Any sufficiently advanced materialism is indistinguishable from idealism in the same way that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. From a materialist perspective, consciousness is not something separate from the physical world. It is what happens when matter becomes organized in sufficiently complex ways, especially in brains capable of memory, self-modeling, and recursive feedback. Conscious experience, in this view, emerges from physical processes rather than floating above them as a soul or independent substance.
Modern physics pushes this one step deeper. Matter itself is no longer understood as tiny solid objects at bottom, but as patterns or excitations in underlying fields, with these fields being a universally extant substrate that is present even in the vast cosmic voids between galaxies, where there is very little matter or energy. If consciousness comes from matter, and matter comes from these universal fields, then consciousness may ultimately depend on certain highly organized field dynamics. A brain would not contain some extra ingredient beyond physics; it would be a particular arrangement of the same substrate underlying matter itself that makes up everything else in the universe, including "empty" space.
The open question is whether consciousness is only a rare effect produced by very complex systems, or whether it reveals something more basic about reality itself. One possibility is that consciousness is just an emergent process, like liquidity emerging from molecules. Another is that experience is somehow woven into the fabric of the universe from the start, with minds being especially dense or sophisticated expressions of it. Physics does not settle that question yet, so the debate remains philosophical as much as scientific.
Religion and the supernatural is not needed here, the conclusion is that the ideal and the material are part of the same substrate, and the evolution of mind out of matter is built into physics itself, possibly as a deterministic inevitability. Speak with the fungi for more info.
It was a grave mistake of cuckery to abandon xviii century french materialism
>>2815863>consciousness cannot come from non-consciousnessWhy?
>>2815870Because there would have to be a gradient from non-consciousness to consciousness, which is not identified. This is why some materialists claim that consciousness is just an illusion, to clear out the contradiction.
>>2815873>Because there would have to be a gradient from non-consciousness to consciousnessThere clearly is a gradient of this, look at animals and bugs.
>>2815874animals and bugs are clearly conscious beings which respond to stimuli and have an internal will - but this is the hypocrisy. Why are humans considered agentic while other life forms arent? What is special about us apes?
>>2815873>Because there would have to be a gradient from non-consciousness to consciousness, which is not identified.yes and? When it come to spectrums there is no such thing as absolute categories, but doesn't mean the range of phenomena covered by said spectrum simply isn't.
>>2815878>yes and?And so if consciousness emerges into phenomena, we can presume that consciousness comes from consciousness, as a spectrum (with the unconscious being the lowest level).
>>2815877Is a single celled amoeba as conscious as a human being? Its a gradient even if you deny it.
>>2815881What does it mean be more or less conscious?
>>2815883higher and lower stages of perception, thought and awareness of reality.
>>2815884>higher and lower stages of perception, thought and awareness of reality.An eagle has better visual perception than a human and its inner awareness of reality is tied to its instincts (which is genetic memory, a type of knowledge). Now, thought is more ambiguous, but its quite clear that animals do think, and have emotions, play, etc. So we are still too unspecific. An eagle has a state of consciousness particular to its own being, so how could this be measured against humanity? But internally of being, lets say that there are some humans who are more or less conscious than each other; can this be measured?
>>2815886>can this be measured?Yes with cognitive testing.
And yeah humans aren't the peak form of consciousness, other parallel forms of life will be superior in niches.
>>2815886>lets say that there are some humans who are more or less conscious than each otherA single human won't even constantly display the same level of consciousness during their lives. That's even measured medically.
>>2815889>cognitive testingSo what is the unit of measurement? Consciousness points?
>>2815891>level of consciousnessWhat are these levels measured in?
>>2815893It requires abstraction but its the ability to interface with reality at a higher level than just following base survival impulses, things like problem solvings and such.
I think its fair to say human brains likely operate on some quantum level whereas I wouldnt make the same argument that a slug does.
Its also just not concretely understood but we are managing to build some theory of the mind up to suggest it.
