Mind/matter duality

[whatever76]

As an aside, my intuitive answer to the mind/body split is that there is no mind or consciousness. There is nothing hiding behind the physical. And I say "intuitive" because the notion that there is no mind is an experience of existential relief for me.

This is the extreme position of physical monism-- there is no mind at all, and therefore no apparent duality to solve.

The other extreme position is to say there's no physical universe at all-- that it's all idealism. If you want to choose a complete monism, this one is better, because it's much less difficult philsophically. If you say that all the physical universe is in the Matrix or the Mind of God or whatever, then there's little contradiction in saying that everything we take as objective reality can be a subset of an idealistic universe, which also allows for the existence of mind. It also makes sense of some of the issues with QM and the effect of observers (monkey is going to disagree with that for sure though).

However, if you want to go with a physical monism absent consciousness, then you come up pretty fast against the idea of consciousness as a brute fact. I'm conscious because I am conscious-- no further conjecture or understanding is really required, and until you can get people to ascribe to a Buddhist or hindu meditation of "not self," very few people are going to say, "Hmmmm. . . I think there's no mind. Wait. . . where did that idea come from?"

Well, fortunately, I don't really care if people subscribe to whatever it is I'm thinking. I'm also not suggesting any Eastern metaphysics. The existence of consciousness or mind or soul is a microcosmic version of the question of God's existence. We think there must be a cause that transcends the organism or the universe as it is. Just as the more we understand about the universe the less we need a creator, similarly the more we understand about the human organism the less we need consciousness as a filler.

Any thought or behavior that you have can be attributed to your own genetics and conditioning. The more you come to recognize that fact and let go of some transcendent cause, the more control you have over your own experience. That is my answer to your question as to why you are self-aware in the first place. If you don't apply that understanding, someone else will in order to control you for their interests.

I disagree that an idealistic monism is easier to uphold because you will quickly run into physical reality (literally) and have to provide some extensive explanation as to why it appears that we are physical organisms in a material universe or that all of our experience has a natural (physical) cause.

We intellectuals are quick to draw from heady theories like QM to defend a position, when the reasoning is much more local, such as physiology. In answer to the question, "Where did that idea come from?" I would say, "Your organism. Where else would it come from?"