the eternal 'material vs spiritual world' debate.

[dragonrider]

There have been many discussions here, about whether 'the entity's are real or not'. Or, more fundamentally, whether materialism could explain counsciousnes or not.
And i've noticed that most people, including myself, seem to think that either materialism should be true, or some other, counsciousnes-based, doctrine.

But why couldn't they BOTH be true? Why couldn't they be something like parallel reality's?

So say that consensus reality, the material world, would be some sort of simulation. A simulation in wich brain-activity is the root cause of counscious experience. Why couldn't we, as long as the simulation would be consistent within itself, treat it as 'true' within itself as well, while at the same time being open to the posibility that it's just a simulation?

If deterministic explanations in your view, fail to explain certain aspects or quality's of the counscious experience, or the DMT-experience specifically, quality's you'd maybe refer to as 'hyperrealism', 'magic', or 'elusiveness', why couldn't, within the framework of deterministic materialism (i think that most interpretations of the term 'materialism', do indeed, automatically imply some sort of determinism as well), some features of this model explain the fact that you THINK or BELIEF that materialism fails to explain it, and yet offer an explanation that is valid within this framework nevertheless?

The point is though that, when it comes to the possible truth of the different models, there are four possible combinations: materialism is true & counsciousnes-based models aren't, materialism is true & counsciousnes-based reality is true as well, materialism is false & counsciousnes-based models are false as well, materialism is false & counsciousnes-based reality is true.

I think any reasonable 'meta-theory' on truth, can only assume the first two options to be possibly true.

This is so, i suppose, because i don't think you could realy deny the truth of at least the counscious experience of consensus reality, and the logical consistency of this experience. So whatever you believe, you should at least believe that materialism is true within itself, in the sense that the experience of it is simply a given, and explanations/conclusions drawn from it are logically valid.

I can see how there could be a parralel reality, in wich all of this in it's turn, could be explained in a different way (for instance by claiming that this material world is just a simulation). But i can't see how any such parallel reality, or the mere existence even, of that parallel reality itself, could undo both the very experience of the material world, as well as it's internal consistency: if for instance, the soul would happen to be eternal, that fact alone would not prevent people from dying in this world.

So what i mean is that, in the case that your spiritual belief would require you to also belief that you could raise the dead, and materialism on the other hand, would require you to believe that there never ever could be such a thing as raising the dead, you'd realy have to drop your spiritual belief (as a guideline for how to behave in THIS world anyway), because your belief requires you to deny something that's simply a given, for the sake something of wich you don't even know it realy exists.
But it would NOT require you to stop believing that for instance, 'death is just an illusion'.

So i think you should say that at least materialism is true, but that wouldn't have to mean that views that are totally at odds with the axioms of materialism are not true. It only means that views that are 1-at odds with the very existence itself of materialism, or 2-with it's logical consistency*, cannot be true. (in the case of 2, the claim is only true ofcourse, if the material world is considered to be a closed system).

 

[SnozzleBerry]

Required reading before this thread proceeds:

The Improbability of Hyperspace
The Improbability of Hyperspace II
A pragmatic approach: What is "real", and when is it actually useful to ask this?

 

[pitubo]

Why do people insist on starting these "spiritual" discourses in the open dmt discussion forum? This is clearly not particularly related to dmt. Threads about consciousness, worldviews and religions without obvious and well defined relation to dmt c!early belong in the philosopy or spirituality forums.

Thanks!

 

[Aum_Shanti]

I don't want to sound too negative, but IMHO such a discussion is futile right from the beginning.

What exactly should emerge from this?

At most it could be a thread, where everybody describes his personal truth (world view).

I mean the spiritual worldview obviously cannot be proven in this materialistic world, and as the spiritual POV obviously also includes the materialistic world as a subset, any materialistic argument cannot say anything to disprove the spiritual standpoint.

In the end nobody can prove or disprove any others POV. So what?
IMHO everybody is right in his personal truth for himself.

Just MHO.

 

[dragonrider]

I mean the spiritual worldview obviously cannot be proven in this materialistic world, and as the spiritual POV obviously also includes the materialistic world as a subset, any materialistic argument cannot say anything to disprove the spiritual standpoint.

I don't think that any spiritual POV automatically automatically does include the material world as a subset. And i tried to argue that it SHOULD.

But i've come across quite a few statements here, like "it is a fact that brain activity doesn't produce counsciousnes", "there can be no doubt about the fact that DMT-entities are real", or "the DMT world is more real than this world".
Even statements that seem to claim something like "the material worldview is a malicious attempt to dull our minds, and to keep us from spiritual growth".

What i tried to do with this thread is to argue that sometimes, different worldviews that on the surface seem to contradict eachother, could be true simultaneously. Spiritual views don't have to be at odds with materialism.

