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There is an ongoing PBS TV series (also several books and also a website) called "Closer to Truth". It is hosted by neuroscientist Robert Lawrence Kuhn. He's featured in one-on-one interviews and panel discussions with the cream of the cream of today's cosmologists, physicists, philosophers, theologians, psychologists, etc. on all of the Big Questions surrounding a trilogy of broad topics - Cosmos; Consciousness; Meaning. The trilogy collectively dealt with reality, space and time, mind and consciousness, aliens, theology and on and on and on. Here are a few more of my comments on one of the general topics covered, subjects dealing with the mind, consciousness and personal identity.
What's the Meaning of Consciousness 1?
I've noted that consciousness and awareness are pretty much synonymous. I've further noted that consciousness or awareness can have up to three components, depending on the complexity of the life form in question. Component number one is the external environment - it's hot outside. The second component is the internal environment - I got a headache. The third component is the mind - I need to get dinner ready. Clearly as one goes down the evolutionary line, some of those components are of lesser or even no relevance. An amoeba is conscious or aware of its external environment; perhaps to some degree its cellular body; but it has no mind that it can be aware of. Ditto with plants. Some invertebrates have the beginnings of what we would call a mind and thus they have some mental awareness as well as being aware that their tentacle hurts and that they are hungry as well as being consciousness that a predator is nearby and it's time to hide under that rock. I see absolutely no problem with how I've defined things.
What's the Meaning of Consciousness 2?
If a robot was well-programmed, it would know enough to come in out of the rain. It would be aware that it was raining and that being wet might lead to rust, or some such. Plants, microbes, bacteria and related are indeed aware. A common cold virus is aware enough that it has entered a suitable host environment - like you, the reader - and can do its biological reproductive thing, causing you some discomfort in the process. Plants are aware of the changing seasons and respond accordingly. Sunflowers follow the Sun during the course of the day. Plants bend in the direction of the light. A seed is aware of the soil conditions and acts accordingly. A seed is aware of gravity and grows partly against the force of gravity (stem) and partly with the force of gravity (roots). Every living thing must be aware of its environment and be able to respond accordingly or die. Any species, including all of the plant kingdom that you see that currently survive and thrive have awareness. If they didn't, they would not be present and accounted for in the here and now for anyone to make note of their existence.
What's the Meaning of Consciousness 3?
Consciousness is awareness. If you have no awareness you don't survive. That applies as much to me as it does to my two cats, and by extension to other living things as well. My cats have an awareness of where their food bowls are, and are conscious of what the contents in those bowls is. If they didn't have that awareness, that consciousness then they would starve to death.
What's the Meaning of Consciousness 4?
Readers will note that I equate awareness with consciousness. When the body is fully on autopilot, like when we are asleep, passed out drunk, knocked out cold, under a general anaesthesia we are not conscious hence not aware. I agree with this. This is true. I also do not equate awareness with the subconscious. We have thousands of memories tucked away in our little grey cells yet we are not aware or conscious of that storage.
Do we have less awareness as we drink ourselves under the table? I'm not convinced. What I am convinced about is that we have a more distorted state of awareness as we drink at a faster rate than our metabolism can deal with the alcohol. Plain Jane's become more attractive as we get increasingly drunk, or we have a distorted or altered state of awareness about our skills in punching out someone's lights. If one is going to postulate that we have less awareness as we drink or as we go to sleep, etc. then we almost have to have units of awareness such that when fully awake and functional we have 100 units of awareness; when asleep or passed out drunk no units of awareness; after one beer 90 units of awareness; after two beers 80 units and so on. Does anyone have suggestions for how to define a unit of awareness?
Is Consciousness an Ultimate Fact 1?
Consider the following thought experiment. If someone were to be born without any functional sensory apparatus - born blind, deaf, without any sense of touch or feeling or sensation (no urge to eat; no urge to even breathe), without any sense of taste or smell - and such a person were kept alive for years on end via transfusions of oxygen-rich blood and also tube-feeding as a means for meeting nutritional requirements (plus supplements) as a means to meet needs for growth and to keep entropy at bay, along with the removal of associated waste products, would that being ever develop consciousness?
