We don't know if particles have feeling or not. There is no evidence that they do, but there's no evidence that they lack it either. — Manuel

If particles experience, then we are not dealing with physicalism.

Well, the point ought to be simple, show me an example of someone or something thinking or experiencing anything without a brain. If that can be done, then the "non-physical" proposal can be taken seriously. — Manuel

I don't know about thinking, but there are examples of NDEs that refer to experiencing certain things which is impossible, given the circumstances, including that there is no brain activity.

We have irreducible particles, such as electrons and quarks, each has a set of properties, such as mass, charge, etc. These properties determine how these particles behave. Their behavior, however, is lawful. These particles do not experience anything at all. That is all about physicalism. According to its believers, experience is something extra to physicalism, emerging only under certain conditions, such as when a living brain is present.

I was unable to follow that - you seem to think an idea emerges from a sentence, rather then a sentence expressing an idea. — Banno

In you, an idea emerges when you read a sentence. Ideas to me are irreducible mental events.

Let's assume that there are at least two substances for the sake of discussion: soul and body, for example. We say that these substances are independent if they share no properties in common; otherwise, they are dependent, hence interacting with each other. There is, however, a little problem here: Could we somehow measure the presence of the soul when the person is alive, accepting that the soul and the body are interacting? The answer to this is no if we accept that the soul is a light substance, by light I mean its effect is beyond the precision of our instruments.

I have to say that NDEs are a serious anomaly in physicalism. So we minimally need two substances to explain NDEs and life coherently.

Anyhow, my point in that post was not about NDE. That is my own objection to physicalism.

Dead people don't experience, according to physicalism. The experience is a feature of alive things. So, it is on and off depending on whether we are dealing with a living thing or a dead thing.

Of course, the phenomenon experience is distinct from matter. That is one thing. I am, however, wondering how you could type your thoughts, given that you believe that physicalism can provide an answer to all phenomena?

There is nothing that I don't understand in that post. You asked for a mystery and I gave you one.

I am on drugs. What kind of logic is it that says you alter your consciousness in a way that reliably causes hallucination, yet you take hte entities as real?? Seems utterly bizarre to think they are real without further. — AmadeusD

Did the entities you encountered show any sign of intelligence? If yes, why are you discarding them as unreal? I have never used DMT, but if I had a chance, I would ask questions I don't have answers for to check whether these entities are real intelligent entities or just mere hallucinations.

I've actually had one dream where i was with Graham Hancock on a vine-covered river cruiser speaking at length about the possibility that psilocybin mushrooms graduated through ancient Welsh ceremony to the Druids. Two days later, I fell asleep and hte dream picked up in the exact same place. I was able to report hte entire conversation. This simply means my mind is agile. — AmadeusD

How do you define mind?

My question is not silly. Considering that your thoughts are mental events and have no physical properties, I wonder how they could affect physical processes, such as typing. Do you have an explanation for that?

You are sure able to type your thoughts. Are you denying that?

Nice example. The word and the meaning are separate parts of the idea. — noAxioms

So you agree that the idea exists as an irreducible mental event?

The properties of the coin include it's monetary value. But this is not a properties of it's parts.

Reductionism defeated. — Banno

If you are talking about ideas, then I have to say that they are forms of strong emergence. I have discussed this here.

I was wondering if anyone would bring some wisdom skepticism to the table. Is wisdom merely difficult to define, or does it, perhaps, not exist? — Tom Storm

Given that we know what we mean by instinct and logical thinking, therefore, I think it is proper to say that intuition refers to the fact that our guesses are mostly right. That is a unique phenomenon by itself! It is difficult for me that understand how we could possibly intuit, but it is real, at least from my own personal observation. Having said all these, accepting that intuition also exists, maybe we can define wisdom as a state of mind when your guesses are always right. Other than that, I don't see any extra room for anything else at all.

I know what instinct and logical thinking are. Intuition, in philosophy, is defined as the power of obtaining knowledge that cannot be acquired either by inference or observation, by reason or experience. From my own experience, sometimes my intuition was right and sometimes wrong, so to me, this definition of intuition is problematic. I have no idea what wisdom may refer to at all.

Correct! :wink:

It is a first-person phenomenon, so-called experience, that anything with the ability to experience knows what it is like to have such a certain experience rather than other experiences, given what you are, where you are, etc.

You certainly experience, don't you? Are you a materialist?

Do you consider that to be evidence that the cup idea is irreducible? — noAxioms

Yes, to me and many others here, the idea of a cup is irreducible. Have you ever been in a condition in which you want to write something, while you don't remember the word that is needed for your writing, but you know what word you are looking for? In such cases, you simply have access to the idea that the word refers to, but not the word.

