe is much more complex and are less inclined to look for explanations in purely material terms. — Jack Cummins

Agreed. This comes back to the nature of fundamental phenomena, whether one subscribes to a dualist or monist philosophy, science has shown that energy has the capacity to operate as both a wave and a particle simultaneously. In this way it is both a discrete possible temporo-spatial location( a particle) and a sort of field of possible locations based on probability (a wave).

So it’s clear that the line between the material (discrete/defined) and the non-material (potentiality to be) is at best difficult to delineate. Einstein also pointed out the duality of energy with his energy equivalence E=mc2 which was the first solid scientific principle on exactly how energy relates to mass - its “alter ego”.

I like to picture it as a spectrum of determined scale - as energy is finite (Cannot he created not destroyed) and quantised (photons) - therefore at one pole of the spectrum you have the solid and manipulated form the “acted upon” and on the other you have the inmaterial potency “that which enforces/propagates the action” - the scale between them is then space-time (C^2) the speed of light squared - an area with the parameters of distance and time (speed).

None of this prevents energy and matter from being the exact same thing because implicit to the nature of each is perspective ... from what point on the scale are you observing it? Relativity. Or duality.
This neatly circles back to wave- particle duality in that it collapses into one or the other when “observed” or made “discrete” and relative.

I think that this reminds us of our limited human view. — Jack Cummins

Well, I affirm that our human perception, in this case, the individual one - egoism - is what makes us unique and is what makes our conscious existence within the Universe possible. Limitation is the way of acting that has been applied for thousands of years in the human psyche, where the human nature has been opressed and in its place, empty third objects have been placed - such as religion, the State, Group, Community, etc ... - to to be worshiped, and that same doctrine that persists until today is what makes you think that "the human vision is limiting". What is limiting is the doctrine that it is necessary to see the world through the eyes of another...

I don't say that is not possible to exist "other higher states of cousciousness", but that trying to reach them without the human egocentric view is impossible.

Oxytocin. I think all emotions have a material basis in terms of hormones, enzymes and the like. What's not explicable through such means is selfless devotion and self-sacrifice. — Wayfarer

While I think that yes definitely there is a correlation between oxytocin concentration and “bonding” or “affection” based behaviour that has resulted in the belief that it is the “love Molecule” - it’s likely along the right track but I think it’s also rather reductive. I don’t believe that profound and deep emotions of consciousness are explicitly quantised as “just a molecule.”

If this were the case then we would have already resolved war, depression, hatred etc by injecting ourselves repeatedly with oxytocin. We’d all be love bugs lol.
One think to point out is that in general with bio pharmacology - the more frequently we use a molecule the less of an effect it has and the more effort we have to put in to get the same result. This is tolerance and is common to the majority of chemicals we use both endogenous - dopamine, endorphins for example and exogenous - caffeine, Cocaine, hallucinogens.

So at the very least there is a complex negative feedback that prevents a “one solves all solution” To the generation of emotions and feelings of pleasure etc.

Love is noted for its consistency and perseverance despite removal of the object of love. One can continue to love with all their being a partner who has passed away decades ago. Love seems to be incredibly powerful and Often long lasting and I just don’t see this as being down chemistry alone.

Also on your point of selfless devotion and self sacrifice.. is this not a feature of love? Does he/she who loves in totality not find themselves willing to sacrifice anything and everything for the preservation or wellbeing of the object of their love - think the maternal instinct of a mother to throw herself in front of traffic in order to rescue her child from being hit by a car.

Also on your point of selfless devotion and self sacrifice.. is this not a feature of love? Does he/she who loves in totality not find themselves willing to sacrifice anything and everything for the preservation or wellbeing of the object of their love - think the maternal instinct of a mother to throw herself in front of traffic in order to rescue her child from being hit by a car. — Benj96

Yes, it is a feature of love, and no, there is not a material explanation for it.

When I spoke of our limited human view I was not speaking of seeing through the eyes of another but more of the limits of possible knowledge in virtue of our ability to know the ultimate truths.
As Barry Stroud argues, (in the book I cited in my previous post to you): '...whatever we human beings come to know is from a human point of view. There is no other point of view from which human beings could know anything.'

The one other point I will clarify about higher states of consciousness is that what I am talking about is not necessarily free from egocentricity or dependent upon it. I am referring more to what Abraham Maslow spoke of as peak experiences.

