agnosticatheist wrote:
What if our awareness is some type of electromagnetic phenomenon?
It might be totally bogus, but I do think it is at least an interesting idea.
I think it is better to pursue this avenue first rather than resort to the second approach you described in this thread, because that approach is ultimately non-falsifiable.
With all that said, maybe I'm missing something here.
From a scientific point of view you are correct. It may ultimately be non-falsifiable in any objective way if reality is genuinely "
spiritual" in nature. But should we then dismiss it as being implausible or even impossible?
I don't see why. Especially considering that science isn't explaining where anything ever came from in the first place. I mean, how can science ever be an answer for the question: "What is the true nature of reality"?
This question may simply be beyond the scope of science to answer.
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Getting back to your point about conscious awareness possibly being nothing more than a configuration of electromagnetic patterns. I would agree that this is the most likely physical avenue to investigate for sure. And specifically in terms of "feed-back loops".
Having worked on servo systems and electronic guidance systems for "smart bombs", I'm fully aware of the power of electronic feedback systems. They are amazing to be sure. When a feedback servo is working properly it does appear to take on a "life" of its own.
In fact, I have always held that if we ever build a "sentient brain", it will necessarily need to be analog computer, and not a digital computer. An analogy computer is the only computer capable of actually creating the kind of dynamic and instantaneous feedback loops that have any potential of ever becoming "sentient" in the truest sense of the concept.
When I was a young boy I played with an analog computer similar to the one shown in the photo below.
I was actually more excited about analog computers than digital computers. But of course, digital computers are far more handy form a programming point of view. It's much easier to write lines of code than trying to wire up an analog computer to make it do what you want. But that's actually from a programmer's point of view. The analog computer actually shows more promise from a computing point of view.
Our brains are actually analog computers, not digital computers.
I can't see how a digital computer could even become sentient because it's nothing but lines of code being processed through a processor. There is nothing there to become sentient.
In the case of an analog computer the whole configuration is one. The whole computer is processing everything all at once. It's all interconnected and feeds back on its own outputs. So I actually have a window into how this could be done.
But there still remains the question of "What is actually having the experience?"
Is this mass of wires and electronic OP-AMPS feeding back on each other having an experience?
Or perhaps, as you suggest, maybe it the electromagnetic activity that is somehow having an experience?
But that still bring the question to my mind, "How in the world can electromagnetic fields have an experience?"
To me this suggesting that perhaps electromagnetism itself can somehow innately have an experience.
Also, we need to ask the question, "What is electromagnetism anyway?"
Well, thanks to James Clerk Maxwell we do know that electromagnetism is a single phenomenon, and thanks to the Standard Model of Particle physics we believe that we know that it's basically a "field" of energy that seems to transmit and receive feedback via the exchange of "bosons" we call photons.
So far so good. We have a "macro physical description" of what's going on.
But wait a minute? Did I just say "macro"?
Yes I did, even though I was also referring to things like electrons and photons which are quantum phenomena. This field of electromagnetic is not only interacting on a macro level via the exchange of photons, but these photons and electrons are themselves quantum phenomena capable of doing all those weird and strange quantum things as well.
If our conscious awareness is indeed a property of electromagnetic patterns, then our consciousness not only resides in the physical macro world, but it equally belongs to the mysterious quantum world as well. All electromagnetic phenomena is quantum phenomena.
Many secular atheists object to the brain being "in communication" with anything physically removed from the brain. They claim that if such a communication was talking place they should be able to measure it in the form of some sort of radiation propagating through spacetime. But why should that need to be the case?
We know that in the quantum domain quantum particles such as electrons and photons can be anywhere in space, including being in two places simultaneously. Or traversing great distances without having passed through any intermediate space.
If we are patterns of electromagnetic radiation, then our "ground of being" may be the electromagnetic field. (whatever that might be) For science it's just a theoretical concept. But one that seems to have some essence of reality to it.
But my thinking is that if we are an electromagnetic field having an experience then we may simply be a facet of some much greater electromagnetic field that is in essence a holistic phenomenon. Connected through the quantum domain from which it arises.
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I mean, hey this may seem like I'm going off the deep end of philosophical speculation here, but surely you can see that this also has potential physics behind it as well.
It's an idea that is totally compatible with both "Modern Physics" and with ideas related to at least some "Mystical Philosophies".
This of course doesn't mean that these mystical philosophies must then be true. But it seems to me that it at least means that they can't be ruled out, and may very well have some valid points to make that don't conflict with our modern understanding of physics at all.
So all I'm "arguing for" is
plausibility, and the idea that it's far too early to rule these mystical ideas out entirely based on what we know about science.
It could be that we can rule these mystical ideas out at some point in the future. But I think it's far too early to rule them out at this point.
That's really all I'm saying.
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So yes, I suppose it's possible that we could just be "pockets" of awareness that arise from electromagnetic patterns. And when those patterns cease the awareness ceases and that's the end of it.
This seems to be what secular atheists are almost "rooting" for. Like they actually prefer this explanation. Perhaps it appears to them to be the epitome of Occam's Razor. A short and sweet explanation that doesn't require anything beyond these pockets of patterns.
I'm just not sold on the idea of why a pattern should be able to have an experience? It just seems more intuitive to me (and I realize that doesn't mean diddly squat), but it just seems more reasonable to me that it's not the pattern that is having an experience, but rather it's the field that's having the experience of being in that pattern.
And so in my mind, it's easy for me to imagine this 'field' of electromagnetism (or energy) as being a larger holistic entity.
Of course, I wouldn't stop there. I would also imagine that all vibrating quantum fields are this same larger holistic entity. Or at least properties thereof.
For lack of a better term, we call this larger holistic entity "God". And as the mystics then point out "Tat t'vam asi" meaning "Your are that". You are this mind of reality. Or at least a "facet of it" (i.e. a pocket of patterns).
But the core of your underlying being (the actually entity that you are), is not the pattern, but rather it's the stuff that has become the pattern.
It's a strange philosophy to be sure. And it has its own problems as well. Like how does this holistic entity divide its awareness up into these separate pockets of patterns that we experience as our brains?
Also many Christians don't like this philosophy at all because they see it as meaning that in the end, when all is said and done, then all that truly exists is one mind and we are it. And that doesn't appeal to the ego at all. It also implies than in the end we are all nothing more than a very lonely God who is just dreaming of being a bunch of different people.
The mystic try to avoid dwelling on these types of questions. They are content with just tossing their hands up in the air on that one and confessing that they have no clue how this might be done by the mind that is "God". They are content with accepting that it's all a
mystery and this is why they call it "Mysticism".
The mystics aren't concerned with having logical and scientific explanations for how "God" achieves this illusion of reality. Clearly something exists as opposed to there simply never having ever been anything. The mere fact that we exist at all seems sufficient to conclude that something "mystical" is going on.
Even if pure secular materialism is true, that's still pretty darn "Mystical".
The fact that some stuff just happens to exist that can evolved into complex patters of electromagnetic behaviors that can actually have a lucid experience is surely 'mystical' even if we could find the mathematical description of how it all evolved.
Like Stephen Hawking once said, "Even if we find a theory of everything, it will just be a mathematical equation, but what is it that breathes life into the equation and causes a universe for it to describe?"
So even if we had a complete full mathematical description of precisely how the universe came into being and has evolved, we'd still having nothing but an equation sitting on a piece of paper that truly doesn't tell us anything at all about why there exists a universe for this equation to describe.
So even pure secular materialism ends up being total "Mysticism".
We can't seem to avoid that fate no matter what we do.
