if everything is made up of just permutations and combinations of elements, what makes me me? — dm12

I think you've answered your own question. Each of us is an unique combination/permutation of matter. I imagine this uniqueness defines each one of us i.e. my particular combination/permutation is me.

Matter, energy, space & time is as much the creators of us, as we the creators of.

If you reverse your question, you have your answer:

Conscious makes us.

It is very obvious. All just have to reverse the materialist notion of life and you arrive quickly at the obvious answer to your question - if you can entertain the notion that consciousness creates matter which is far more likely than matter created consciousness.

- if you can entertain the notion that consciousness creates matter which is far more likely than matter created consciousness. — Rich

Yeah it's just so obvious. Alcohol doesn't cause drunkeness, drunkeness causes alcohol. Lobotomies don't cause a destruction of integrative thought, a lack of integrative thought cause lobotomies. Etc, etc.

Yeah it's just so obvious. Alcohol doesn't cause drunkeness, drunkeness causes alcohol. Lobotomies don't cause a destruction of integrative thought, a lack of integrative thought cause lobotomies. Etc, etc. — apokrisis

Isn't this just begging the question, though, by implicitly assuming consciousness is akin to the effects of a physical reaction?

Consciousness isn't really weird, at least not in comparison to the apparent outside world. We at least know what consciousness is like. The "real" world is only able to be ascertained indirectly. It's probably nothing like what we experience it to be, if it even exists in the first place.

if you can entertain the notion that consciousness creates matter which is far more likely than matter created consciousness — Rich

Can you explain why it is ''far more likely'' that consciousness creates matter?

Because conscious is creative send intelligent and can create matter. Where does matter get the intelligence? From God?

Oh, yes. matter can definitely deaden or kill consciousness (physicians do this all the time when they prescribe opioids) , but it takes consciousness to know this. Let's not equate having life from killing it deadening life. They move in opposite directions.

Because conscious is creative send intelligent and can create matter. Where does matter get the intelligence? From God? — Rich

What do you mean ''can create matter''? I've never heard of a mind create matter. Are you talking about god?

That is what happens when quantum energy turns into matter.

That is what happens when quantum energy turns into matter — Rich

Which theory is this? Can you elaborate?

you can say it is the theory of Bergson, Bohm, Daoism, Heraclitus, Paganism, or any philosophical thought that understands consciousness was at the beginning. Where mainstream religion went awry was first externalizing consciousness and then turning it into a business. Business and philosophy don't mix.

Oh, yes. matter can definitely deaden or kill consciousness (physicians do this all the time when they prescribe opioids) , but it takes consciousness to know this. — Rich

So you have changed your claim now? Consciousness no longer creates matter. Instead matter can kill it, yet not create it?

Yet what is happening when physicians prescribe stimulants? And consciousness finds itself enhanced, enlivened? What are the consequences of admitting that matter appears to affect the state of mind in predictable fashion in either direction.

No claim was changed. I was simply answering your question. Matter can definitely kill physical life forms and physicians do it all the time with their scientific derived knowledge. Consciousness does try to repair the damage being thrust upon it but sometimes it is simply overwhelmed. Over time it may learn how to build resistance of it had the opportunity. Consciousness is always learning. Consciousness itself may persist as memory patterns in a holographic fabric of the universe. Evidence of this would be what is called instincts, inherited traits, natural inborn skills, etc. However, the persistence of memory is another question entirely.

So again, explain stimulants.

They work exactly as advertised. They stimulate. Lots of things can stimulate.

What are the consequences of admitting that matter appears to affect the state of mind in predictable fashion in either direction. — apokrisis

Question: I would have thought that the ability of the mind to heal itself from brain injury, by re-routing its activities to other areas of the brain via 'neuroplasticity', demonstrates the ability of mind to 'rewire' the brain. That is the substance of the book 'The Brain that Changes Itself', by Norman Doidge.

Now, if mind was purely the output or product of matter, then you wouldn't expect that to happen, would you? You would think, if the brain is injured or damaged or diseased, then the mind would have no capacity to compensate if it were a 'slave' to the physical configuration.

