Does Physics explain reality?

[@PerspectivePhilosophy]

To try everything Brilliant has to offer-free-for a full 30 days, visit brilliant.org/PerspectivePhilosophy . The first 200 of you will get 20% off Brilliant’s annual premium subscription.

[@Wearephuct-O]

Reality is a plastic jellyfish swimming in an endless sea of you and me

[@thoughtraindrops]

You've really upped the video quality man!

[@slorbitify]

In Indian philosophy there is the curious case of Samkhya, a school of thought which proposes a peculiar kind of dualism, one between "prakrti" and witness-consciousness. In simple terms prakrti is what we might call matter, but it is matter that is more fluid, process-like rather than atomic. Witness-consciousness is just the thing which is conscious of thing, which witnesses things and thats it. All other mental phenomena like thinking, feeling, and what we might call "qualia" belong to prakrti, are subtle manifestations of it. Notice that its not our general dualism, most mental stuff is actually material, only consciousness isn't.

[@Darkloid21]

Old Indian philosophy quickly lost a lot of it's luster in the face of modern neuroscience. Simply put they don't know what we know now.

[@Patchowisky]

I was waiting for a video on that topic! Will you do one on Empiricism x Rationalism?

[@maltesefalconpunch2804]

I hope one day I get to catch one of your streams and discuss this with you further

[@Wearephuct-O]

Brilliant intro !

This was a fantastic explanation, will definitely rewatch a few parts to let the information sink in :)

[@DarrenMcStravick]

Neutral monism > idealism. Change my mind.

[@naitsirhc2065]

Why?

[@DarrenMcStravick]

@naitsirhc2065 Mental substances (at least from our perspectives being ones) appear to inherently be complex (composed) dependent (derivative) entities with mainly relational properties (experientiality, intentionality). Given the plausibility of the contents of our states being (at least in origin) external to our subjective states, and the subjective states themselves being derivative of things not internal to those states (brains), the most plausible explanation would seem to be "non-mental" to account for at least part of those states and their contents. This wouldn't necessarily commit one to materialism, although that could be argued. But if it is argued, then we could run the same lines I mention above with respect to dispositional, structural properties and entities unveiled by physics and appeal to the "incompleteness of nature". I think this would naturally lead to neutral monism. Further, I think it overcomes a lot of epistemic obstacles and produces a far more parsimonious and explanatorily powerful ontology than the alternatives.

[@Marcus-143]

Makes sense biblically to me. Genesis, god says let there be light. Let there be "existence" really. But god was before that. Before things exist. Then separated night and day making "time" and all that. Interesting video.

[@coolbanana165]

I came to a similar conclusion from a different perspective, though without saying the universe is moving towards a specific goal of creating consciousness. Or without a God. Monistic Panprotopsychism. Physics is the dynamics, and something like like proto-consciousness can be part of the fundamental substance of the universe/ particles. There's a good chance that consciousness in the brain is caused by quantum mechanics in microtubules, and so is connected to fundamental physics.

[@TheVeganVicar]

