Wait, are you saying that our physical bodies aren’t real either?
Then how come I’m so rarely the tallest, smartest or best looking guy in the game?
Besides applying to really any discussion at all, I thought the levels of abstraction section might help another hopelessly hung up map vs territory argument.
Going back to life force – it’s obviously not apparent to science as a force in the sense that gravity or electromagnetism is a force. Being conceived as a device in a science fiction fantasy film, it is fictional, but still analogous to several prescientific spiritual concepts which you may value however you like, and it is not a stretch IMO to consider this poetic concept as rooted deeply in nature. Some people don’t dig groovy Jedi vibes, chock it up to midichlorian deficiency.
And the evidence to support your assertion of the existence of a disembodied consciousness?
It always ends up here. I believe the counter-arguement generally comes down to: “Believe, you muggle!”
That depends on what you mean by real I guess. They are impermanent and in a state of constant flux. But sure, they are about as real as anything else.
But I don’t believe consciousness is an emergent property of the nervous system, I believe consciousness is the universal “substance”. Basically that the quantum field we’re in is a form of consciousness and that it is evolving and playing with itself, making itself into more and more complex patterns. Human beings themselves are incredibly complex and interesting patterns within patterns.
The ego or separate self however has no physical existence and exists only as a figment of imagination, in my experience. It seems to consist mainly of physical contractions, emotions such as fear, and a continuing sub-vocal narrative in the mind. It’s a ghost in the machine, and as most ghosts, it’s not real.
There can be only one of those, and we’re currently 7 billion people playing so… 
If it makes you feel any better, this character isn’t that tall, smart or good looking either. 
??? Is that where he was going? I thought he was arguing the other way around, that there is no “soul” or “homunculus” or “centrum of neurons that is the ‘real’ ‘me,’” etc. I thought he was rejecting idealism.
If he was actually trying to lead up to a “soul” or other ideal, he seemed (to me) to be arguing away from it, not toward it!
I agree with Human Action that “the whole thing” is me. The body is necessary, to keep the brain alive. The brain is necessary, because that’s the organ where the thinking happens. Most of the parts of the brain are necessary, because they all contribute toward thinking.
Here is where reductionism comes in, as Plato suggested more than 2,000 years ago: how much of a person can we remove (surgically, via disease, accidents, or war) and still have a person left? This is where (per Oliver Sacks and others) we see the role of the various parts of the brain in the overall assembling of the sense of “me.”
Ultimately, yes, “we” exist. We really do. You can argue that our selves are constructs or projections or illusions – maybe so, maybe not – but there really are people out there, and most of us have to deal with them every day. Tell an angry customer who wants his toaster-oven fixed, “Your perceptions of the problem are entirely illusory,” and you’ll be filing for unemployment.
Most of an atom is empty space. Matter is an “illusion.” So, go on, Samuel Johnson: kick that rock as hard as you can. Whose toes feel the illusory pain?
Better yet, try your hardest to kick the empty space in that rock.
I wasn’t going anywhere. I am just spontaneously responding to ideas and information, there’s no agenda.
This mind has a current worldview, but it is constantly updating and changing. I make no claims to know the ultimate truth of anything. The fact that there is no self or “homunculus” came as huge surprise to me. But once it’s seen through, you can’t really go back to believing in it.
And you base that on what?
There is no homunculus, but there is a self. I am one. You’re one. Most of us are one, except for people with very severe medical conditions. (Someone in a persistent vegetative state is…probably not a “self.” Someone suffering from really severe depression is missing a part of their “self.”)
You appear to be defining “self” as a “super-self,” a Platonic idea, a soul, an ikon, or a homunculus. But most of us define “self” as the whole of the entity, especially mentally. Me, the guy sitting here blithering philosophy with a cuppa tea at his right hand. Sip.
It makes sense from my perspective. It explains why we can’t find it anywhere, seems to be a logical way to solve the “hard problem” of consciousness.