Yet, though different, seemingly contradictory worldviews, could both be true, this doesn't mean that "everything goes".

 

[dreamer042]

Did you folques check out that required reading?

Also moved to Philosophy section.

 

[SnozzleBerry]

But i've come across quite a few statements here, like "it is a fact that brain activity doesn't produce counsciousnes", "there can be no doubt about the fact that DMT-entities are real", or "the DMT world is more real than this world".
Even statements that seem to claim something like "the material worldview is a malicious attempt to dull our minds, and to keep us from spiritual growth".

I'm highly skeptical of this...can you link to instances where these assertions were made in the context of an actual discussion (not tertiary throwaway lines) and left unchallenged by other folks in the discussion? That just doesn't reflect the type of discourse I'm familiar with taking place on this site.

Additionally it sounds like folks skipped the required reading. Let me re-emphasize that anyone wishing to engage in this thread should actually read through those other threads before continuing to post here.

Required reading before this thread proceeds:

The Improbability of Hyperspace
The Improbability of Hyperspace II
A pragmatic approach: What is "real", and when is it actually useful to ask this?

 

[dragonrider]

Required reading before this thread proceeds:

The Improbability of Hyperspace
The Improbability of Hyperspace II
A pragmatic approach: What is "real", and when is it actually useful to ask this?

I think that what i'm saying is: 1-that, if we would use Gibrans analogy of the box and the marbles, as long as there is no way of knowing the true state of the inside of the box, so if we would consider the box as a closed system, every statement about it's content has the same 'truth value', so they could be treated as logically equivalent. Yet, there has to be a box. Any statement that denies the existence of the box itself, cannot be true.

2-But there's another way of looking at the problem.

There is this ancient philosophical problem. The sentence "this sentence is false"...is it true of false? Well, if it's true, then it is false. But if it would be false, it would therefore have to be true...

So for ages, people have been trying to solve it. Some people have tried to solve it by disqualifying sentences that refer to themselves as a meaningfull sentence. The problem is that self-reference is just too common to do that. As a child we often use the self-referential aspect of language as a way to learn a language, for instance.

Another way would be to leave 'two-valued logic' where a sentence is either true or false. There could be another value, like 'neither true nor false' for instance.

But the thing is that "this sentence is either false, or neither true nor false", is essentially the same problem. If it is true, then it is false, and if it is false, then it has to be true.

There is another solution though, wich is also three-valued. It is called paraconsistent logic: Why not assume that something can BOTH be true and false? Ofcourse this aproach creates a lot of logical problems of itself. But we could solve many of those problems by for instance, considering cases like self-reference, to be special cases where two-valued logic does not apply.

So my second point is: maybe there are ways to deal with contradictory views, where they can BOTH be considered to be true.

But if we where to say that from there on, every view is just as valid as another, then you create a problem that is often refered to as 'explosion'. If everything goes, then EVERYTHING goes. Especially in logic, this is a problem. In normal, two-valued logic, anything can follow from a contradiction, for instance. So once you start to accept contradictions without any restrictions, you could eventually say something like: "because the sun is a planet as well as not a planet, fish are excellent cyclists".

So you need some kind of system to deal with contradictions.
I think that the notion of parallel reality's (or simmilar formulation), of wich one is a closed system, could be such a way. Or at least, it could be so, within the context of the debate on the truth of DMT-experiences.

 

[dragonrider]

But i've come across quite a few statements here, like "it is a fact that brain activity doesn't produce counsciousnes", "there can be no doubt about the fact that DMT-entities are real", or "the DMT world is more real than this world".
Even statements that seem to claim something like "the material worldview is a malicious attempt to dull our minds, and to keep us from spiritual growth".

I'm highly skeptical of this...can you link to instances where these assertions were made in the context of an actual discussion (not tertiary throwaway lines) and left unchallenged by other folks in the discussion? That just doesn't reflect the type of discourse I'm familiar with taking place on this site.

No, luckily, remarks like that have never remain unchallenged here.

But i'm more looking for a way to not end up with just

A:"what you're saying is bullshit".
B:"no, what YOU"RE saying is bullshit".
etc.

But to find a way to reconcile different views, without that automatically meaning that there can be no critical thinking anymore. I think there is a way to reconcile very different views, and at the same time to remain critical and thorough.

 

[Tommi]

I've been thinking here, this picture explains it. Material world is kind of a blockage in the spiritual world. Maybe, the material is The Boundaries? I consider, material is the ego embracing society.

*Overmind*

*Consciousness*

Where are you heading for the future?

Andrew Till: To a place of total sonic unification where boundaries and titles don't exist.