monism: the view in metaphysics that reality (that is, Ultimate Reality) is a unified whole and that all existing things can be ascribed to or described by a single concept or system; the doctrine that mind and matter are formed from, or reducible to, the same ultimate substance or principle of being; any system of thought that seeks to deduce all the varied phenomena of both the physical and spiritual worlds from a single principle, specifically, the metaphysical doctrine that there is but one substance, either mind (idealism) or matter (materialism), or a substance that is neither mind nor matter, but is the substantial ground of both. Cf. “dualism”. To put it simply, whilst materialists/physicalists/naturalists believe that the ground of being is some kind of tangible form of matter (or a field of some sort), and idealists/theists/panpsychists consider some kind of mind(s) or consciousness(es) to be most fundamental, MONISTS understand that Ultimate Reality is simultaneously both the Subject and any possible object, and thus one, undivided whole (even though it may seem that objects are, in fact, divisible from a certain standpoint). The descriptive term favoured in the metaphysical framework proposed in this Holy Scripture is “Brahman”, a Sanskrit word meaning “expansion”, although similes such as “Sacchidānanda” (Eternal-Conscious-Peace), “The Tao” and “The Monad” are also satisfactory. Perhaps the oldest extant metaphysical system, Advaita Vedānta, originating in ancient Bhārata (India), which is the thesis promulgated in this treatise, “A Final Instruction Sheet for Humanity”, is a decompositional dual-aspect monist schema, in which the mental and the physical are two (epistemic) aspects of an underlying (ontic) reality that itself is neither mental nor physical, but rather, psychophysically neutral. On such a view, the decomposition creates mutually-exclusive mental (subjective) and physical (objective) domains, both of which are necessary for a comprehensive metaphysical worldview. The mere fact that it is possible for Awareness to be conscious of Itself, implies that, by nature, Ultimate Reality is con-substantially BOTH subjective and objective, since it would not be possible for a subject to perceive itself unless the subject was also a self-reflective object. Therefore, it seems that the necessary-contingent dichotomy often discussed by philosophers in regards to ontology, is superfluous to the concept of monism, because on this view, BOTH the subjective and the objective realities are essentially one, necessary ontological Being(ness). In other words, because you are, fundamentally, Brahman, you are a necessary being and not contingent on any external force. This concept has been termed "necessitarianism" by contemporary philosophers, in contradiction to contingentarianism - the view that at least some thing could have been different otherwise - and is intimately tied to the notions of causality and determinism in Chapters 08 and 11. Advaita Vedānta (that is, dual-aspect Monism) is the only metaphysical scheme that has complete explanatory power. Hypothetically, and somewhat tangentially, one might question thus: “If it is accurate to state that both the Subject of all subjects and all possible objects are equally ‘Brahman’ (that is, Ultimate Truth), then surely that implies that a rock is equally valuable as a human being?”. That is correct purely on the Absolute platform. Here, in the transactional world of relativity, there is no such thing as equality, except within the conceptual sphere (such as in mathematics), as already demonstrated in more than a couple of places in this Holiest of Holy Books, “F.I.S.H”, especially in the chapter regarding the spiteful, pernicious ideology of feminism (Chapter 26). Cf. “advaita”, “dualism”, “Brahman/Parabrahman”, “Saguna Brahman”, “Nirguna Brahman”, “subject”, and “object”.

[@rifleattheplayground]

Absolutely NO! The correspondence theory of truth is based on assumptions one can never prove. There's no reason to believe reality is physical. Now, we can explain a lot of things (insofar as we are explaining how things that we can detect with the senses or tools that expand our senses [quantifiable], but that's HARDLY a description of REALITY. I think that problem comes about because we are basically taught a certain way of seeing the world. We are shown that view because it can be shown, but that's hardly a reason to think that's reality, but we aren't taught about how to think critically and skeptically. Consciousness, what it's like to be, flies in the face of a world that can only be quantitative. You either have to argue that there are psychophysical laws that come into effect OR you have to argue that consciousness is fundamental to reality. I really don't see how you can get past consciousness being fundamental unless you claim psychophysical laws, but no one does that. Giving the impression they don't think that's true. Which really only leaves consciousness as fundamental.

[@rifleattheplayground]

I do have to disagree with your tacit conclusion that there is duality. I don't see how you have any basis to say so, from a purely logical and rational standpoint. You give the concepts of universal and concrete ideas, but I truly do not see a distinction between the two. In the Aristotilian sense, I get what you're saying, but from the monist perspective, I can also marry those concepts. You are perceiving the universal within consciousness, and you can realize the concrete concept within your individual experience, BUT that says nothing about whether there exists both the universal and concrete in separate domains. If reality is purely mental, all of the conclusions of dualism would still hold true, except perhaps the origin of consciousness. There's no reason to accept Christianity or dualism, from a purely logical and rational basis, as the default.

[@fagusformigordusfagordumfl1798]

What do you think about Alan Watts? Can you do a video on his philosophy?

[@georgepantzikis7988]

What do you think of the Marxist approach to materialism? It is the metaphysics I personally subscribe to, and I find that it gets around a lot of problems. Marxian materialism basically boils down to an inversion of the Hegelian Trinity, such that the Father is sustained by the Son, and together they give rise to the Holy Spirit. Hegel's system has to commit a weird kind of anti-hegelian move at its beginning, where indeterminate Being is assumed to be the false start that will justify itself through the unfolding of the system, but, precisely because Hegel moves in the realm of immaterial essences, the only way for him to tie the end and beginning together is to posit it as the self-same Absolute. In other words, instead of grounding this otherwise empty abstraction, he sets up his entire philosophy to be the discovery of this Absolute, creating a kind of concentric circle that never actually justifies Being.