>>2815896>It requires abstraction but its the ability to interface with reality at a higher level than just following base survival impulses, things like problem solvings and such.Animals can solve problems. But more pressing is the fact that computer programs can solve problems, and have a sense of continuity in existence, or survival, so are these conscious beings?
>whereas I wouldnt make the same argument that a slug does.But don't you feel as though this is just speciesist? A slug knows things humans can never know.
>>2815900the ability to form a religion might genuinely be one of the signs of higher consciousness.
>>2815900>But more pressing is the fact that computer programs can solve problemsno
>and have a sense of continuity in existence, or survivalno
>so are these conscious beings?no
>>2815906Yes. Yes. Yes.
I'm sorry that your anthropocentrism clouds your judgement.
>>2815904Well… Some people have perceived what they recognise as religion in animals.
>>2815846Yeah that's pretty much the post-1870 developments but MLs usually disregard that because of Lenin's empirio-criticism.
In essence, in the early 1900s, the development of physics had made the idea of matter as these external tiny atoms a bit redundant. This prompted philosophers to reassess the division between idealism and materialism in a new way. In particular, within the marxist movement, you had Ernst Mach and Avinarius who both developed new theories.
Ernst Mach was essentially a kantian reinterpretation of Marx. He believed that the external world to us only appeared through the lens of sensations, and that atoms and forces were only fictions used to organize experience, rather than reflections of an objective reality (which modern physics somewhat agrees with).
Avinarius on the other hand developed "empirio-criticism" in which he argued that knowledge arose from pure experience in a neutral and undifferentiated flow of sensations. There was not a "thing in itself", and to him abstractions like the subject or the object were just abstractions from this monist experience.
Lenin, who saw these tendencies as contesting his power within the Party, developed a critique of both where he strawmanned them into oblivion. This paved the way for a quasi-dogmatic interpretation of Marx's materialism with no regards for the development of science. Later, Pannekoek summarized all of this in a book on Lenin. He argues that albeit both theories have some issues, Lenin's mistake is to have developed a poor strawman critique of them which destroyed the development of theory in that field.
>books related, couldn't find Mach's book in pdf<https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/39508/pg39508-images.html >>2815907>>2815907No they really don't, they crunch numbers. Nothin more nothing less. Everything else is the operator's interpratation and biases.
>>2815909>Ernst Mach was essentially a kantian reinterpretation of Marx.And that sums up your illiteracy.
Lenin was right and is right. So called modern physics is a crock of bullshit too btw.
>>2815846I bet you feel like a smartass but if consciousness is a product of matter, why is people stupid? LOL
>>2815913>>2815913>No they really don't, they crunch numbers. Nothin more nothing less. Everything else is the operator's interpratation and biases.And what is the difference between this and a human brain?
>>2815919quantum reasoning
>>2815920What does this mean?
>>2815922The universe is unconscious.
>>2815924the ability to work like a quantum computer or to act on quantum levels of reasoning - basically non-linearity of thought and super positions are possible within the human brain.
The fact we're even able to observe and rationalize quantum phenom elevates our consciousness above anyone else's in terms of raw abstraction, it suggests we can likely think along the same lines.
It puts us above computers.
>>2815927So the human brain is a quantum computer while other animal brains are binary computers?
>>2815928Its a spectrum, thats probably the case for forms of life that act on basic survival and reproduction instincts like lower stage lifeforms and not the case for higher stage animals like chimpos
>>2815932I still don't recognise the concept of a higher and lower form of life, or of a standardised natural intelligence. States of consciousness may be variable, but not linear to anthropocentric illusions.
>>2815934Amoeba are as intelligent as humans, got it.
>>2815935What is more intelligent? A catepillar or an ant?
You are comparing apples and oranges.
>>2815938
>What is more intelligent? A catepillar or an ant?Both are similar, ants demonstrate *society* and group dynamics so id probably but them above the pillar.
>You are comparing apples and oranges.You are just wrong here, we're discussing alive entities on earth, I am quite literally not doing that.
DUDE
WEED
LMAO
>>2815944Apples and oranges ARE alive
What is more intelligent, an apple or an orange?
