Yujin Nagasawa - Anything Non-physical About the Mind? 

Because the scientific apparatus has advanced so far, I often wonder if we've lost the ability to stop and truly understand that we simply may not have the capability to experience some portions of reality. I'm not suggesting anything metaphysical (a human construct, btw), just that there may be physical components of reality that we simply lack the ability to perceive as human organisms. Ex: an ant can't conceptualize radio. Just because we have advanced consciousness doesn't mean we can perceive everything about reality.

As Nick Tesla said “The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.”

I watched halfway through the video. The key difference that seems to not be understood here is the difference between knowledge and experience. You can know that colors exist without experiencing seeing them yourself based on everyone else who can see in color telling you that they exist. Lacking experience of something isn't really a lack of knowledge about that thing.

I like Dennett's instructive story about how vitalism just slowly fell out of currency as a result of the tremendous progress of biophysical science in the last 50 years. Given that there was often no known physical difference in a living creature one second prior to one second after death, many presumed that there is some life force that inhabits living things. What defeated vitalism (for many, anyway) is that molecular biology, systems biology, and biophysics were able to explain so much of living systems in such a convincing manner that vitalism just didn't seem necessary any longer. It was a slow process, and there was no proof or conclusive point at which vitalism was discharged (for many, anyway). It also helps to realize that there is no self that is persistent over time, and that you are not who you think you are.

Maybe the question to ask is: 1) What exactly do we mean by "physical"? 2) Is there anything "physical" about reality?

Without consciousness, there is no chair to begin with.

Trying to remove human experience from knowledge is a very fun and difficult task to work around

We decided reality is only material not because this is the only thing that exist, but because this is the only thing we can communicate to each other.

It's fascinating to me that almost all of the scientists that I've heard, whenever they speak about any idea that is even slightly metaphysical, feel the need to make several disclaimers how none of this is meant to be spiritual or religious in any way. Like even the idea of letting physical reality go as the base layer of conscious experience feels terrifying to them. It seems like an unnecessary limitation to put on ones mind.

In the example given, with the woman that was only exposed to black and white, until later in life, I would still argue that what she is experiencing is still physical. Her eyes see the colour, chemicals release in her mind that are interpreted as a feeling. The image so vivid and her emotions so strong, that's perhaps likely to be stored on her memory as an experience, one with feelings, emotions etc. Those processes are physical in nature and her mind/ neurons of her brain, remember all of those things as a collective, give her that feeling again due to the image in her mind, which then triggers a chemical release so that she experiences that moment again, although perhaps to a lesser degree.

Yet another informative segment . Bravo & Thank you for bringing us along on your quest.

Outstanding

Fascinating...I wish another deep dive talk with Prof Nagasawa....

I love this channel SO MUCH !!!!

I love this interviewer

It is good to hear Russell contribution spans into the theory of Mind. Also, Prof Nagasawa's refutation of Jackson's thought arguments by showing it is not sound by challenging the premise that "Mary knew all that needed to know." According to Nagasawa, she only knows a proper subset of knowledge. Great counter-argument.

Mary's brain learns which of her neurons fire in what pattern when she sees red.

Even if the mind emerges from brain activity, then it's still not physical. It's source may be physical but what it is is subjective anyway and therefore not physical.

Everything that is in the universe, has always existed, only constantly changing; including knowledge and information; we only discover information, we don’t create it.😊

Yes. Ive often said this, now im going down the pub .

He’s very thoughtful and very perceptive. Some of these philosophers may have encounters the recorded teachings of Huang Po and other early Chinese Ch’an masters

The experimental, will learn everything by the experiences

The Mary thought experiment is ridiculously simplistic! We know through experience and we use concepts. The Mary thought experiment merely says concepts don't encapsulate all experience. It says nothing at all about physicalism.

Show me the mind and you will show me spirit. Spirit is outside of space/time, energy and matter.