[@TheVeganVicar]

🐟 22. ILLEGITIMATE GOVERNANCES: SOCIALISM (and its more extreme form, communism) is intrinsically evil, because it is based on the ideology of social and economic egalitarianism, which is both a theoretical and a practical impossibility. Equality exists solely in abstract concepts such as mathematics and arguably in the sub-atomic realm. Many proponents of socialism argue that it is purely an economic system and therefore independent of any particular form of governance. However, it is inconceivable that socialism/communism could be implemented on a nationwide scale without any form of government intervention. If a relatively small number of persons wish to unite in order to form a commune or worker-cooperative, that is their prerogative, but it could never work in a country with a large population, because there will always exist entrepreneurs desirous of engaging in wealth-building enterprises. Even a musician who composes a hit tune wants his song to succeed and earn him inordinate wealth. Socialism reduces individual citizens to utilities, who, in practice, are used to support the ruling elite, who are invariably despotic scoundrels, and very far from ideal leaders (i.e. compassionate and righteous monarchs). Those citizens who display talent in business or the arts are either oppressed, or their gifts are coercively utilized by the corrupt state. Despite purporting to be a fair and equitable system of wealth distribution, those in leadership positions seem to live a far more luxurious lifestyle than the mass of menial workers. Wealth is effectively stolen from the rich. Most destructively, virtuous and holy teachings (“dharma”, in Sanskrit) are repressed by the irreligious and ILLEGITIMATE “government”. The argument that some form of government WELFARE programme is essential to aid those who are unable to financially-support themselves for reasons beyond their control, is fallacious. A righteous ruler (i.e. a saintly monarch) will ensure the welfare of each and every citizen by encouraging private welfare. There is no need for a king to extort money from his subjects in order to feed and clothe the impoverished. Of course, in the highly-unlikely event that civilians are unwilling to help a person in dire straits, the king would step-in to assist that person, as one would expect from a patriarch (father of his people). The head of any nation ought to be the penultimate patriarch, not a selfish buffoon. DEMOCRACY is almost as evil, because, just as the rabble favoured the murderous Barabbas over the good King Jesus, the ignorant masses will overwhelmingly vote for the candidate which promises to fulfil their inane desires, rather than one which will enforce the law, and promote a wholesome and just society. Read Chapter 12 for the most authoritative and concise exegesis of law, morality, and ethics, currently available. Even in the miraculous scenario where the vast majority of the population are holy and righteous citizens, it is still immoral for them to vote for a seemingly-righteous leader. This is because that leader will not be, by definition, a king. As clearly and logically explicated in the previous chapter of this Holy Scripture, MONARCHY is the only lawful form of governance. If an elected ruler is truly righteous, he will not be able to condone the fact that the citizens are paying him to perform a job (which is a working-class role), and that an inordinate amount of time, money and resources are being wasted on political campaigning. Furthermore, an actual ruler does not wimpishly pander to voters - he takes power by (divinely-mandated) force, as one would expect from the penultimate alpha-male in society (the ultimate alpha-male being a priest). The thought of children voting for who will be their parents or teachers, would seem utterly RIDICULOUS to the average person, yet most believe that they are qualified to choose their own ruler - they are most assuredly not. Just as a typical child fails to understand that a piece of sweet, juicy, healthy, delicious fruit is more beneficial for them than a cone of pus-infested, fattening, diabetes-inducing ice-cream, so too can the uneducated proletariat not understand that they are unqualified to choose their own leader, even after it is logically explained to them (as it is in this chapter, as well as in the previous chapter). And by “uneducated”, it is simply meant that they are misguided in the realities of life and in righteous living (“dharma”, in Sanskrit), not in facts and figures or in technical training. Intelligence doesn't necessarily correlate to wisdom. No socialist or democratic government will educate its citizens sufficiently well that the citizens have the knowledge of how to usurp their rule. To put it frankly, democracy is rule by the “lowest common denominator”. It should be obvious that ANARCHY can never ever succeed, because even the smallest possible social unit (the nuclear family) requires a dominator. Any family will fall-apart without a strict male household head. In fact, without the husband/father, there is no family, by definition. The English noun “husband” comes from the Old Norse word “hûsbôndi”, meaning “master of the house”. The same paradigm applies to the extended family, which depends on a strong patriarchal figure (customarily, the eldest or most senior male). Likewise with clans, tribes, villages, towns, cities, and nations or countries. Unfortunately, there are many otherwise-intelligent persons who honestly believe that an ENTIRE country can smoothly run without a leader in place. Any sane person can easily understand that even a nuclear family is unable to function properly without a head of the house, what to speak of a populous nation. The reason for anarchists' distrust of any kind of government is due to the corrupt nature of democratic governments, and the adulteration of the monarchy in recent centuries. However, if anarchists were to understand that most all so-called “kings/queens” in recent centuries were not even close to being true monarchs, they may change their stance on that inane “system”. Most of the problems in human society are directly or indirectly attributable to this relatively modern phenomenon (non-monarchies), since it is the government’s role and sacred DUTY to enforce the law (see Chapter 12), and non-monarchical governments are themselves unlawful. One of the many sinister characteristics of democracy, socialism, and other evil forms of governance, is the desire for their so-called “leaders” to control, or at least influence, the private lives of every single citizen (hence the term “Nanny State”). For example, in the wicked, decadent nations in which this holy scripture was composed, The Philippine Islands and The Southland (or “Australia”, as it is known in the Latin tongue), the DEMONIC governments try, and largely succeed, in controlling the rights of parents to properly raise, discipline and punish their children according to their own morals, compulsory vaccination of infants, enforcing feminist ideology, limiting legitimate powers an employer has over his servants, subsidizing animal agriculture, persecuting religious leaders (even to imprisonment and death, believe it or not. Personally, I have been jailed thrice for executing God’s perfect and pure will), and even trying to negatively influence what people eat and wear. Not that a government shouldn’t control what its citizens wear in public, but it should ensure that they are MODESTLY dressed, according to the guidelines outlined in Chapter 28, which is hardly the case in Australia, the Philippines, and similar nations. At least ninety-nine per cent of Filipinas, for instance, are transvestinal, despite Philippines pretending to be a religious nation. Cont...