>>2815947arent you glad I didnt say banana?
>>2815914>So called modern physics is a crock of bullshit too btw.sorry grandpa, there is empirical evidence for dark matter, anti-matter, and quantum fields. you can cope about it until your face turns blue and continue living in the 19th century if you want.
>>2816437why even care to argue about it. none of us are qualified to have a real opinion on it and it has no impact on our lives anyway.
>>2816437There is empirical evidence for anti matter and quantum fields. dark matter however, is just an hypothesis scientists made up to make their models of the universe work because all observable matter in the universe have too little mass otherwise.
We have no
empirical evidence of its existence so far. Could be we don't know how to detect it, could be our current model of the universe is flawed.
>>2816440>none of us are qualified to have a real opinionYou insist, but we know all this stuff from accumulated scientific experimentation over the past 2 centuries.
We know matter is field excitations. The idea of quantum fields emerged gradually from a chain of experimental discoveries in early modern physics. First, experiments on blackbody radiation and the photoelectric effect showed that light behaves as discrete quanta, later called photons, rather than as a purely continuous wave. Then atomic spectroscopy revealed that matter itself has quantized energy levels, while electron diffraction experiments confirmed that particles also behave like waves. As relativity and quantum mechanics were combined, physicists found that particles could be created and destroyed in high-energy collisions, something ordinary quantum mechanics could not naturally describe. Quantum field theory solved this by treating particles as excitations of underlying fields spread throughout space. Its validity was then confirmed with extraordinary precision: quantum electrodynamics correctly predicted phenomena such as the electron’s magnetic moment and the Lamb shift, particle accelerators discovered the many particles predicted by quantum fields, and later experiments at colliders, culminating in the discovery of the Higgs field through the detection of the Higgs, provided direct evidence that fundamental fields are physically real. Go to school for physics and you will learn this.
We also know mind is matter. In the 19th century, doctors observed that specific injuries to the brain could selectively destroy language, memory, or personality, implying that mental abilities were physically localized rather than spiritual abstractions. Later, scientists discovered that neurons communicate through electrical signals and chemical neurotransmitters, and that changing brain chemistry with drugs could reliably alter perception, mood, and consciousness. In the 20th century, brain stimulation experiments showed that touching tiny regions of cortex could evoke memories, movements, or emotions, while modern neuroimaging revealed patterns of neural activity corresponding to perception, decision-making, and even imagined experiences. Cases such as split-brain surgery demonstrated that altering physical connections in the brain could divide aspects of conscious awareness itself. Today, artificial neural networks inspired by brain architecture can perform tasks once thought uniquely mental, reinforcing the idea that cognition may emerge from organized matter rather than exist independently of it. Taken together, these discoveries build a cumulative empirical case that mind is not separate from matter, but an activity arising from extraordinarily complex physical systems.
What we call “mind” is a higher-order phenomenon emerging from the dynamics of quantum fields organized into living matter. Physics progressively replaced solid, independent objects with underlying fields whose interactions generate particles and structure, while neuroscience progressively replaced the idea of an immaterial soul with evidence that consciousness tracks the organization and activity of the brain. Put together, the realization that the universe is having about itself through our minds which it generated by itself is that thought, memory, emotion, and selfhood are not exceptions to the physical universe but among its most complex field-based processes. In this view, a human mind is what certain arrangements of excitations of the universal substrate do when they become sufficiently self-organizing, recursive, and information-rich. Consciousness would therefore not float outside physics. It is a rare but natural mode of behavior that the universe can produce under the right conditions, much as stars produce fusion or crystals produce order.
Dude, what if like *hits a massive bong rip* our eyes aren't real, then how can we be real *hits bong* I've been reading a physics textbook and saw this one argument that we're all made out of foam and *hits bong again* exist on something called fields
You feel me bro?
message me when an ant discovers quantum fields jewish niggers
>>2816465you don't understand what anon even said, so you confuse it for stoner ramblings
>>2816477why would an ant discover quantum fields? how is that the goalpost?