That is not to deny that physical changes don't lead to affective consequences, but it is to question the degree to which this is a one-way relationship.

Question: I would have thought that the ability of the mind to heal itself from brain injury, by re-routing its activities to other areas of the brain via 'neuroplasticity', demonstrates the ability of mind to 'rewire' the brain. That is the substance of the book 'The Brain that Changes Itself', by Norman Doidge. — Wayfarer

Hah. That's a dreadful book in terms of its over-egged celebration of plasticity.

But remember that my own take on neurology is semiotic. So I don't explain the mind as a material state of affairs. The mind is a system of signs. It is an interactive model of the world. So in some sense, the brain has a distributed or holistic memory of how it needs to be to continue to function the way it normally does. This is how - top-down - it reconstructs itself even after serious insult.

So in the semiotic view, what is important is that the material parts of the machinery are maximally unstable. Life depends on molecules that are always on the verge of falling apart (and equally, just as fast reforming). That is, the hardware of life is the precise opposite of the hardware suitable for computing. Life needs a fundamental instability as that then gives signs, or encoded information routines, something to do - create stability.

So from the get-go - down at the nanoscale quasi-classical scale of material process - "consciousness" or semiosis is giving the biophysics just enough of a nudge to keep the machine rebuilding itself. Proteins and other constituents are falling together slightly more than they are falling apart, and so the fundamental plasticity is being statistically regulated to produce a long-running, self-repairing, stable organism.

The brain then just repeats this basic semiotic trick on a humongously complex scale of organisation. That is how brains can effect repairs - rearrange and regrow to keep doing what they have learnt to do.

Holistically, they have to be able to regulate plasticity the whole time anyway. The half-life of structural elements of neural tissue like microtubules is about 10 minutes. A large proportion of what was your brain this morning will have fallen apart and rebuilt itself by the time this evening comes around. So viewed on the nano-scale, you might say the brain's ability to maintain its identity in the face of the chaotic thermal flux that is the molecular level of cellular machinery is far more remarkable than any recovery from stroke.

That is not to deny that physical changes don't lead to affective consequences, but it is to question the degree to which this is a one-way relationship. — Wayfarer

It is absolutely a two way relationship. But one of sign and matter, not mind and matter.

Well of course, material can affect mental and mental can effect material, as stress often does. It's a continuum. But Consciousness came first. Matter is merely a product of consciousness evolution. That was what OP was asking.

I imagine this uniqueness defines each one of us i.e. my particular combination/permutation is me. — TheMadFool

I guess what I am wondering is these permutations and combinations of the genes and elements cause my body to maybe produce more of one chemical and less of another, just like how programming affects what a computer does. But they are not self-aware. My computer is unaware of itself, as is my phone, they don't know that they are who they are. How can I?

But one of sign and matter, not mind and matter. — apokrisis

I think that signs imply minds, but admit it's not something that could ever be resolved conclusively.

I guess what I am wondering is these permutations and combinations of the genes and elements cause my body to maybe produce more of one chemical and less of another, just like how programming affects what a computer does. — dm12

If you're wondering how 'reductive materialism' works - you can relax, it doesn't work. Nobody knows how neurobiology gives rise to consciousness, in fact that is called 'the hard problem', and that is why it's hard.

But they are not self-aware. My computer is unaware of itself, as is my phone, they don't know that they are who they are. How can I? — dm12

You are right. Computers aren't self-aware. But I don't see how this leads to us being not self-aware.

how am I conscious of myself. How do I feel what I feel and wonder about you feel. — dm12

To be conscious of something amounts to having one's attention directed towards it.

How a biological organism can have its attention directed towards something is partly explained by the fact that there are things which are interesting enough to pay attention to; typically things which tend to increase the fitness of the organism, such as food, sex, dangers or predators etc. It seems fairly clear how the organism may also benefit from paying attention to itself, its capacities, like the presence of others and their capacities. That's one part of an explanation of how you are conscious of yourself.

The other part would be to explain how all the biology works in terms of synaptic events etc., i.e. how the biological activity of directing attention towards things arises from lower lever biochemical processes. It might require more empirical research but the problem does not seem insurmountably hard as some philosophical dualists would like to have it.