[@georgepantzikis7988]

@@TheVeganVicar I am talking about metaphysics. Do you look for comments that mention Marx and copy-paste your multi-paragraph ramble? Please stop replying to my comments with irrelevant nonsense.

[@lLenn2]

Bruh, nobody cares about marxism

[@thechurchofgravity]

​@@georgepantzikis7988you brought out the resident scitzo

[@georgepantzikis7988]

@@thechurchofgravity yea, you can't avoid them. Every philosophy video has at least two guys writing screeds of Jordan Peterson talking points. Lmao

[@Doctor.T.46]

I'm a physicalist, and much as I love to listen to your talks, I have to disagree with your final comment. Of course I believe that materialism/physicalism has the answers about consciousness. Viewers should read the work of Antonio Damasio and his Somatic Marker Hypothesis. Consciousness should be approached from a neurophilosophical perspective as proposed by the Churchlands. Dualism was contrived to accommodate the soul and belief in a God. It might account for why most philosophers and scientists are atheists.

[@vegan-rising]

Do you have an actual argument?

[@Doctor.T.46]

@@vegan-rising Of course, what do you want me to explain?

[@vegan-rising]

@@Doctor.T.46 Well you made a bunch of statements. I would like to hear an actual argument for why you think it (Somatic Marker Hypothesis or whatever) supports physicalism.

[@Doctor.T.46]

@veganismrising-unstoppable8700 Sorry, I thought I was just stimulating interest for people to explore themselves. I think the SMH supports physicalism because it shows that through neuroimaging the centre for emotion generation

[@Doctor.T.46]

@@vegan-rising Sorry...to continue. The centre for emotion has been identified in the prefrontal cortex. This shows that part of what is known as qualia is a physical process. By extension, further parts of consciousness will be identified in the near future to be generated by brain tissue. Damasio wrote some excellent books and papers on the subject. Please may I urge you to read some of them. Hope that helps.

[@MK_ULTRA420]

If you don't think Physics best explains reality then it's because you can't comprehend it.

[@PerspectivePhilosophy]

I love Physics but you can't answer everything in Physical terms.

[@MK_ULTRA420]

@@RadahnBrofist Nice projection, bud. Unlike you I actually have a Physics degree.

[@Veegan4theanimals]

I love your channel. I study occult science. I love that you bring this up because vegans seems to be stuck on materialism and atheist thinking. We are more than just matter.

[@PrestonGranger]

Daniel Dennett debunked mary the color scientist in the 90's *yawn*

[@Darkloid21]

Well I mean the research seems to show mind is nothing more than brain activity so all this is rather moot. Nor does any of this really change the math behind physics. There is a reason the old ideas are dead and gone, they just don't work anymore. There is no such thing as "mental" at least not in the way you think of it. "Mental" and "mind" is just from a time we didn't know better. The example of the Zebra also falls flat, it's existence has nothing to do with our ideas about it or anything else, it simply does. Or to put it bluntly, you're just wrong here.

