Materialism, the notion that everything in the world has a Newtonian
one-thing-bumping-into-the-next-thing evolutionary quality about it was
the rage of the non-science science expropriators of the nineteenth
century and now has come to a full stop in the discussion of
consciousness.
Modern physics simply will not allow a Newtonian discussion about it. It now appears that we can not measure the position or the speed of anything in physics--and that measurement of speed and position is sort of the essence of materialism. A number of explanations have arisen to encompass (not really explain) this nature but they vary from the mystical to the weird. Worse, there is no agreement on how to experiment to improve our understanding; if you can not measure position and speed, where do you start ? One considered idea is that measurement immediately creates another universe where the measured elements flee to so they are beyond measurement.
With this as a background, consider a recent article in Aeon--written by an astrophysicist--which ends with this stunner: "...solutions include possibilities that overly project mind into matter. Consciousness might, for example, be an example of the emergence of a new entity in the Universe not contained in the laws of particles. There is also the more radical possibility that some rudimentary form of consciousness must be added to the list of things, such as mass or electric charge, that the world is built of."
Holy smokes
Modern physics simply will not allow a Newtonian discussion about it. It now appears that we can not measure the position or the speed of anything in physics--and that measurement of speed and position is sort of the essence of materialism. A number of explanations have arisen to encompass (not really explain) this nature but they vary from the mystical to the weird. Worse, there is no agreement on how to experiment to improve our understanding; if you can not measure position and speed, where do you start ? One considered idea is that measurement immediately creates another universe where the measured elements flee to so they are beyond measurement.
With this as a background, consider a recent article in Aeon--written by an astrophysicist--which ends with this stunner: "...solutions include possibilities that overly project mind into matter. Consciousness might, for example, be an example of the emergence of a new entity in the Universe not contained in the laws of particles. There is also the more radical possibility that some rudimentary form of consciousness must be added to the list of things, such as mass or electric charge, that the world is built of."
Holy smokes
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