>>2817693you need quantum instruments to measure quantum phenomena, enter the human brain.
>>2815846Idealism exists in materialism, we live in a material world, but idealism is nowhere to be seen on its own merit, because it is subjectivist nonsense.
>>2815873Yes ever heard of development? Evolution?
>>2817719>Dinosaurs<Conscious>Humans<ConsciousThere is no change in the state of consciousness in evolution.
>>2817724If dinosaurs are as conscious to you as humans, then so are the amoeba that first formed, object oriented ontologist
>>2817729You are implying quantities of consciousness which can be objectively measured by scientific instruments; so how do we measure consciousness?
>>2817731You subjectified consciousness, define it by first looking at the definition
Quantom mechanics is not this voodoo idealist rubbish, it's just something where we don't yet have instruments that can read what is going on. This "quantom mechanics in the human brain" crap is eye-rolling. Also these insane religious assumptions like "the universe must be conscious because humans are." Marxism must purge this nonsense. Only the material world exists.
>This "quantom mechanics in the human brain"
Its likely the missing piece in our understanding of consciousness - China is also studying and building Quantum computers, its real.
>>2817734>Define it firstConsciousness is the awareness of reality.
>>2817744Nobody besides humans is aware of material reality, in fact, most humans are retarded scum believing in fantasies and are unaware they are living in a material world
>>2817743>>2817734>>2817744Consciousness is just being able to respond to stimuli. It's not special and it is a spectrum. It's not that complciated.
>>2817751Diet coke and mentos = consciousness because one object responses to stimuli from another
>>2817751Evidently it is pretty complicated or we'd understand it, we dont.
>>2817746>Nobody besides humans is aware of material reality, in fact, most humans are retarded scum believing in fantasies and are unaware they are living in a material world<I am smart, everyone else is stupidWe should be so blessed to be in your presence.
>>2817751>A spectrumA spectrum upon what? What is the measure?
>>2817767Yes if you don't acknowledge materialism you have false consciousness
>>2817775We get it; you are smart, everyone else is stupid.
You are the most special person in the world.
>>2817783Religger mohammedan
>>2817759No that is just a chemical reaction. Bacteria however are conscious to a very small extent.
>>2817811>small extentaccording to what measure?
>>2815846no one on this site really ever seems to care about determining what idealism or materialism actually mean in a way that is sensitive to the problematic that marx was working with. already with marx we have an ontology wherein relations of production pre-exist the individual subject, and sensuous activity pre-exists the subject-object divide. with that in mind, dialectical materialism was always already ahead of quantum mechanics. to really grasp what materialism actually means as should be relevant for us, we must ask ourselves where marx was placing himself in relation to hegel's own you could say dialectical idealism. the ultimate distinction is that in dialectical materialism, form can never fully coincide its content, as content is always found within a deeper underlying field of contingency which changes its expression. hegel does not recognize this, and so the abstract right of the bourgeois state is taken for granted to be an incorruptible form taken up into eternity. the way in which this form is conditioned by contingent modes of production is not questioned. hegel's immanent critique begins presents itself as an arrangement from the most elementary of starting points. in contrast, marx's always starts from a historically contingent moment in history, and indeed his work on capital can not be properly understood if one does not appreciate such a thing. quoting moishe postone:
<With this turn to historical specificity, Marx now historicizes his earlier, transhistorical conceptions of social contradiction and the existence of an intrinsic historical logic. He now treats them as specific to capitalism, and roots them in the "unstable" duality of material and social moments with which he characterizes its basic social forms, such as the commodity and capital. In my analysis of Capital, I shall show how this duality, according to Marx, becomes externalized and gives rise. to a peculiar historical dialectic. By describing his object of investigation in terms of a historically specific contradiction, and grounding the dialectic inthe double character of the peculiar social forms underlying the capitalist social formation (labor, the commodity, the process of production, and so on), Marx now implicitly rejects the idea of an immanent logic of human history and any form of transhistorical dialectic, whether inclusive of nature or restricted to history. In Marx's mature works, the historical dialectic does not result from the interplay of subject, labor, and nature, from the reflexive work ings of the material objectifications of the Subject's "labor" upon itself; rather, it is rooted in the contradictory character of capitalist social forms.