Mr. Kuhn you are one of my Heroes. I Value and Love your work. You hv helped me understand through a very difficult time in my life. Plz keep it coming your work is criminally underrated.

In the Statement “Mary KNOWS everything physical” it is implied that all her knowledge about the apparently physical world is knowledge which is inherently a conscious phenomena. We know there is mind but we assume that there is a physical dead matter world beyond our experience. We conflate our experience of things with things themselves

Spirit is the essence of consciousness, the energy of the Universe that creates all things. Each one of us is a part of that Spirit Energy - a Divine Entity. So the Spirit is the Higher Self, the Eternal Being that lives within us. Form is the physical world: body, mind, personality. We as spiritual beings created the physical world as a place to learn. We're here to learn how to master the process of creation - to learn how to consciously channel the creative energy of spirit into physical form. HOW CONSCIOUNESS CREATES REALITY? If God is Reality And if Reality Is Consciousness Then God Is Consciousness I Think therefore I Am God Consciousness The whole universe is one reality which is pure consciousness. Pure consciousness is absolute existence. God makes things through the direct act of becoming the things which He creates. In the beginning the One differentiated into the many. The One entered into the many and became the Self of each. The being within everything is the One. When you merge with this nonlocal Self, you become one with the Self of all that exists. The One is the Higher Self of all. You are the One. The God Spirit In Me Is The Same God Spirit In You, And The Spirit Of All Beings. Enlightenment Is The realization That You Are All Part Of The Universal Spirit Of All That Exists, Which Is GOD. Each of us is the universal spirit projecting a particular point of view. My Self is inseparable from all that exists, just as your self is inseparable from all that exists. You are an aspect of Infinite Intelligence, and Infinite Intelligence is the source of all that exists. Therefore you are the source of all that exists and you create your own experience. Everything is possible because everything exists within you. The same unbounded potential of the Infinite Spirit also resides in each and every one of us. Everything in the universe is consciousness. Space and time in all planes of reality are only projections within universal consciousness. There really is no here or there for everything is at one place where Mind is. Mind does not move at all. Mind simply is (Not to be confused with the brain). Mind is everywhere yet nowhere. Mind is nowhere but Here, Now. We are all existing together as a singularity in one place and time. Everything is one, Here and Now. Your soul is the reflection of all souls. You are the Other. Without the other, you would not exist. You are defined by your relationships with others. You would need to describe the whole universe in order to define a single person. Therefore every single person is the whole universe. Your soul is both personal and universal at the same time. Everyone is a reflection of yourself. You are in a hall of mirrors where every reflection of yourself appears different. Others you admire reflect the qualities you most cherish in yourself. Others you detest reflect the qualities you most deny in yourself. Each person you see is a different version of you. The outer world is a mirror of yourself at any place and time. If you want to know the state of your personal consciousness, just look around and see what is happening to you. If you want to know the state of the collective consciousness, just look around at what is happening in the world. Your personal reality is synchronistically orchestrated by your sense of Self at all times. If a critical mass of people expressed their higher selves, they would cause a transformation in collective consciousness and the world reality. Every time a person rises in personal consciousness, he moves the state of the world towards a higher one than before. TRANSCENDENT WORLD: You are comfortable here when you can experience all possibilities. Your awareness is open. You are connected to the source. Your consciousness is merged with the mind of God. SUBTLE WORLD: You are comfortable here when you can hold on to your vision. You trust yourself to follow where the mind goes. You aren't bound up in resistance, objections, skepticism, and rigid beliefs. Inspiration occurs as a normal part of your existence. MATERIAL WORLD: You are comfortable with your personal reality. You take responsibility for it. You read the world as a reflection of who you are and what is happening "in here." As the reflection shifts and changes, you track the changes occurring inside yourself. The Need to Create, Discover, and Explore. God becomes a creative source. He gave us our birthright of curiosity. He remains unknowable, but he unfolds one secret after another in creation. At the far edge of the universe, the unknown is a challenge and a source of wonder. God wants us not to worship but to evolve. Our role is to discover and explore. Nature exists to provide endless mysteries that challenge our intelligence - there is always more to discover. This is your God if you live to explore and be creative, if you feel happiest confronting the unknown, if you have total confidence that nature can be unraveled, including human nature, as long as we keep questioning and never settle for fixed, preordained truth. God becomes pure wonder. After reason has reached the limits of understanding, the mystery remains. Sages, saints, and the divinely inspired have penetrated it. They have felt a divine presence that transcends everyday life. Materialism is an illusion. Creation was fashioned in two layers, the visible and the invisible. Miracles become real when everything is a miracle. To reach God, one must accept the reality of invisible things. Nature is a mask for the divine. This is your God if you are a spiritual seeker. You want to know what lies behind the mask of materialism, to find the source of healing, to experience peace, and to be in direct contact with a divine presence. Unity, the State Beyond All Needs. God becomes One. There is complete fulfillment because you have reached the goal of seeking. You experience the divine everywhere. The last hint of separation has vanished. You have no need to divide saint from sinner, because God imbues everything. In this state, you don't know the truth; you become it. The universe and every event in it are expressions of a single underlying Being, which is pure awareness, pure intelligence, and pure creativity. Nature is the outward form that consciousness takes as it unfolds in time and space. This is your God if you feel totally connected to your soul and your source. Your consciousness has expanded to embrace a cosmic perspective. You see everything happening in the mind of God. The ecstasy of great mystics, who seem especially gifted or chosen, now becomes available to you, because you have fully matured spiritually. The God that brings the scheme to an end, God as One, is different from the others. He isn't a projection. He signifies a state of total certainty and wonder, and if you reach that state, you are no longer projecting. Every need has been fulfilled; the path has ended with reality itself.

