(May 28, 2013 at 5:27 pm)bennyboy Wrote:(May 28, 2013 at 11:41 am)Drew_2013 Wrote: Yet you assume mindless, lifeless forces came into existence somehow and caused a universe with life and mind yet you can't demonstrate how such occurred.
Mind/matter duality is the biggest problem with a physical monism. Nobody can really explain why it is that mechanical interactions between particles lead to subjective awareness, rather than simple "dumb" processing of data. Some will argue that consciousness is just a natural byproduct of organized matter-- but that amounts to a physicalist "Goddidit"-- it's a non-answer that is interpreted as "Obviously, what we say is true, though there's no way to prove it."
I make that argument based on the fact that it seems, to me, the likeliest explanation, but without the assumption that it is true, and with confidence that, one day, our ability to analyze the brain will produce this result. Of course, it may never do so, or it may produce a very different result nobody expects. Those are all possibilities. I've merely picked the one which seems most likely to end up being true.