The way I see it is like this: Matter < Energy < Space < Emptiness
Matter depends on energy, meaning you can have energy without matter but not vice versa. Energy depends on space, and space depends on emptiness. Hence emptiness is the prime “thingy”. Since consciousness or awareness is not matter, energy or space it must be emptiness. This would mean that everything springs from emptiness/awareness and is being experienced in emptiness/awareness. So consciousness is both the subject and the object, and is in a process of experiencing itself in more and more complicated patterns.
Makes sense to me. Your mileage may vary.
Unless you can demostrate otherwise, conscience is bound by matter (the brain and body) and exhibited through complex electro-chemical process that can be measured, and what’s more, altered by internal and external actors.
And space, as it turns out, isn’t quite as empty as we previously thought.
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Black holes and dark energy are theories in physics which make predictions regarding new evidence that may exist - and we may test by observation; if our observations find the predicted new evidence, the theory is strengthened.
That is how science works. Hypothesise>Predict>test>confirm, modify or discard>repeat ad infinitum
Now, you have a hypothesis that there is something called the ‘life force’. you want science to take a look at it. The next step in the process for you is to make a prediction that can be tested by observation.
If you want the process to work in a different way, then you don’t want science to look at your idea.
Perhaps I don’t want SCIENCE to look at my idea, but people, beings who can emote, share concepts, and imagine. Someone mentioned mysticism way back in this thread, and that defines what I am questioning. I see around me phenomena which I can not explain with Newtonian, quantum, or astro-physics. I have had experiences which cause me to question causality and our perception of time. I know that there are others who consider the power of a hand breaking bricks to be derived from something which SCIENCE does not know how to approach, because it is, by definition, ‘supernatural’.
Another poster tossed off one of my examples as being merely ‘teamwork’, as if such a thing were so obvious that there is no point in examining what is going on. But what IS going when people working together create or achieve something which could not have been created by the same individuals working separately? A group pulling in a net achieves a task which their individual strength, added together, could not achieve is one example of such activity. ‘Team spirit’ is not a phony or fabricated thing.
Having heard the argument in favor of dark energy, and being aware of the evidence presented, doubt began to creep into my mind about whether Science has blinded itself to a part of the Cosmos because it does not fit into the rational, causal framework which we have created to explain what we see when we look outside our little speck of dust. Consider the prolonged refusal to accept that things fall out of the sky; Rocks do. Sometimes lots of them. Big 'uns, too. Meteor Crater in Arizona was not identified properly until less than a hundred years ago, if memory serves, even though theories of extra-planetary origin had been put forward as early as 1903. ‘Rocks don’t fall out of the sky’ people said, and the scientists considered that to be truth. They WANTED it to be the truth.
Currency in the United States says “In God we trust.” Not only do we believe in an unseen, all-powerful being, but we trust it, too. My theory about the Life Force is, indeed, only a theory, but I consider it to be valid concept, worth exploring. There is nothing else out there that is going to save us from ourselves. (No, I am not suggesting that the Life Force is going to ‘save’ us. We need something to unite us.) Examining the Cosmos with an open mind and a willingness to believe is far different than duplicating someone’s results with a chemical reaction.
I think we should explore ideas to see if they pan out, not explore ideas until they turn out to be true.
Who says Conciousness is not matter, energy or space? Is a computer program? If I open up my laptop, I can’t find any in there. I think your original point refuting the ‘cartesian theatre’ was good (if fairly uncontroversial nowadays). If however, you are going to argue from it that human beings do not physically exist, I think you are about as clearly wrong as it’s possible to be. Also, please don’t bring quantum physics into it. It is not the justification for anything and everything some people imagine it to be. If you have an argument relating to quantum physics and want it taken seriously, you need to show your equations.
You are right, you absolutely do not want science to look at your idea. Not if you want to keep it. Unfortunately for you, science went away and did it without your approval. The ideas you are espousing are not outside of the remit of science simply because science has failed to find any evidence for them, nor are they supernatural by definition. They are supernatural because the are not part of nature, ie non-existent.