<A transhistorical dialectic must be grounded ontologically,. either in Being as such (Engels) or in social Being (Lilics). In light of Marx's historically specific analysis, however, the idea that reality or social relations in general are essentially contradictory and dialectical is now revealed to be one that cannot be explained or grounded; it can only be assumed metaphysically.57 In other words, by analyzing the historical dialectic in terms of the peculiarities of the fundamental social structures of capitalism, Marx removes it from the realm of the philosophy of history and places it within the framework of a historically specific social theory.<The move from a transhistorical to a historically specific point of departure implies that not only the categories but also the very form of the theory are historically specific. Given Marx's assumption that thought is socially embedded, his turn to an analysis of the historical specificity of the categories of capitalist society-his own social context-involves a turn to a notion of the historical specificity of his own theory. The historical relativization of the object of investigation is also reflexive for the theory itself.if we are still going to talk about consciousness and metaphysics, i wrote a little bit on some my technical thoughts regarding this, but as it is not really meant to be widely read, i didnt put much effort introducing all the terms and bringing out the relevant points of elaboration
https://hidwehproject.nekoweb.org/pages/phil/philref.htmlidk why im even posting on this board rn as i doubt anyone here even cares about hidweh project but ive already typed this all out soz
>>2817820The measure of being alive aka being conscious aka reacting to your enviroment.
<But how can you sepearate consciousness from chemical reactionsQuantity becomes quality. simple as.
>>2817879Cockshott is consistent.
>>2817880>The measure of being aliveSo some beings are more alive than others..?
>>2817853>idk why im even posting on this board rn as i doubt anyone here even cares about hidweh project but ive already typed this all out sozI have made some responses to the Hidweh project here:
>>>/hobby/47678>>>/hobby/47680I'm planning to go through the whole corpus to write up a proper commentary. 🙂👍
>>2817853>dialectical materialism was always already ahead of quantum mechanics.how so
>>2817891thats cool anon i will check it out. something i have been starting to look into is bringing in some elements from sophiology as well
>>2818012with dialectical materialism we have a relational ontology that no longer takes self-standing entities for granted, and a recognition of time as involving within itself contradiction at each temporal moment. one of the interpretations of qm that i prefer over the others is heavily inspired by diamat and emphasizes these ideas:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicate_and_explicate_orderhttps://philarchive.org/archive/VANWBWthe world under diamat is close to that of the implicate order, with the contradictory nature of temporal moments being relatable to basil hiley's concept of the "duron" as well as the uncertainty principle
the recognition by marx of sensuous activity being before the division between subject and object also provides a better way of interpreting the role of consciousness in material reality compared to the consciousness wave-function collapse which takes the self-standing observer for granted imo
>>2817879Dickblast speaks for himself, because when he was doing a q&a on here, in all his supposed knowledge about computers, he could not figure out how to navigate the imageboard, just like an unconscious or at the very least a mentally retarded person.
>>2818361>one of the interpretations of qm that i prefer over the others is heavily inspired by diamatwait so if certain interpretations of QM build on DiaMat how is DiaMat ahead of it. We all stand on the shoulders of those who came before us, but those who came before us are not "ahead" of us. We are "ahead of them" because we are able to see farther by building on top of their frameworks.
>the world under diamat is close to that of the implicate order, with the contradictory nature of temporal moments being relatable to basil hiley's concept of the "duron" as well as the uncertainty principle
>the recognition by marx of sensuous activity being before the division between subject and object also provides a better way of interpreting the role of consciousness in material reality compared to the consciousness wave-function collapse which takes the self-standing observer for granted imointeresting, thank you.