If "yes", then consciousness transcends physics and chemistry and associated physiochemical processes and thus consciousness is an ultimate fact. If not, if consciousness is not an ultimate fact that arises no matter what, then consciousness is the sole result of physics and chemistry and emerges out of purely physiochemical processes.
Is Consciousness an Ultimate Fact 2?
We all have a pretty good intuitive feel for what consciousness is*, but 100 different people ranging from the great unwashed through and including professional neurologists, psychologists and philosophers will probably give 100 different definitions. In any event, one not only requires a precise definition of what consciousness is (apart from being "the hard problem") but where it is located in the human brain and also a precise way of measuring relative degrees of consciousness. I imagine there will be different readings of degrees of consciousness - brain scans of one type or another - depending on how alert or how tired you are; whether you are asleep or awake, and if asleep, in deep sleep or in shallow sleep; a bit tipsy or flat out, even passed out drunk; what drugs you are taking; what neurological traumas or injuries you've had, or have, etc. That would even have to apply in my thought experiment about someone born without any functional sensory apparatus.
There has to be some sort of standardized baseline - based on some type of brain scan - for consciousness that one can be compared and contrasted to at any given moment, just like there is a standard meter or a standard temperature and pressure, or a standard baseline for human IQ. However, if there is such a neurological standard of human consciousness, I'm not aware of it. Maybe that means consciousness is not a quantifiable thing. But if consciousness is an ultimate fact, it should be - quantifiable that is.
*Much like time. We all have a feeling for what time is but we usually have a hard time defining or explaining it.
Does Consciousness Defeat Materialism?
Does consciousness defeat materialism? No, consciousness confirms materialism. Consciousness (or awareness - same difference), is easily affected - actually negated - by very common materialism-based activities, like going to sleep. When you go to sleep, a physiochemical process, you lose consciousness. Another common example is passing out, either because you are under the influence or perhaps because you faint. In either case, no consciousness. You lose consciousness if you are knocked out. In other words, you are unconsciousness. You also lose consciousness when placed under a general anaesthesia. These are all physical, physiochemical or in other words materialism-based processes. So, consciousness must have a materialism-based foundation in order to be influenced by materialism-based processes.
The mind (consciousness) can conceive of immaterial things like mathematics, but cannot construct them since almost by definition you can't construct with structure and substance anything immaterial out of the material. Any immaterial parts of you, anything that's abstract or a mental concept, is alive and well while you are alive and well, but passes into oblivion when you shuffle off to Buffalo (i.e. - kick the bucket or fall off your perch), maybe even before if your brain is injured or diseased.
Is Consciousness Entirely Physical?
When you were born you had existence but no essence or person-hood or consciousness.
Today you have both existence and essence, a sense of self, personality, memories, knowledge, consciousness, etc.
Your current essence or person-hood or consciousness is your output. The question is, what was the input that gave you your essence, all of that which makes you, you?
More likely as not, it came from a massive variety of sources including your parents, family, and relatives; friends, acquaintances, teachers, and well known personalities; the printed word from books, magazines and newspapers to Internet forums and blogs; visual media like films and TV; and on it goes.
Now the interesting thing is that all of the inputs you receive from these sources are totally non-material. You are fed a constant stream of ideas, opinions, 'facts', and assorted bits and pieces that in themselves have no structure or substance that can be associated with any form of physical reality.
So, if input is non-material, then how can your output, your essence, be material?
Can the Mind Heal the Body?
Can the mind heal the body, or can the immaterial affect the material? Thinking in its own right is material since it requires and uses up energy (the brain is a very energy intensive body organ for its size). What is being thought is probably of an immaterial nature. The concept of the mind healing the body is immaterial. Thinking about how the mind can heal the body is material. The mind actually healing the body should be entirely physiochemical in nature - of material stuff.
Put another way, anything immaterial about the brain/mind and/or the body has to exist and operate independently of an energy (and therefore matter) supply.
Presumably pure thought cannot create any molecules or bio-chemicals that the brain, or body, hasn't already the ways and means to produce. I mean I can't think the way to having my body produce uranium hexafluoride even if my body does contain traces of uranium and fluorine! Though it would be nice, I can't by thought alone turn the high-calorie sugars in my soft drinks into the dietary zero-calorie kind once I've consumed the former. I can't drink methyl alcohol and then turn it into ethyl alcohol.
