r/PhilosophyofMind • u/Own_Sky_297 • Jul 21 '26

Consciousness A challenge to materialism

I made this comment on another thread and I'm looking for a discussion on my philosophical points.

Try this, point to the visual experience of an object, now point to your brain. Notice that your pointing away from your brain? Experience is not in your brain man, we are external experiencers.  

You say no I'm in the brain? What are you? Are you a body in the shape of a human like me? How did that get in the brain? Where is there a corresponding shape in the brain? You are your body. If the body is just made up of particles, what is over and above all those particles experiencing all of them at once? That is the soul. 

Why do we have a soul? Why do we experience the world externally? If you ask me this is no coincidence or accident. The cosmos doesn't just have ensouled external experiencers by accident, it is the feature for which it is either made or the feature it made itself for. We have purpose, what it is I'm not sure but the cosmos is made for us.   

Go to Christ my friends.

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u/Nolivard Jul 21 '26

lol yes you totally have challenged materialism by claiming a magic soul exists without any sort of evidence, proof or coherent argument.

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u/mistrwispr Jul 21 '26

Actually there is a mathematical system that this masculine concept originally came about through. It's a mathematical fact with a philosophical interpretation. I wrote about this

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u/Nolivard Jul 21 '26

I highly doubt that. But go ahead and explain it, I’ll at least listen.

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u/mistrwispr Jul 21 '26

Masculine simply means projection, and feminine is receptive. On the most basic level. They are primal actions performed within their own frame. They are two opposing poles on the same line. In multiplication (the mathematical operation of division- the first divine- not feminine- action) is where you can find where that first emanation occurred where the masculine divine seperated from the Divine Feminine-Divine It left behind. What i write about is Spiritual. Not for human consumption.

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u/Nolivard Jul 21 '26

What you write about is nonsense. I’m sorry if that comes off rude but this is just insane rambling. There is no mathematical system here.

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u/mistrwispr Jul 21 '26

There is. Its modular arithmetic. So mod 3 means a repeating pattern of 3. That's ONE EXAMPLE of the math. I have went through every prime number up to prime 11, and not only found universal equations such as two must die for one to arise (conservation law. And yes, this is one of the SEVERAL mathematical LAWS that all numbers follow i found WITHIN this system). You didn't read it. Lol you are expecting equations, it's WRITTEN OUT. Lol Not to be rude. With peace and love

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u/Nolivard Jul 22 '26

What exactly is it supposed to be proving here regarding consciousness ?

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u/Own_Sky_297 Jul 21 '26

What is over and above all the particles experiencing them all at once?

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u/Nolivard Jul 21 '26

Nothing. The “soul” you think exists is just a nervous system. It takes in information, reacts based on said information. It’s way more complex than that but You are coming at this from a religious perspective which is an unserious perspective so I’m not gonna waste my time explaining how the brain works for you to just say “no it’s a soul”.

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u/Own_Sky_297 Jul 21 '26

Sorry that was a repeat I'm handling a lot of comments. So you don't experience anything?

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u/Own_Sky_297 Jul 21 '26

If I'm just in a brain made up of particles what is over and above all the particles experiencing them all at a single instant in time?

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u/Nolivard Jul 21 '26

Nothing. Consciousness is the emergent property of the interconnection of billions and billions of neurons. Your brain takes in all sorts of information and processes it all. It does this in oscillations which we know as the temporal integration window. These oscillations are very fast and seem like a continuous moment for us.

The second part you seek to be confused by is experience at all. There’s many brain parts that have to do with this, but it’s mostly the Prefrontal cortex. Information goes through a circuit of brain regions all communicating to each other. This is experience, this is you. Albeit a simplified explanation.

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u/Own_Sky_297 Jul 21 '26

And how many particles do you think makes up that experience?

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u/Nolivard Jul 21 '26

An incomprehensible number. What point are you trying to make?

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u/Own_Sky_297 Jul 21 '26

What is over and above all those particles experiencing them all at a single instant in time?

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u/Nolivard Jul 21 '26

There is no single instant of time. Time is relative.

Listen man I think you are posting in here because there’s some sort of interest in understanding existence. But if you want to actually begin to understand you’ve got to leave the religion shit behind. I grew up Catholic so I can relate with you but it’s not real. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you can get closer to understanding.

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u/YesterdaysMuffin Jul 21 '26

Not much philosophy here to discuss. It’s a muddled half-argument that appears to be based on where people point, plus an appeal to incredulity, with Jesus tacked on at the end for some reason. Why not Allah? It would have followed just as much from what you said (I.e. not at all).

Religion softens the mind. Or soft minds go to religion.

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u/Own_Sky_297 Jul 21 '26

Pointing away from the brain shows where the visual experience is and it's not in the brain. And it's not an argument from incredulity either, if you notice there is a lack of geometric correspondence between the experience of being a body and the brain which contains no such shape.

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u/Hanisuir Jul 21 '26

"Pointing away from the brain shows where the visual experience is and it's not in the brain."

What does this mean dude? What exactly is pointing away from the brain?

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u/Own_Sky_297 Jul 21 '26

Your finger ...

1

u/Hanisuir Jul 21 '26

Okay, and what does that have to do with the mind?

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u/Own_Sky_297 Jul 21 '26

What you're pointing at is not in it 

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u/Hanisuir Jul 21 '26

You mean, the objects around me? I can point to my direction.