Yes, in the context of physicalism.

That a coin is worth ten cents has nothing to do with it's composition. — Banno

I am not talking about currency but a coin.

It does not emerge from some combination of the material properties of the coin, but consists in the way the coin is used. — Banno

As I mentioned, the shape of the coin is a function of the position of the parts.

Yes, but I mentioned brains without activity in the sentence directly before. An example suggesting the plausibility that a flatlined brain can still be responsive to external stimuli. — Apustimelogist

I think the brain is responsive to external stimuli until its cells die to a certain extent. We are, however, talking about a case of NDE in which the person does not have any brain activity.

I mean you could give an explanation for this that is completely physical; a physicalist would explain spiritual experiences from psychedelics completely physically too. — Apustimelogist

And what is the physical explanation for NDE?

The problem here imo is presupposing dualism and presupposing some fundamental ontological divide between what happens when we perceive and have experiences, and everything else we know about. I don't believe we need to make this presupposition. — Apustimelogist

We need them. Experience is an accepted phenomenon in the domain of materialism. Materialists claim that matter also exists and behaves according to the laws of physics. Materialism also claims that matter does not have any experience in most forms, but in the brain. They claim that experience is the result of neural processes in the brain. We are dealing with a kind of strong emergence, as experience is something more than just neural processes in the brain. Granting that such an emergence is possible, we are still dealing with a problem. To demonstrate the problem, we need to note that the experience cannot be causally efficacious in the world for two reasons, as I demonstrated in my former post to you, yet we observe that there is a correlation between our experiences and how we change reality in the form that pleases us.

He told me about a patient with no brain activity while she had an NDE. This is his thread. I am just giving my opinion here. That is why I said, "Please ask him".

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Being a ten cent coin isn't an emergent property... — Banno

A coin is a weak emergence since its property/shape is a function of the properties/positions of its parts.

...maybe not. — Banno

They for sure exist, and they are the only ones.

I don't think NDE experiences themselves are necessarily problematic in themselves regarding physicalism; studies of dying brains show there is a lot of activity just before death. — Apustimelogist

According to my discussion with @Sam26, the person does not show brain activity during NDE. So, at least in this case, we are not talking about brain activity near death.

What would need more explaining is the claim that people have accurate knowledge about events that are happening. — Apustimelogist

And we also have this spiritual experience, which seems common among NDEs. Why do such people have such an intense experience, which is common when they are dying or are basically dead?

Ofcourse, in order to study this you would want to be able to validate the claim that people can have genuine knowledge of things happening externally during NDEs that are not just lucky guesses or confabulation or other things that would not indicate genuine knowledge. — Apustimelogist

Well, the question is, what is the right model of reality when it comes to NDEs and normal life? Physicalism fails to explain the strong emergence of experience. Experience cannot be causally efficacious in the physical world, considering the fact that the physical world is causally closed. Moreover, experience is only a mental event, so it cannot affect the physical world since it does not have any physical properties to affect the physical world.

For the record, I don't consider any such case to be real - a flat EEG reading isn't a sufficient measurement for defining brain death. — sime

I am not an expert in this field, so let's see the opinion of @Sam26 on this matter.

But if such cases were real in some sense of having intersubjective confirmation of anomalous phenomena, then it would at most imply a hole in our current physical theories, resulting in a new physical theory with regards to an extended notion of the body with additional senses, coupled with a new definition of personhood. — sime

I think if NDEs are proven to be correct, then to have a better model, you need to add other substances into consideration, including the mind.

How do you/we know NDE-subjects "experience" anything while there is zero brain activity? — 180 Proof

Ask @Sam26 please. I am not an expert in NDE, but he told me an example of the NDE in which the patient showed no brain activity.

C'mon ... — 180 Proof

Do you have an explanation for NDE within materialism? The brain does not show any activity, yet the person experiences!

Even if NDEs were veridical, that wouldn't be enough to challenge physicalism or mind-brain equivalence. — sime

If we agree that one case of NDE was real, then we are dealing with an anomaly that materialism cannot describe. I am wondering how you could explain the NDE experience when there is no brain activity.

We say that we have a system when there are at least two irreducible entities, each entity has at least a set of properties.

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According to my discussion with @Sam26, there is at least one case of NDE in which the person exhibited no brain activity. Therefore, materialism fails when it comes to describing experience. I must say that one case of NDE is enough to warrant discarding materialism when it comes to experience.

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