Your term "no-progress" approaches (is that the right wording? I don't recall exactly) is perfect for this. People keep saying "We may not know now but some day we'll understand."
Chalmers calls this "promissory materialism."
It's like, you can hammer a nail for 10 million years; your hammering is NEVER going to turn the nail into a butterfly!
"Oh, but you don't understand the complexity of endless hammering. How can you deny that at some point in thousands or several million years, the nail may begin to sprout wings, and eventually fly off?"
Well, it might "fly off the handle" but that nail is just not going to be a butterfly.
Interesting that the people who say "some day we'll know" don't realize their prophecy is as silly as believing hammering a nail will one day turn it into a butterfly.
Chalmers, by the way, subsequently said that there really is no hard problem of CONSCIOUSNESS - there's a hard problem of MATTER - something which (as defined by materialists) we can never, by definition, have ANY contact with nor ANY evidence of!
Start there, and ask your materialists, "Why should I believe in such a thing? I have no need for that hypothesis!"
Right. Or, we might put things upside down and double/triple down. There is a hard problem of mind (despite all the AI hype, cognitive sciences have no clue how semantics works) and a hard problem of will and emotions in life (biology has no clue where that comes from either).
True. A hard problem of anything? How did anything come into existence? Why don't the patterns/laws of nature change over time? How can there be time or space at all?
That sounds all very mental, I know, but if you carefully go through it, you will see how deep that is. The speech and "word" of/in science is at the level of vaikhari vak and madhyama vak. Beyond is pashyanti vak, where the real semantics is comprehended, but is unreachable by any material information processing (that is, no AI can get there, they also briefly discuss this in the video), let alone the highest level of para vak. The point is that physicalists, without having awareness of these levels, try to recreate the two latter with the two former, which is the same rationale of recreating consciousness with matter, but here not on the physical but the mental plane. It takes time to digest that (I made my own notices of Vladimir's structure to grasp it) but becoming aware of this is quite revealing and opens an entirely new intuitive understanding of things from a very different but complementary perspective, for example when it comes to the 'hard problems'.
Yes, I'm quite familiar with the tantric understanding of the levels of the word. It was a big part of the teaching I followed for years related to the repetition of the Divine Name. If you are familiar with David Bentley Hart's "The Experience of God" he speaks specifically of the "intellect" (by which is meant what Sri Aurobindo refers to as the "higher buddhi" - later as the intuitive mind, which is quite close to the pashyanti vak.
In a letter to Dilip Kumar Roy, in which Dilip had quoted a VERY long letter from Sri Krishna Prem, which remains one of the best things I've ever read on the metaphysical foundations of science (it's in "Yogi Sri Krishna Prem" by Dilip, a book I highly recommend if you can ever get it) Sri Aurobindo praises Krishna Prem as having a rare capacity to rise above the "mists" of modern thought, saying that Prem's comments on the limitations of empirical science showed that Prem had developed a kind of intuition - describing it with his own newly minted phrase - a "pashyanti buddhi", which he went on to describe as very rare (this is reminiscent of Ramana Maharshi saying Prem was a rare combination of Jnani and Bhakta)
However, as you know, my concern is that we are telling these things among us and none of these get out beyond the little circle of pandits. Top scientists and philosophers do the same and aren't able to go beyond debating fervently if language is a "propositional attitude" created by brain modules, or if the origin of language might be due to a genetic random mutation that allowed humans to lower their larynx during vocalization, or theories alike...
Just thinking aloud about how the two worlds could be integrated and synthesized.
Bernardo K and Iain McGilchrist are among the loudest voices today, and both speak in a language which is WAY WAY out of reach for the vast majority of people.
This is why I'm teaching myself how to draw and later this year or some time next year, will be learning some computer animation programs.
I've talked with teens of average reading ability and they have no trouble understanding this stuff if you put it to them clearly.
As you know, I'll be reaching out to you regularly for advice when Jan and I start our videos on this. Meanwhile, you can start thinking about how to describe physics experiments (a) in language accessible to a 12 year old and (b) in a way that shows with absolutely clarity why materialist assumptions are unnecessary.
I just wrote a response to a popular British blogger, Jules Evans, who writes a lot on stoicism and therapy, who is open to non. materialist views but asked "what about the fact that materialism has made such spectacular successes.". I tried to explain to him that "physics" is not the same as "materialism."
I"ve noticed this is an almost universal misundersatnding andI do NOTthink writing about it is going to make much of a difference OR simply a "talking heads" video.
Your term "no-progress" approaches (is that the right wording? I don't recall exactly) is perfect for this. People keep saying "We may not know now but some day we'll understand."
