I am a materialist. Convince me with the idea that I am more than a body

[Panteranegra]

Hey guys,

Convince me with the idea that I am more than a body through quantum mechanics or any other science.

I know, I know... Leo has a video on quantum mechanics debunks materialism, but I'm still not sure how I can explain to someone that we are more than a body through science.

Edited December 30, 2022 by Panteranegra

[DecemberFlower]

Body is what you have not what you are. Also body is constanly changing while the sense of you the self isnt. 

In your dreams you still are the same you but you dont experience your body anymore. Meaning body is not who you essentialy are. 

Edited December 30, 2022 by DecemberFlower

[RendHeaven]

Science (in the sense that you seem to be using it) cannot determine what "I" am. Such inquiries are outside of its framework.

Science (as we know it) deals with observing and testing relationships. What a thing is is pre-assumed, and science is in the business of investigating the relative mechanistic properties of some such thing.

Now, "science," etymologically speaking can be invoked to signify knowledge at large. Hence Hegel will use the word "science" to discuss grandiose abstracts. But people who need to be "convinced" by "scientific" means are not open to this interpretation of science, and so the discussion dies there.

It's like you are asking us to sing "happy birthday" using a fork.

Forks are not used for singing. Likewise, science does not say anything about who or what "I" am.

[SourceCodo]

What are you wanting to be proven? 
 

What do you consider your body? 
 

Where do you live in your body? Or is the whole thing you? What happens if you lose part of if? Is it still you or only part of you? Or not you at all?

 

Is consciousness the body? Or is it the product of the body? If it is the product of the body, and you are consciousness, then how are you not more than the body? 
 

Consciousness is intangible and the identity you have is always changing through action, thought, experience… If that’s true, when are you actually a stabilized you? I’d argue that you’re just electrical evolution, not a real person at all. 
 

How are you certain that your body is not just another phantom, as if in a dream? We sense physical reality in dreams to be structurally consistent, but upon waking, we know it was all in our head.
 

Because of how we experience reality, I’d argue that all experiences of identity and self are subjectively projected via the brain/mind/something else. The body is more like an avatar for this continually evolving energy. It passes from creature to creature, matter to matter, moment to moment.

Edited December 31, 2022 by SourceCodo

[Razard86]

I'll give a very quick example. Many people think their consciousness is in their brain. Tell them that if they looked at a mirror and you cut open their head they would see a brain. How can the brain be generating consciousness when it is INSIDE consciousness. 

Let their mouth drop when they realize how foolish science has been this whole time. 

[NoSelfSelf]

Better is why are you so special and lazy that we need to prove to you anything ?

[LastThursday]

Materialists make the logical error of assuming that there is something beyond what is being observed. However, the only thing that can be known with complete certainty is what is personally being observed; everything else is a construct, an inference, or a belief (also known as faith). If it is not being observed, it cannot be known with certainty whether it exists.

However, it is clear that the observer is always present and must therefore exist with 100% certainty. You are not the body (for example, your head does not exist with certainty), but rather the entity that observes.

[UnbornTao]

No ideology will change the fact that you don't know what anything is.

Assuming one thing or another is irrelevant in this regard.

What's reality? What am I? What is an object? What is perception?

The goal should be to contemplate those questions and become directly conscious of what they are for oneself, otherwise what's the point?

Edited December 31, 2022 by UnbornTao

[Moksha]

A few quotes from my favorite scientist, who realized that ultimate truth is the mystery that cannot be comprehended by the human mind, no matter the level of genius:

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed.

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician.

Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I am not yet completely sure about the universe.

The years of anxious searching in the dark, with their intense longing, their alternations of confidence and exhaustion, and final emergence into light—only those who have experienced it can understand that. Let us not forget that human knowledge and skills alone cannot lead humanity to a happy and dignified life.

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe”, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.

The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books—-a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects.

[Carl-Richard]

Science doesn't settle metaphysics. You should try a different kind of inquiry.

The body is a perception. Perceptions come and go. The only "thing" that is not impermanent is the thing that the perceptions are occuring within. This thing is not a body, it's not a human, it's not alive, it's not dead, but it's the essence of You.

Edited December 30, 2022 by Carl-Richard

[Osaid]

There's a difference between science and materialism. You should scientifically prove that you are the body, first. Your initial assumption isn't even based in science, it's just materialism.

[Leo Gura]

There is zero scientific proof that you are a body. No such proof could exist even in theory.

You assume a lot of things about "science" which science has never actually said nor demonstrated. You sneak in a lot of metaphysical assumptions when you think about science because you are being sloppy and arrogant.

Edited December 31, 2022 by Leo Gura

[Staples]

@Panteranegra Not really sure it's possible to convince you of that through science. Since science is very limited especially when it comes to consciousness.

You'll snap out of that the second you take some psychedelics or think about where your senses come from for even a second. 

Pinch your arm. Is that pain just your nerves sending signals to your brain? Or is that just a story you've picked up somewhere? 

What is that 'Ouchy' stuff? Is that material?

[r0ckyreed]

16 hours ago, Razard86 said:

 

I'll give a very quick example. Many people think their consciousness is in their brain. Tell them that if they looked at a mirror and you cut open their head they would see a brain. How can the brain be generating consciousness when it is INSIDE consciousness. 