Conversely, I cannot by pure thought split my water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen or the salty parts of my body into chlorine and sodium or my fatty cells into waste products my body can quickly eliminate (and thus effortlessly lose weight).
It would also be nice if we could will our bodies to manufacture aspirin as required (and save a trip to the pharmacist), or Omega-3, or antioxidants or antihistamines or any one of thousands of extremely expensive prescription medicines we all need from time to time. We can't, so we often succumb or rely instead on the placebo effect - if we think it will work, it will work. We all tend to take various supplements to prevent or cure this, that or the next thing even if clinical trials tend to show such supplements are a waste of money and just produce rather expensive urine. If we take a sugar pill but think its aspirin, then the pain still goes away. But can it really? A sugar pill can't really alleviate a headache like an aspirin can, at least that's the common-sense viewpoint.
So can the mind really heal the body (to a limited extent otherwise we'd all be immortal curing our aliments and ills via thought alone every day, even the most hideous of diseases from cancer to Ebola)? If the mind-over-matter placebo effect even partially works (albeit to that same limited extent) how is this explained? Any time the nebulous or immaterial can influence the material, well common-sense tells you that something is screwy somewhere.
But if the mind and the body are both immaterial, or both composed of the same stuff (bits and bytes instead of quarks and electrons) then there is scope for some acceptance or belief that the mind can heal the body since both the mind and the body are run by programmable software. We might have limited scope to influence our programming akin to how our free will operates within our simulated landscape. This of course assumes that we exist as virtual beings in a simulated landscape, or what I term the Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe.
How Free Will Probes Mind and Consciousness 1
According to some, dreams are not as vivid as we think they are. Try telling that to a child having nightmares! Some say we are seeing next-to-nothing in our dreams, but please note the logic here that next-to-nothing isn't nothing. I don't care if you rate the vividness of dreaming as 1 out of 10, or 9 out of ten, it is not zero!
Physics is the whole story because it came first. There was a time when there was physics but no life, and certainly no us. We, as a life form, are an emergent phenomena out of the laws, principles and relationships of physics. Physics exists very nicely without humans and will continue to exist even when we go kaput. Humans on the other hand can't survive and thrive without physics.
How Free Will Probes Mind and Consciousness 2
The cosmos is all there is and ever will be.
The cosmos can exist, does exist, and maybe is even required to exist, because the laws, principles and relationships of physics make it so.
The cosmos and the laws, principles and relationships of physics are a quasi-chicken-and-egg issue since both came into existence simultaneously if the Big Bang event was an actual happening.
We call this existence reality.
The cosmos-physics relationship makes this reality a deterministic one, so there is no free will.
The non-material (i.e. - the mind) too has reality since it is part of the cosmos.
Causality operates in the realm of the non-material as well as in the realm of the material.
That means there must be some sort of laws, principles and relationships of yet undiscovered physics or exotic physics (like for example the speculations about dark matter and dark energy) that governs the non-material - or maybe it's software.
What's the Meaning of Consciousness?
One little point may not have occurred to most people reading this. We are not actually an organism. We are a colony of billions, actually trillions of organisms - we call them cells. So, even though we may be totally unconscious, our body, our trillions of cells, are still aware of the state of the environment and act accordingly. Cells need oxygen, they are aware when their oxygen supply is low, so they collectively make sure we keep on breathing even though we're asleep, etc. There's no difference in principle between a plant cell being aware and acting accordingly and a human cell being aware and acting accordingly. So, the Royal "we" might not be aware when asleep or passed out drunk, but the essential units that make us up, our cells, are still aware. If they weren't, we'd be up fertilizer creek without a canoe. So yes, the Royal "we" do survive without consciousness but you'd better pray like hell that our cells keep on keeping on, or else look forward to an immediate afterlife!
Is There Anything Non-Physical About the Mind?
If you want evidence that's suggestive that there is a non-material part of you then consider this: All common pets - cats and dogs - have their very own unique personality. Yet any veterinary surgeon doing an autopsy on their brain will find zero, zip, and zilch of that personality in there. Einstein's brain was removed (illegally) after his death but has since been studied extensively and there is no cerebral physics to be uncovered anywhere within. Finally, you do not have free will since none of your trillions of body cells can have free will. Zero plus zero plus zero equals zero. Unless of course your alleged free will is just one of those nebulous non-physical attributes you have.