As I read you, dear thinkers, I get the impression we're all too anthropocentric here.
I recently got to know Georg Northoff and I think his idea of stop-using the term mind and focus more on the brain and its relation with the world is very successful.

http://www.georgnorthoff.com/

Don't you think "mind" is an extremely anthropocentric concept in most of the cultures (western and asiatic) (except true pantheists of course - not sure Spinoza's was true one :brow: )?
We're surrounded by what we call world, nature, univers, matter, etc. however we want to call it.We can deny it and speculate as much as we can but while our brains biology is the same than Plato's and Aristotle's or even Hegel's so that we still have many of their existential intuitions.... while we keep going in circles within many naif intuitions, the actual progress in understanding the world and in understanding human nature is coming from biology, neuroscience and physicists, in one word from science.
Philosophy should go hand-by-hand with science but I see here we talk too much speculative-philosophy only.
So the answer to the question "Is the material world the most absolute form of reality?" the net answer is yes, of course and keep moving. You can spend time defining the concepts within the stated question (world, material, absolute, reality, form) and you will get into Wittgenstein's linguistic turn and then Quine... but after this we should be talking about Stanislas Dehaene, Daniel Dennett, Georg Northoff maybe Metzinger as well, Antonio Damasio, and a long etc. of thinkers that are producing philosophy that has absorbed contemporary discoveries.
Those discoveries that come thanks to the new technologies, that are basically extensions of human humble senses. Technologies that are the only way to experience new worlds, new realities, learn more and speculate better :chin:
I do agree that philosophy is super powerful. I like it so much!! Reading the right philosopher at the right time of your life with the right mood is a mystic experience :-)
Plato's dialogues, Hegel's dialectic, the great positivists like Hume, our dear Hobbes... infinite list of great thinkers... should we include Derrida? Yes, why not (kidding).
But we have to recognize it is like listening to music, it doesn't help better understanding the world. It helps building a critical way of thinking, scrutinizing reality but not generating knowledge if it doesn't take into account scientific method and scientific language.
Contemporary technologies are the ones that shape our understanding of the world and how we experience it (biology and AI are challenging the foundations of our laws and ethics, as one example).

Material vs Immaterial fight: of course there are "things", "concepts", "values" that are abstract and part of the subjective human world that refer to human matters that exist thanks to humans and that will disappear with humans. Those "things" are anyway "material" in the sense that are coded in our minds through symbols embedded in our biology, within our brains and our brains manipulate them continuously, conscious and unconsciously (let's be humble again, mostly unconsciously), same way my brain is working right now to write this post.
So let's be honest, yes everything resides in the world, in the material or quantistic, or however you want to call it using this colloquial language but let's be humble and recognize we are just:
nature that thinks
nature that one day found itself in a mirror
and started to walk and explore to survive time
by walking and exploring it met a second mirror
and those 2 mirrors look at each other
and infinity was raised
we humans are drowning in that infinity
while nature continuous its time.

Thank you for your link to the ideas of Northoff. I think that you raise many good points in your comment. So far, I have not had any reference to the ideas of philosophers, such as Dennet. I have read him briefly, but was not inspired by him, because I find him too materialistic.

I would say that I really created this thread because it appears to me that there are many hard materialists on one hand, and on the other, a tradition which emphasises the 'mind'. I would say that I dislike the word mind, but brain seems a bit limited. So, really I was just asking the question because it seems that many philosophers are diametrically opposed on the subject of mind, and the material world. I am not saying that it is more important than the questions of living, but just an implicit assumption beneath the surface. So, I am raising it as one for the starting point about clarity for thinking.

I do think that you are right to point to the way in which energy, and relativity, is an important aspect in the way of thinking on the spectrum in between duality. I would say that the quantum physicists are leading the way in questioning a materialist, mechanistic understanding of the world.

brain seems a bit limited — Jack Cummins

Agree the brain is limited in its own but if we look at the "brain in relationship with the world" it becomes very interesting :wink:
And let's keep the metaphysical discussions aside. Every philosopher after Aristotle has tried to create a metaphysical system of ideas with new "metaphysical concepts" trying to reinvent the wheel each time: Kant, Hegel, Camus... each of them trying to reinvent the metaphysics of the previous one. It is a clear symptom that it is not the right path to follow.
The "meta-anything" is an intellectual loop.
If Dennett looks too materialistic try for example cognitive naturalists like Daniel Andler or Sandro Nannini.