>>2818505>in all his supposed knowledge about computers, he could not figure out how to navigate the imageboardanon being born in the 50s and knowing a fuckton about logic gates and turing machines has nothing to do with knowing how to navigate a dogshit user interface first made by japanese autists in the 00s for anonymously discussing anime titties
>>2818561excuses excuses
I wanna know why he is unconscious
>>2818361>>2818559Underlying this notion is the dialectical category of necessity, something in conflict with the dominant Humean empiricism, because its bourgeois metaphysicians tend to hark back to the clockwork universe and flatten every material relation into cause/effect. This is despite the fact necessity is taken for granted in the formulation of many physical laws:
When a voltage source is connected to a wire, the voltage doesn't "cause" current to flow. Current sources will likewise induce a voltages, hence both forces must be linked by necessity. Note also le chatelier's principle, which states that a chemical system within an equilibrium will respond to changes in temperature, pressure, volume or concentration by undergoing a change within the other parameters. Again this is not causal, since these changes occur reciprocally and aren't "forced" in the sense that fixing a pendulum annuls motion in its radial direction. Neither does it mean physical systems universally tend towards an equilibrium, something Lenin already debunked. In practice it means everything from a proton to a block of metal is for itself a thermodynamic system in contradiction with its molecular state (phase, concentration, structure, etc.).
>>2822489i'm stupid. are you saying cause and effect don't exist? like when hitler shot himself in the brainstem it didn't cause him to die?
>>2822514I'm not claiming hitting the light switch won't cause the light to turn on, but anyone with a passing familiarity of physics should recognize, how many of its laws more closely conform to necessity. Dialectical materialism goes beyond empiricism, in that we assert our mind can produce concepts closely conforming to material reality, as opposed to a naive observer seeing everything i mentioned in the last post unfold as a chain of events.
I don't understand enough physics to understand 10% of this discussion.
>>2822528ug pick up rock
ug know heavy thing fall
ug drop rock
heavy thing fall
I feel like a bunch of people here are schizos
>>2822521> we assert our mind can produce concepts closely conforming to material realitydo empiricists deny that?
>>2822550schizos can be right sometimes, even if they're right for the wrong reasons, or exaggerate their conclusions
>>2822489>>2822521When you say necessity do you mean in the Hegelian sense of dialectical development or in the colloquial sense of "it is the utmost necessity that I take a shit right now"
>>2815855read the chapter from theories of surplus value where Marx addresses the ideas of the physiocrats.
>>2823029Lenin's Empirio-Criticism and Materialism goes into painstaking detail on this, but here is a more "neutral" source:
>If causal inferences don’t involve a priori reasoning about relations of ideas, they must concern matters of fact and experience. When we’ve had many experiences of one kind of event constantly conjoined with another, we begin to think of them as cause and effect and infer the one from the other. But even after we’ve had many experiences of a cause conjoined with its effect, our inferences aren’t determined by reason or any other operation of the understanding.>[…]>Hume argues that there is no probable reasoning that can provide a just inference from past to future. Any attempt to infer [future events] from [past experience] by a probable inference will be viciously circular—it will involve supposing what we are trying to prove.>[…]>It is therefore custom, not reason, which “determines the mind … to suppose the future conformable to the past” (Abstract 16). But even though we have located the principle, it is important to see that this isn’t a new principle by which our minds operate. Custom and habit are general names for the principles of association.>[…]>Hume concludes that it is just this felt determination of the mind—our awareness of this customary transition from one associated object to another—that is the source of our idea of necessary connection. When we say that one object is necessarily connected with another, we really mean that the objects have acquired an associative connection in our thought that gives rise to this inference.>[…]>Hume locates the source of the idea of necessary connection in us, not in the objects themselves or even in our ideas of those objects we regard as causes and effects. In doing so, he completely changes the course of the causation debate, reversing what everyone else thought about the idea of necessary connection. Subsequent discussions of causation must confront the challenges Hume poses for traditional, more metaphysical, ways of looking at our idea of causation.https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/ >>2815883Have you never been sleepy, drunk, or done something on autopilot and don't remember doing it? How much do you remember from your childhood? Were you conscious then?
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