Consciousness: A State of Matter? (General)

by David Turell , Sunday, October 30, 2016, 14:21 (2944 days ago) @ dhw

Bbella: PHYSICISTS SAY CONSCIOUSNESS SHOULD BE CONSIDERED A STATE OF MATTER:
THE “NON PHYSICAL” IS REAL

http://tinyurl.com/hch7qvd

"He is basically saying that the immaterial ‘substance’ of consciousness is directly intertwined with what we perceive to be our physical material world in some sort of way, shape or form, that consciousness is required for matter to be, that it becomes after consciousness….and he’s not the only physicist to believe that."
We have been here before in this discussion -
but interesting to revisit at this point.

DAVID: My take has always been that consciousness came first, then matter, which is how I interpret the thoughts in the above website.

dhw: Chicken and egg. If consciousness came before matter, we have some form of God. If matter came first, we have no God (at least of the conventional monotheistic kind). The expression “a state of matter” is not clear to me, but it would seem to imply panpsychism (the true meaning of which is that all forms of matter have some mental aspect). I don’t know how this leads to the conclusion that “The Universe is immaterial – mental and spiritual. Live, and enjoy”, but there are gaps in the quote, so perhaps it’s out of context. Clearly none of us would be alive if matter was not a real part of the universe, so my conclusion would be that, regardless of what came first, unless you believe that neither we nor our thoughts are real, our world at least (we don’t know about the rest of the universe) is both material and mental, and we can enjoy both.

I am hoping to find a spare hour this week to formulate my own dastardly plan to reconcile dualism and materialism!

If you read the whole website, my statement stands, consciousness first.