Chalmers calls this "promissory materialism."
It's like, you can hammer a nail for 10 million years; your hammering is NEVER going to turn the nail into a butterfly!
"Oh, but you don't understand the complexity of endless hammering. How can you deny that at some point in thousands or several million years, the nail may begin to sprout wings, and eventually fly off?"
Well, it might "fly off the handle" but that nail is just not going to be a butterfly.
Interesting that the people who say "some day we'll know" don't realize their prophecy is as silly as believing hammering a nail will one day turn it into a butterfly.
Chalmers, by the way, subsequently said that there really is no hard problem of CONSCIOUSNESS - there's a hard problem of MATTER - something which (as defined by materialists) we can never, by definition, have ANY contact with nor ANY evidence of!
Start there, and ask your materialists, "Why should I believe in such a thing? I have no need for that hypothesis!"
Take THAT, Laplace!!!
Right. Or, we might put things upside down and double/triple down. There is a hard problem of mind (despite all the AI hype, cognitive sciences have no clue how semantics works) and a hard problem of will and emotions in life (biology has no clue where that comes from either).
True. A hard problem of anything? How did anything come into existence? Why don't the patterns/laws of nature change over time? How can there be time or space at all?
Yes, but I mean something more specific. Let me try to explain what I mean by the hard problem of mind.
Do you know the four levels of speech of Abhinava Gupta? Vladimir exposes it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41aZorUQBpU?
That sounds all very mental, I know, but if you carefully go through it, you will see how deep that is. The speech and "word" of/in science is at the level of vaikhari vak and madhyama vak. Beyond is pashyanti vak, where the real semantics is comprehended, but is unreachable by any material information processing (that is, no AI can get there, they also briefly discuss this in the video), let alone the highest level of para vak. The point is that physicalists, without having awareness of these levels, try to recreate the two latter with the two former, which is the same rationale of recreating consciousness with matter, but here not on the physical but the mental plane. It takes time to digest that (I made my own notices of Vladimir's structure to grasp it) but becoming aware of this is quite revealing and opens an entirely new intuitive understanding of things from a very different but complementary perspective, for example when it comes to the 'hard problems'.
Yes, I'm quite familiar with the tantric understanding of the levels of the word. It was a big part of the teaching I followed for years related to the repetition of the Divine Name. If you are familiar with David Bentley Hart's "The Experience of God" he speaks specifically of the "intellect" (by which is meant what Sri Aurobindo refers to as the "higher buddhi" - later as the intuitive mind, which is quite close to the pashyanti vak.
In a letter to Dilip Kumar Roy, in which Dilip had quoted a VERY long letter from Sri Krishna Prem, which remains one of the best things I've ever read on the metaphysical foundations of science (it's in "Yogi Sri Krishna Prem" by Dilip, a book I highly recommend if you can ever get it) Sri Aurobindo praises Krishna Prem as having a rare capacity to rise above the "mists" of modern thought, saying that Prem's comments on the limitations of empirical science showed that Prem had developed a kind of intuition - describing it with his own newly minted phrase - a "pashyanti buddhi", which he went on to describe as very rare (this is reminiscent of Ramana Maharshi saying Prem was a rare combination of Jnani and Bhakta)
Interesting. Will check that out.
However, as you know, my concern is that we are telling these things among us and none of these get out beyond the little circle of pandits. Top scientists and philosophers do the same and aren't able to go beyond debating fervently if language is a "propositional attitude" created by brain modules, or if the origin of language might be due to a genetic random mutation that allowed humans to lower their larynx during vocalization, or theories alike...
Just thinking aloud about how the two worlds could be integrated and synthesized.
Bernardo K and Iain McGilchrist are among the loudest voices today, and both speak in a language which is WAY WAY out of reach for the vast majority of people.
This is why I'm teaching myself how to draw and later this year or some time next year, will be learning some computer animation programs.
I've talked with teens of average reading ability and they have no trouble understanding this stuff if you put it to them clearly.
As you know, I'll be reaching out to you regularly for advice when Jan and I start our videos on this. Meanwhile, you can start thinking about how to describe physics experiments (a) in language accessible to a 12 year old and (b) in a way that shows with absolutely clarity why materialist assumptions are unnecessary.
I just wrote a response to a popular British blogger, Jules Evans, who writes a lot on stoicism and therapy, who is open to non. materialist views but asked "what about the fact that materialism has made such spectacular successes.". I tried to explain to him that "physics" is not the same as "materialism."
I"ve noticed this is an almost universal misundersatnding andI do NOTthink writing about it is going to make much of a difference OR simply a "talking heads" video.
We'll see if animation makes it any easier!