Solutions to the Mind-Body Problem
If one requires that only something physical can interact with something physical, that the body / brain can only interact with the mind (and vice versa) if both are composed of stuff, then it might be postulated or speculated that this 'immaterial' essence we ascribe to the mind is actually material but composed of such an exotic nature, with such an exotic structure, such an exotic substance that it lies outside the boundary of physics and chemistry as we know it. Perhaps it might be something akin to this exotic and mysterious dark matter that no one can pin down even though some of it has to, if it exists at all, be incorporated throughout Planet Earth we inhabit, hence this exotic matter would be incorporated within our own bodies and brains. So maybe, dark matter or something closely related is the stuff of the mind - maybe.
Does ESP Reveal the Non-physical?
Many people over many eras on many topics have suggested that, other than perhaps extending the decimal places down another notch or so, that was that. Discovery had come to an end. So, one, based on these historical examples of "oops", should always expect the unexpected. Discoveries march on.
Now my definition of "non-physical" is apparently not the same as some other definitions. My definition of "non-physical" is the void or a perfect vacuum that contains nothing of structure or substance. That is, no particles; no forces; no fields; no nothing. Since the existence of ESP would have to somehow involve interactions with particles, forces or fields, ESP, if it exists, is a something with structure and substance. Therefore, the possible existence of ESP cannot reveal the non-physical, the void, the perfect vacuum.
However, some apparently link ESP with the Higgs field which is a something IMHO. So the existence of ESP would just be another manifestation of particles / forces / fields interacting. I'd be rather surprised if science would actually define the Higgs Field as something non-physical, but perhaps others are more clued about such things than I am.
Is Consciousness Ultimate Reality 1?
What's that famous inscription at Delphi, ancient Greece - "Know Thyself". Of course while you are the best person available that can come to terms with the real nature, albeit ever changing nature of yourself, probably most people most of the time use their minds to try to come to terms with people, places, things, patterns, creations, concepts, etc. other than themselves.
Is Consciousness Ultimate Reality 2?
Memory and self-awareness / self-identity are clearly linked as cases of amnesia clearly demonstrate. Any time you lose your consciousness / memory you lose your sense of self. You have no sense of self when asleep or when passed out drunk or when knocked out or when under a general anaesthesia since your memory isn't active or functional under those circumstances. So, consciousness cannot be the be-all-and-end-all of reality since you're not always conscious.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/9194912
What's the Meaning of Consciousness 1?
I've noted that consciousness and awareness are pretty much synonymous. I've further noted that consciousness or awareness can have up to three components, depending on the complexity of the life form in question. Component number one is the external environment - it's hot outside. The second component is the internal environment - I got a headache. The third component is the mind - I need to get dinner ready. Clearly as one goes down the evolutionary line, some of those components are of lesser or even no relevance. An amoeba is conscious or aware of its external environment; perhaps to some degree its cellular body; but it has no mind that it can be aware of. Ditto with plants. Some invertebrates have the beginnings of what we would call a mind and thus they have some mental awareness as well as being aware that their tentacle hurts and that they are hungry as well as being consciousness that a predator is nearby and it's time to hide under that rock. I see absolutely no problem with how I've defined things.
What's the Meaning of Consciousness 2?
If a robot was well-programmed, it would know enough to come in out of the rain. It would be aware that it was raining and that being wet might lead to rust, or some such. Plants, microbes, bacteria and related are indeed aware. A common cold virus is aware enough that it has entered a suitable host environment - like you, the reader - and can do its biological reproductive thing, causing you some discomfort in the process. Plants are aware of the changing seasons and respond accordingly. Sunflowers follow the Sun during the course of the day. Plants bend in the direction of the light. A seed is aware of the soil conditions and acts accordingly. A seed is aware of gravity and grows partly against the force of gravity (stem) and partly with the force of gravity (roots). Every living thing must be aware of its environment and be able to respond accordingly or die. Any species, including all of the plant kingdom that you see that currently survive and thrive have awareness. If they didn't, they would not be present and accounted for in the here and now for anyone to make note of their existence.
What's the Meaning of Consciousness 3?
