A Conscious Universe

[bennyboy]

Me doing the math isn't what make the ball fly. The ball flies because the bat interacts with the ball. Just because we can use math to calculate how the ball will fly, it doesn't mean the math is making the ball fly.

Nobody has asserted otherwise. Why are you arguing this point?

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.

I frankly do not see what the problem is. Your brain takes in some sensory information and assosiates it with a memory. The consciousness (a byproduct of the brain) has access to these memories. So whenever you get the a similiar sensory data, the already existing memory makes you feel like you know what it is. This is subjective, because this is only your memory not anyones else.

The problem isn't the processing. It's the qualia. There's no good explanation for why physical processing should imply, require, or allow the existence of qualia. Nor is there any plausible mechanism described which would allow the supervenience of qualia on any physical system. In fact, you don't even have the capacity, given a given physical system, to determine IF it is capable of experiencing qualia.

We can generate ideas, I do it all the time. These ideas do not manifest in reality unless I get up and impliment them. If ideas is what this reality is made out of, then there shouldn't be a difference between generating ideas in my head vs ideas in reality.

Why? That's like saying if matter is what this reality is made out of, there should be no difference between moving your hand and moving the moon. Just because things reduce down to ideas doesn't mean that nothing is different from anything else. Get this point-- idealism is not solipsism. I'm not claiming we are collectively co-creating the universe with our imaginations.

In physicalism, my mind cannot create physical objects. So me imagining physical objects have no affect on reality.
In idealism, my mind can create ideas. So I can create the idea of balls using my imagination. You couldn't see my created balls because of ...... umm ..... what is preventing you from seeing them?

lol what do you think idealism is? Apparently you haven't read the several posts in which I described what the word means to me.

I'm saying that "under the hood" of the universe, if things reduce down to conceptual relationships that cannot be expressed unambiguously in a space-time framework, then it makes more sense to think of these things as ideas than as physical objects. I've said that QM and the existence of mind make me believe this to be the case. I did not say that we are limited only by our imagination, or that dreams are the same as objective reality, or that anyone needs to balance their Four Psychic Winds.