 

I could also use my phone camera and take a picture of it in the mirror. The image of my phone is in the picture and yet was the source of the image. How do we know the brain doesn’t work like that?

I will add another perspective that with consciousness it seems different because how can anything you see (an object) be the source of the subject?

Edited December 31, 2022 by r0ckyreed

[spiritual memes]

2 hours ago, r0ckyreed said:

I could also use my phone camera and take a picture of it in the mirror. The image of my phone is in the picture and yet was the source of the image. How do we know the brain doesn’t work like that?

When you look at the phone screen, you see the image. The image is the collection of pixels on a screen.

when you cut open someone's brain, you don't see the colour blue or the smell of coffee, only neurons. Yet all of this exists in your conscious experience.

[Ninja_pig]

All you know of reality is your thoughts and experiences. It is an assumption that there is an objective reality beyond those experiences. Materialists mistake the self-consistency of reality as proof that it must be material.

To illustrate the point, think about when you are dreaming. Let's say in this dream you 100% believe that it is not a dream and then you find a set of mathematical laws that describe the things you see in the dream. Does this mean that this dream is now "material"? No. It just means it's an especially vivid dream :).

[Razard86]

On 12/31/2022 at 8:55 AM, r0ckyreed said:

I could also use my phone camera and take a picture of it in the mirror. The image of my phone is in the picture and yet was the source of the image. How do we know the brain doesn’t work like that?

I will add another perspective that with consciousness it seems different because how can anything you see (an object) be the source of the subject?

How can it work like that...when you just said I could do it? Your analogy only works if the phone camera is generating your reality and led you to take a picture of it in the mirror. But again....how can the phone camera be generating everything if it is IN everything. Think about it. I can hack Grand Theft Auto and make the player character's head be opened and his brain is shown. Is his brain generating his reality? NO!!! We understand that is the case because its IN the game. 

What you aren't taking into account is with your premise if it were true, then there would need to be something else generating the phone camera behind the scenes, then what is generating that behind the scenes? This would continue for infinity. At a certain point there would have to be a ground and the ground....is itself. So its both groundless and ground. The ground is itself....but it cannot be located anywhere because it is everywhere.

[effortlesslumen]

On 30.12.2022 at 8:15 PM, Panteranegra said:

Hey guys,

Convince me with the idea that I am more than a body through quantum mechanics or any other science.

I know, I know... Leo has a video on quantum mechanics debunks materialism, but I'm still not sure how I can explain to someone that we are more than a body through science.

The body and its sensation is only present when it is observed. That would fit in our concept of quantum mechanics.

Edited January 1, 2023 by effortlesslumen

[r0ckyreed]

On 1/1/2023 at 11:01 AM, Razard86 said:

How can it work like that...when you just said I could do it? Your analogy only works if the phone camera is generating your reality and led you to take a picture of it in the mirror. But again....how can the phone camera be generating everything if it is IN everything. Think about it. I can hack Grand Theft Auto and make the player character's head be opened and his brain is shown. Is his brain generating his reality? NO!!! We understand that is the case because its IN the game. 

What you aren't taking into account is with your premise if it were true, then there would need to be something else generating the phone camera behind the scenes, then what is generating that behind the scenes? This would continue for infinity. At a certain point there would have to be a ground and the ground....is itself. So its both groundless and ground. The ground is itself....but it cannot be located anywhere because it is everywhere.

Without the camera, there is no picture. Without the brain, there is no consciousness. Why are humans conscious and intelligent whereas an amoeba and tree aren’t at least to our degree? It has to do with the organization of the brain. The brain is made out of The Force or God or Nature or whatever. If the brain isn’t the originator of consciousness, then why is it that we can make change peoples consciousness through a change in their brain? I can poke your arm and you would feel pain. But if I poke your brain, you would no longer be “you.” But we don’t just stop at the brain. You are the entire Universe. The entire universe or God or Force has created the brain and subjectivity/ego. Without a brain, sun, plants, oxygen, etc. there is just empty Force Consciousness. What really baffles my mind is how is there life at all? Why is my couch considered lifeless whereas a plant is considered to be life. Our brain is constantly making our life movie. Our memory and brain are linked together in the same way that a camera and picture are. Camera and picture are one. The brain and consciousness are also one. Brain = Consciousness. 

[r0ckyreed]

On 12/31/2022 at 10:51 AM, spiritual memes said:

when you cut open someone's brain, you don't see the colour blue or the smell of coffee, only neurons. Yet all of this exists in your conscious experience.

Well. If Solipsism is true, the person does not have conscious experience and is like a robot.  They have no qualia.  Their brain is like the operating system that produces the illusion of conscious experience.  I cannot know for certain whether other people have consciousness.  Everything I know about another being is objectified.  An animal is an object in my consciousness.  In my subjective experience, I am the only subject there is.  But I seriously doubt that I am the only subject.  If you are actually conscious right now and are not just some philosophical zombie or dream character of mine, then I could never possibly know, but that doesn't mean that metaphysical solipsism is true.  Epistemological solipsism is the case, but metaphysical solipsism is still a big question mark.  There are so many limits to my epistemology that I am always limited to my own point of view.