A Conscious Universe

[bennyboy]

I don't know the exact chemistry of alcohol on brain function.

More generally, why does manipulation of the brain via substances result in manipulation of the experiences?

I think you are looking for an alternative to brain chemistry. However, there are no observable facts which are not also considered facts in an idealistic universe. The brain is the brain, brain chemistry is brain chemistry, etc.

The differences, so far as I can tell, only happen at philosophical boundary conditions: establishing the fundamental nature "underlying" QM (if there is such a thing), establishing cosmogony, psychogony, etc.

---

The problem with "an idea" as the solution, one that exists solely in thought without any characteristic identifiable with a world where concepts are provided definition by sense data, is that it cannot, at least as I can see, be understood in terms of how this purely abstract existence could affect physical reality.

Because everything that exists, i.e. reality, IS the data.

---

---

Information about its chemistry as it interacts with air.

So the subset of the information of paint (specifically the chemistry subset) interacts with the information of the air? How can information do anything?

Well, in one case, you are walking outside where other people walk, and in the other case, you are imagining walking, and other people cannot walk there, because it's in your imagination.

What seperates your imagination from the shared environment?

The subjective awareness of information.

Hmmmm. . . what does "exist" mean to you?

Something exist if it directly interacts with the shared environment.

Do consciousness and information "exist"? Then I think I can almost answer my question about how you define that word. Let me ask you-- do numbers exist?

A deliberate change of state in one's environment.

I don't understand this question.

e.g. to walk or to think of walking. You partically answered earlier, but you didn't specify how can such a seperation exist.

The interaction of ideas over time causes change of state.

What are the mechanics of the interaction?

So you think time exist, what about space? Or do you think time and space are also information?

The subjective awareness of information.

What is consciousness made out of? Information? If so, how can information create a consciousness?

---

That's a lot of questions. Let me answer that, in general, I'd describe most things as you would: momentum is the product of mass and velocity, the speed of light is 300,000km/s., etc. In fact, in all observable cases of physical interactions, I'd accept current explanations: bat has momentum a, ball has momentum b, you do the math, and ball flies toward the outfield.

The main differences occur at philosophical boundaries. What, for example, is a photon: a wave, a particle, both, neither? As an idea, ambiguity is fine. I would not, however, accept that an ambiguous "particle" is real in a physical sense, because there's no way to map it to the dimension of space which is the framework in which physical monism works.

Another example is the mind. In a physical monism, subjective mind is a (very strange) "bonus" to processes which should be able to tick along just fine without it. And before everyone starts shouting about brain chemistry, consider this: how do we even know what physical systems have the capacity to experience subjectively? We don't.

It seems to me much simpler to explain all the universe in terms of an interaction of ideas, than to explain mind in terms of physical elements. This is because we already experience everything we know as a collection of experiences and ideas anyway.