Consciousness is awareness. If you have no awareness you don't survive. That applies as much to me as it does to my two cats, and by extension to other living things as well. My cats have an awareness of where their food bowls are, and are conscious of what the contents in those bowls is. If they didn't have that awareness, that consciousness then they would starve to death.
What's the Meaning of Consciousness 4?
Readers will note that I equate awareness with consciousness. When the body is fully on autopilot, like when we are asleep, passed out drunk, knocked out cold, under a general anaesthesia we are not conscious hence not aware. I agree with this. This is true. I also do not equate awareness with the subconscious. We have thousands of memories tucked away in our little grey cells yet we are not aware or conscious of that storage.
Do we have less awareness as we drink ourselves under the table? I'm not convinced. What I am convinced about is that we have a more distorted state of awareness as we drink at a faster rate than our metabolism can deal with the alcohol. Plain Jane's become more attractive as we get increasingly drunk, or we have a distorted or altered state of awareness about our skills in punching out someone's lights. If one is going to postulate that we have less awareness as we drink or as we go to sleep, etc. then we almost have to have units of awareness such that when fully awake and functional we have 100 units of awareness; when asleep or passed out drunk no units of awareness; after one beer 90 units of awareness; after two beers 80 units and so on. Does anyone have suggestions for how to define a unit of awareness?
Is Consciousness an Ultimate Fact 1?
Consider the following thought experiment. If someone were to be born without any functional sensory apparatus - born blind, deaf, without any sense of touch or feeling or sensation (no urge to eat; no urge to even breathe), without any sense of taste or smell - and such a person were kept alive for years on end via transfusions of oxygen-rich blood and also tube-feeding as a means for meeting nutritional requirements (plus supplements) as a means to meet needs for growth and to keep entropy at bay, along with the removal of associated waste products, would that being ever develop consciousness?
If "yes", then consciousness transcends physics and chemistry and associated physiochemical processes and thus consciousness is an ultimate fact. If not, if consciousness is not an ultimate fact that arises no matter what, then consciousness is the sole result of physics and chemistry and emerges out of purely physiochemical processes.
Is Consciousness an Ultimate Fact 2?
We all have a pretty good intuitive feel for what consciousness is*, but 100 different people ranging from the great unwashed through and including professional neurologists, psychologists and philosophers will probably give 100 different definitions. In any event, one not only requires a precise definition of what consciousness is (apart from being "the hard problem") but where it is located in the human brain and also a precise way of measuring relative degrees of consciousness. I imagine there will be different readings of degrees of consciousness - brain scans of one type or another - depending on how alert or how tired you are; whether you are asleep or awake, and if asleep, in deep sleep or in shallow sleep; a bit tipsy or flat out, even passed out drunk; what drugs you are taking; what neurological traumas or injuries you've had, or have, etc. That would even have to apply in my thought experiment about someone born without any functional sensory apparatus.
There has to be some sort of standardized baseline - based on some type of brain scan - for consciousness that one can be compared and contrasted to at any given moment, just like there is a standard meter or a standard temperature and pressure, or a standard baseline for human IQ. However, if there is such a neurological standard of human consciousness, I'm not aware of it. Maybe that means consciousness is not a quantifiable thing. But if consciousness is an ultimate fact, it should be - quantifiable that is.
*Much like time. We all have a feeling for what time is but we usually have a hard time defining or explaining it.
Does Consciousness Defeat Materialism?
Does consciousness defeat materialism? No, consciousness confirms materialism. Consciousness (or awareness - same difference), is easily affected - actually negated - by very common materialism-based activities, like going to sleep. When you go to sleep, a physiochemical process, you lose consciousness. Another common example is passing out, either because you are under the influence or perhaps because you faint. In either case, no consciousness. You lose consciousness if you are knocked out. In other words, you are unconsciousness. You also lose consciousness when placed under a general anaesthesia. These are all physical, physiochemical or in other words materialism-based processes. So, consciousness must have a materialism-based foundation in order to be influenced by materialism-based processes.
The mind (consciousness) can conceive of immaterial things like mathematics, but cannot construct them since almost by definition you can't construct with structure and substance anything immaterial out of the material. Any immaterial parts of you, anything that's abstract or a mental concept, is alive and well while you are alive and well, but passes into oblivion when you shuffle off to Buffalo (i.e. - kick the bucket or fall off your perch), maybe even before if your brain is injured or diseased.