[@pseudonympseudonym8288]

I don't think Mary's Room is very convincing. It seems parsimonious to me to assume that experiences of qualia are objective, everyone sees the same red, etc. Substance dualism was created to undergird theism. What's parsimonious is taking the Donald Davidson approach of supervenience rooted non-reductive physicalism. It is great at predicting and explaining things, it is not costly to the intuitions of anyone who accepts the basic facts of the natural sciences, and scientific realists. Substance dualism is a project of pumping people's intuitions with questions of varying conceivability, and using the holes seemingly exposed by those intuition pumps to sneak the logical entailment of God, souls, a place for this substance(heaven/hell/whatev), creation or intelligent design of some sort, etc. Also for some people it helps them save free will if they are not into compatibilism. A good example would be the philosophical zombies thought experiment. Many dualists still think in a Cartesian fashion that conceivability is worth more for truth finding in philosophy than it actually is. The standard is usually, though, that there must be something clearly conceived. Well I have no clue how anyone can clearly conceive of a philosophical zombie. To me a philosophical zombie is concievable-ish, but not clearly conceivable. Just as I can somewhat conceive of a giant, floating volcano, but I cannot clearly conceive of one, because conceiving of it in the world I'm familiar with means breaking a lot of fundamental rules. A volcano in the real world has to be plugged into the ground, that's where it gets the lava. The foggily conceivable world where a volcano can fly and erupt without being connected to the earth is worthless to me, in terms of teaching me anything about the real world. Take all that and apply it to philosophical zombies. I care about what is parsimonious, I care about being on the right side of Occam's razor. Dualism and panpsychism are attempts to justify wishful thinking and tradition. Panpsychism is harmless, but Dualism deserves to devastated by modern philosophers. The idea that god put a holy substance into humans only, right at the point of conception, which is what the soul/conscious experience is made of, is the acute source of many people's dogshit anti-vegan and anti-choice/abortion takes.

[@vegan-rising]

the simpler explanation isn't necessarily the correct one.

[@tomatao.]

I'm 45 seconds in and already object - The initial hypothetical already posits an impossible situation. You can't remove colours from reality as there is defraction of light even in a monochromatic room. Hypotheticals that step outside of the nature aren't convincing, they're just playful

[@tomatao.]

Okay I'm now 2 minutes in and another objection. You're in a constant state of gaining knowledge as time progresses, there is always new knowledge as every experience you have is built on previous experiences. If computers can store information over time and continue to gain information on their physical hardware - then so can humans

[@tomatao.]

Causation isn't the only theory of physicalism. It's possible for physical systems to be explained with some atemporal qualities

[@tomatao.]

Why is physicalism here framed as "external" rather than holistic? Wouldn't the physical also include the internal? edit: okay, I see this is based on a definition. But to me, this is begging the question as it already supposes that mind is separate from physical

[@tomatao.]

This definition of physical would also lead to photos being "non physical" as they are an "internal representation" of the "external" object - or the memory storage on a computer that represents data it has captured through sensors - if we're framing purely in terms of information

[@tomatao.]

9:18 "Physical is defined against the subjective"... well only if you only consider the "definer" to be the mind, if you consider other possible "definers" that are based in physical then this problem goes away. Relativity places all physical defined against other physical and category theory would say they are all defined against the "empty set" aka the singularity

[@nikibronson133]

Channels like this, make me tired of thinking, not because I don’t understand the points he’s making, but I can easily see innumerable amounts of physicists going through every line of his argument, and he bucking it and then him coming back with her bottles and honestly life is too short to just end up in the cycle of humans having disagreements that won’t even matter because the sun engulf the earth and everything humans ever did Will have a little significance. Be on the fact that we are a speck of dust, suspended in a Sunbeam and that’s a part of physics you can’t deny, so I’m just going to have fun while I’m here😂

[@bozoc2572]

All we need is Hegel...

[@itstandstoreason]

Lewis, have you considered interviewing Bernardo Kastrup?

[@x-b5516]

❤❤❤

[@Joulederschreckliche]

I learned about monism and dualism from a different lens. Since they a both schools of ontology, they are concerned with what something can be reduced down to. So when you say steel has two irreducible aspects to it that makes you a dualist. And when you use that viewpoint Marrys room doesn't make any sense. Because it is not important how much she read about colours; as a physicalist you could still say that the visual part of her brain experienced something new. And beacause the brain is a physical object physicalism stays in tact. When I understood your postion correctly you would go along with that but postulate a mental component that has to go hand in hand but be seperate to her visual cortex. To which I just say no and apply Ockhams Razor.

[@irish_deconstruction]

Lewis is becoming a dualist confirmed???😳😂

[@naitsirhc2065]

No

[@RadahnBrofist]

Makes a video talking about Physics. Has no qualifications in Physics... Okay.

[@gentlyschannel4193]

Well, I thought this was going to be informative but it ended up just proselytising 🥱