I would say that while metaphysical and epistemological points of view should be not seen as philosophical ends they are implicit in most systems of belief, including those in psychology and even political views. I would say that it is worth looking behind the surface of all views because these assumptions are at the core of all systems of values and ideas. For example, I would say that many adopt determinist belief systems because they are popular and mainstream, and they may not have really examined the underlying premises in much detail or depth.

determinist belief systems because they are popular and mainstream — Jack Cummins

Right, and we can say the opposite as well. That religious and spiritual beliefs (impregnated of dualism and metaphysics) are much more popular and mainstream and have been used and are still being used to manipulate the mass. And it is quite obvious that certain countries with low-education standards and high poverty rates are much more religious than rich and developed countries.
The scientific world is much more complex to understand and usually its teachings not easy to accept as scientific discoveries can be a revolution against mainstream ideas and main-culture assumptions (we know consequences in history of people being killed because of showing scientific facts) but once we understand them and its implications we can never go back :wink: We cannot elude them.

I definitely would not advocate that people just hold on to mainstream religious beliefs, especially in countries where there are low education standards.

I already have spent a long time thinking through the beliefs which were taught to me as a child in Roman Catholicism. I am not specifically wishing to try to replace any views which I see as materialistic within science. I think that I am more inclined to the extremes of the religious and spiritual, or of scientific materialism.

My own personal interest in the question is not my single quest, as I am very concerned about the present and future of humanity. Really, I am just in favour of critical enquiry within philosophy.

I raise the question as to whether the material world is the most absolute form of reality as it appears to be at the centre of most other debates within philosophy. — Jack Cummins

Absolute? Well, ineluctable (i.e. subject-pov-language-gauge invariant) apparently.

It is at the centre of the whole consideration of life and death and how we frame reality, so I see it as one of the most important philosophy questions.

Furthermore ...

... the present and future of humanity.

"The future is uncertain
But the end is always near".

Thanks for your links to discussions in older threads. They are a little before I joined the forum . I do understand that people who have put forward ideas into other threads probably don't wish to repeat themselves.

I will look at the links but do wish for some kind of interactive discussion, even if it my discussion is only of interest to newer members of the forum.

You raise issues of perennial interest in the OP and the best (as well as easiest) way for me to respond to them is with links (inside links) to old posts within the contexts of old threads. I also prefer an "interactive discussion" which further elaborates in novel direction(s) – critical or speculative – that newer members, like yourself, may bring to the table.

That's fine, because some areas have been explored so much. It is probably interesting when the discussions go in new directions, because philosophy is recurrence of ideas, with new twists and turns.

whether the material world is the most absolute form of reality — Jack Cummins

I'm late here. The material world is not "absolute" in the sense of it being fundamental or permanent but it is as if it were to us since we are of it and in it as temporary and emergent events from the Absolute, many of which events are long lasting.

In physics, many of the earlier proposed absolutes have fallen, such as space, time, classical fields, and particles. All that's left so far are the proposed quantum fields of QFT that work fairly well for the standard model.

An electron, though secondary to its primary electron quantum field, holds together because it has the quantum unit of negative charge. It gets called 'elementary' since perhaps it is non-composite, I guess.

A proton, as a very long event, maybe lasting 10**35 years, is composite. Not anything composite can be the absolute base fundamental.

Yet, what 'realness' should we grant to our human reality, given that it becomes from the Absolute or is actually the Absolute at heart? Should we regard that the temporary transmutations of the Absolute are not the permanent Absolute itself? If so, then the Absolute is somehow coterminal with the goings on in our reality bust somehow not consubstantial with it. If not, we are the Absolute directly and change is intrinsic to the Absolute, which idea perhaps does not compute.

We see that everything changes continually at our level, as quick or slow events, although semblances continue, restrained by time from all happening and going away in a flash, leaving there to be not anything particular lasting here.

Coincidently, or relatedly, since the Absolute cannot have a beginning, it can't then be anything particular, as there is no point in time before it or outside it for any direction or design to be given.

Yet, we suppose covariant quantum fields, all atop one another, as they can work, given quantized energy (nothing else is quantized). The best we can say is that their base existence has no opposite, such as that 'Nothing' cannot even be meant, and so they have to be so, with no alternative.

Or they are forced, again because 'Nothing' cannot be. Yet, 'Nothing', or at least 'zero', seems to be the sum of our reality in that the negative potential energy of gravity exactly balances/cancels the positive kinetic energy of stuff.

Personally, I'm inclined to think that the way quantum physics is going gives far more scope for imagination than many other sciences, including the scientific disciplines. I am talking mainly of psychology, especially when it is being pursued by those who are determined to claim that it is a science.

The quantum physicists do break down the division between the material and the immaterial. In some ways, this allows for a view of life of energy, which corresponds which is the idea of the Tao ,as Fritjof Capra argued. The idea of the Tao is so unlike the anthropomorphic images of the force behind the universe. It is one which is free from the more dogmatic associations people have felt oppressed by in mainstream religious traditions.