Is Consciousness Entirely Physical?
When you were born you had existence but no essence or person-hood or consciousness.
Today you have both existence and essence, a sense of self, personality, memories, knowledge, consciousness, etc.
Your current essence or person-hood or consciousness is your output. The question is, what was the input that gave you your essence, all of that which makes you, you?
More likely as not, it came from a massive variety of sources including your parents, family, and relatives; friends, acquaintances, teachers, and well known personalities; the printed word from books, magazines and newspapers to Internet forums and blogs; visual media like films and TV; and on it goes.
Now the interesting thing is that all of the inputs you receive from these sources are totally non-material. You are fed a constant stream of ideas, opinions, 'facts', and assorted bits and pieces that in themselves have no structure or substance that can be associated with any form of physical reality.
So, if input is non-material, then how can your output, your essence, be material?
Can the Mind Heal the Body?
Can the mind heal the body, or can the immaterial affect the material? Thinking in its own right is material since it requires and uses up energy (the brain is a very energy intensive body organ for its size). What is being thought is probably of an immaterial nature. The concept of the mind healing the body is immaterial. Thinking about how the mind can heal the body is material. The mind actually healing the body should be entirely physiochemical in nature - of material stuff.
Put another way, anything immaterial about the brain/mind and/or the body has to exist and operate independently of an energy (and therefore matter) supply.
Presumably pure thought cannot create any molecules or bio-chemicals that the brain, or body, hasn't already the ways and means to produce. I mean I can't think the way to having my body produce uranium hexafluoride even if my body does contain traces of uranium and fluorine! Though it would be nice, I can't by thought alone turn the high-calorie sugars in my soft drinks into the dietary zero-calorie kind once I've consumed the former. I can't drink methyl alcohol and then turn it into ethyl alcohol.
Conversely, I cannot by pure thought split my water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen or the salty parts of my body into chlorine and sodium or my fatty cells into waste products my body can quickly eliminate (and thus effortlessly lose weight).
It would also be nice if we could will our bodies to manufacture aspirin as required (and save a trip to the pharmacist), or Omega-3, or antioxidants or antihistamines or any one of thousands of extremely expensive prescription medicines we all need from time to time. We can't, so we often succumb or rely instead on the placebo effect - if we think it will work, it will work. We all tend to take various supplements to prevent or cure this, that or the next thing even if clinical trials tend to show such supplements are a waste of money and just produce rather expensive urine. If we take a sugar pill but think its aspirin, then the pain still goes away. But can it really? A sugar pill can't really alleviate a headache like an aspirin can, at least that's the common-sense viewpoint.
So can the mind really heal the body (to a limited extent otherwise we'd all be immortal curing our aliments and ills via thought alone every day, even the most hideous of diseases from cancer to Ebola)? If the mind-over-matter placebo effect even partially works (albeit to that same limited extent) how is this explained? Any time the nebulous or immaterial can influence the material, well common-sense tells you that something is screwy somewhere.
But if the mind and the body are both immaterial, or both composed of the same stuff (bits and bytes instead of quarks and electrons) then there is scope for some acceptance or belief that the mind can heal the body since both the mind and the body are run by programmable software. We might have limited scope to influence our programming akin to how our free will operates within our simulated landscape. This of course assumes that we exist as virtual beings in a simulated landscape, or what I term the Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe.
How Free Will Probes Mind and Consciousness 1
According to some, dreams are not as vivid as we think they are. Try telling that to a child having nightmares! Some say we are seeing next-to-nothing in our dreams, but please note the logic here that next-to-nothing isn't nothing. I don't care if you rate the vividness of dreaming as 1 out of 10, or 9 out of ten, it is not zero!
Physics is the whole story because it came first. There was a time when there was physics but no life, and certainly no us. We, as a life form, are an emergent phenomena out of the laws, principles and relationships of physics. Physics exists very nicely without humans and will continue to exist even when we go kaput. Humans on the other hand can't survive and thrive without physics.
How Free Will Probes Mind and Consciousness 2
The cosmos is all there is and ever will be.
The cosmos can exist, does exist, and maybe is even required to exist, because the laws, principles and relationships of physics make it so.
The cosmos and the laws, principles and relationships of physics are a quasi-chicken-and-egg issue since both came into existence simultaneously if the Big Bang event was an actual happening.