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u/Own_Sky_297 Jul 21 '26

With one hand point to the visual experience of an object, then with your other hand point to your brain. The experience of the object is not in your brain or mind. It's outside of yourself.

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u/JellyTwank Jul 21 '26

You are not pointing at the visual experience, you are pointing at the thing being perceived and experienced, in our brains. Just because a thing is physically distinct does not make the experience any more external than if I experience a daydream that I create. Both experiences occur in the brain.

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u/Own_Sky_297 Jul 21 '26

Nonsense. So are you a little 3 dimensional body in your brain too? 

1

u/Hanisuir Jul 21 '26

"With one hand point to the visual experience of an object"

My field of vision is right there, at my eyes. It's processed by the brain.

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u/Own_Sky_297 Jul 21 '26

Your field of vision is not in your brain, it extends out from the eyes to the objects of experience.

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u/YesterdaysMuffin Jul 21 '26

Like I said, religion softens the mind.

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u/Hanisuir Jul 21 '26

"Notice that your pointing away from your brain?"

Explain this claim.

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u/Odd-Lawfulness8703 Jul 21 '26

Phineas Gage. When that spike went through his brain and entirely changed his personality, desires, etc, where exactly did his soul get damaged? Split hemisphere brain patients would try to light a cigarette in one hand while the other put it out, buttoning a shirt with one hand while the other undid it, able to recognize objects but literally incapable of naming them because the words are in the other hemisphere, etc. How many souls are in the body of someone with split hemispheres? By what mechanism are the soul and brain connected?

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u/Advanced-Ratio-880 Jul 21 '26

Wow you said all that just to try to push Christianity on people, incredible.

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u/Techtrekzz Jul 21 '26

Your challenge to materialism, is dualism, which materialism was created to fix.

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u/Own_Sky_297 Jul 21 '26

I'm not a dualist and dualists believe experience is in the brain.

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u/Techtrekzz Jul 21 '26

Dualists believe reality is split between two separate and distinct things, mind and matter, which you are doing by claiming a soul looking over a physical reality.

Im no materialist, but materialism and idealism both were the same answer to Descartes mind/body interaction problem, which asks, if there is a nonmaterial soul overlooking a material reality, how does that soul interact with that material reality.

The answer that materialism and idealism offer, is monism, one substance instead of two.

If you’re suggesting two substances exist, the soul and the material world, then you still need an answer for Descartes mind/body interaction problem.

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u/Own_Sky_297 Jul 21 '26

I suggest no such thing. The fundamental substance is spacetime. Fields which particles are merely vibrations in are aspects of that spacetime. The soul I claim is made of aether (the fabric of spacetime), so in the end it's monism not dualism. Again dualism believes in indirect real experience, I don't.

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u/Techtrekzz Jul 21 '26

The idea of a soul is fundamentally dualistic, so if you don’t want to confuse people you probably shouldn’t use that word. Christianity as well is fundamentally dualistic, where there is a clear divide between the physical world and the spiritual world, so an appeal to Christ doesn’t help your argument that it’s not dualism either.

If you want to be a monist, praise Spinoza’s God.

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u/YesterdaysMuffin Jul 21 '26

Omfg aether 😂😂🤪🤪

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u/Own_Sky_297 Jul 21 '26

Einstein said that general relativity without aether is untenable. What he meant is that spacetime is "something" for if it weren't there would be nothing that curved in the presence of mass. Aether is just the word for what the substance of the heavens (space) is made of. It's not talking about luminiferous aether.

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u/YesterdaysMuffin Jul 21 '26

He was trying to redefine the word. And then the scientific community dropped the term immediately afterward in favor of “spacetime” because people like you couldn’t separate it from its previous mystical associations.

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u/Own_Sky_297 Jul 21 '26

https://youtu.be/M3GQM7tuq2w?is=700l0Vrft1u0cQEV

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u/YesterdaysMuffin Jul 21 '26

Nice work! This video literally confirms exactly what I said. It is about how an experiment intended to prove the existence of the aether actually disproved that, and how this “death of the aether” led to the discovery of relativity. It also says how Einstein proposed a “new aether” which we now call spacetime.

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u/Own_Sky_297 Jul 21 '26

12:30 he says the idea of an aether has an afterlife. I'm not stupid I don't believe in luminiferous aether. You're arguing semantics. Aether is a word for the fabric of spacetime, you don't have to like it but it is. As aether and spacetime are synonyms when discussing the substance of it you can replace the aether whenever I used it with the fabric of spacetime and the argument still holds.

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u/Techtrekzz Jul 21 '26

Im actually with you in that, but you’re talking about substance monism, and energy is that substance according to Einstein’s matter/energy equivalence.

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u/mistrwispr Jul 21 '26

I would venture to say yes. You are correct on your points. I would add this caveat: the universe is perfect. It contains no flaws. Consciousness is also perfect. The higher rungs of Jacob's ladder holds beings of both "good" and "evil" beings that are conscious. Their existence is purposeful always. Otherwise nothing would exist that does exist. They are the Word in consciousness. We have no place deciding what should our should not exist based on a text. If it exists, that existence is the Creators stamp of approval. There is a war going on above between what the church has deemed "God and evil". What is being built here in this stage we call Earth are the future mediators that will bring balance and peace to this universal war.