We call this existence reality.
The cosmos-physics relationship makes this reality a deterministic one, so there is no free will.
The non-material (i.e. - the mind) too has reality since it is part of the cosmos.
Causality operates in the realm of the non-material as well as in the realm of the material.
That means there must be some sort of laws, principles and relationships of yet undiscovered physics or exotic physics (like for example the speculations about dark matter and dark energy) that governs the non-material - or maybe it's software.
What's the Meaning of Consciousness?
One little point may not have occurred to most people reading this. We are not actually an organism. We are a colony of billions, actually trillions of organisms - we call them cells. So, even though we may be totally unconscious, our body, our trillions of cells, are still aware of the state of the environment and act accordingly. Cells need oxygen, they are aware when their oxygen supply is low, so they collectively make sure we keep on breathing even though we're asleep, etc. There's no difference in principle between a plant cell being aware and acting accordingly and a human cell being aware and acting accordingly. So, the Royal "we" might not be aware when asleep or passed out drunk, but the essential units that make us up, our cells, are still aware. If they weren't, we'd be up fertilizer creek without a canoe. So yes, the Royal "we" do survive without consciousness but you'd better pray like hell that our cells keep on keeping on, or else look forward to an immediate afterlife!
Is There Anything Non-Physical About the Mind?
If you want evidence that's suggestive that there is a non-material part of you then consider this: All common pets - cats and dogs - have their very own unique personality. Yet any veterinary surgeon doing an autopsy on their brain will find zero, zip, and zilch of that personality in there. Einstein's brain was removed (illegally) after his death but has since been studied extensively and there is no cerebral physics to be uncovered anywhere within. Finally, you do not have free will since none of your trillions of body cells can have free will. Zero plus zero plus zero equals zero. Unless of course your alleged free will is just one of those nebulous non-physical attributes you have.
Solutions to the Mind-Body Problem
If one requires that only something physical can interact with something physical, that the body / brain can only interact with the mind (and vice versa) if both are composed of stuff, then it might be postulated or speculated that this 'immaterial' essence we ascribe to the mind is actually material but composed of such an exotic nature, with such an exotic structure, such an exotic substance that it lies outside the boundary of physics and chemistry as we know it. Perhaps it might be something akin to this exotic and mysterious dark matter that no one can pin down even though some of it has to, if it exists at all, be incorporated throughout Planet Earth we inhabit, hence this exotic matter would be incorporated within our own bodies and brains. So maybe, dark matter or something closely related is the stuff of the mind - maybe.
Does ESP Reveal the Non-physical?
Many people over many eras on many topics have suggested that, other than perhaps extending the decimal places down another notch or so, that was that. Discovery had come to an end. So, one, based on these historical examples of "oops", should always expect the unexpected. Discoveries march on.
Now my definition of "non-physical" is apparently not the same as some other definitions. My definition of "non-physical" is the void or a perfect vacuum that contains nothing of structure or substance. That is, no particles; no forces; no fields; no nothing. Since the existence of ESP would have to somehow involve interactions with particles, forces or fields, ESP, if it exists, is a something with structure and substance. Therefore, the possible existence of ESP cannot reveal the non-physical, the void, the perfect vacuum.
However, some apparently link ESP with the Higgs field which is a something IMHO. So the existence of ESP would just be another manifestation of particles / forces / fields interacting. I'd be rather surprised if science would actually define the Higgs Field as something non-physical, but perhaps others are more clued about such things than I am.
Is Consciousness Ultimate Reality 1?
What's that famous inscription at Delphi, ancient Greece - "Know Thyself". Of course while you are the best person available that can come to terms with the real nature, albeit ever changing nature of yourself, probably most people most of the time use their minds to try to come to terms with people, places, things, patterns, creations, concepts, etc. other than themselves.
Is Consciousness Ultimate Reality 2?
Memory and self-awareness / self-identity are clearly linked as cases of amnesia clearly demonstrate. Any time you lose your consciousness / memory you lose your sense of self. You have no sense of self when asleep or when passed out drunk or when knocked out or when under a general anaesthesia since your memory isn't active or functional under those circumstances. So, consciousness cannot be the be-all-and-end-all of reality since you're not always conscious.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/9194912
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