In the human experience we can all mostly agree on what's in front of us. If there is a chair in a room with 10 people we can all agree its there, we can touch it measure it, ect, we can consider it physical

I watched this video a few days ago but just now I realised it's basically the same as Plato's cave!

What is true is that the words itself does not make us closer to the substance of reality absolutely. But generating more complex terms is making possible create methods and tools to merge mind to reality. So any theory is tool only and only technologies allow us deep into fabric of reality.

Yujin is completely amazing. He challenges my thoughts and provides delightful intellectual moments. In my next life I will be his student.

Great i wish if kuhan sir videos met me erlier

Isn't any experience inherently "uncommunicable"? We can try to express the experience, say, the qualia of seeing the color red, to others using words or examples, but that presupposes that others have experiences similar to our own.

We are only pretending to be " human " beings. We are Being itself. Unlimited, free of all obstacles, limitation, lack , pain, and death. Pure awareness itself merely IS. Unborn, so undying. You can already intuit the truth of this. You deserve only happiness, but have lost your way. You have made an impostor of a self, hiding behind a mindless lump of flesh and bone. Yet there is nothing to fear ! You have not sinned, because you made up your own movie , and so did nothing. No one got hurt in the making of this movie ! God has never stopped loving you , and wants you to come home, where you belong.

The language we use to describe reality and reality as it is itself are not the same thing. I think this is the point he was getting at.

Form is Emptiness and Emptiness is Form!.

Seeing red and the mechanisms the eye and brain use to process red are all physical and one more piece of knowledge about color. We've evolved to see and process color.

more yujin plz

I see a complete different problem. People who have been born blind have a knowledge of the world they live in. They have touched all in their world and they have an understanding of this world. Some have been operated to see for the first time. They where not able to even remotely understand anything of the information that entered their brain. They had to go through a proces of learning to interpret this information. I wonder what this actually implies.

Think about every sensation you are experiencing in your body, mind, and emotions. Every one of these sensations is something that the physical world is doing. Sometimes I wonder why physicists don't consider this when trying to understand the properties of reality. We may not understand it, but our first-person perspectives are direct windows into the nature of reality.

Good analogy... materialists live in a black and white kind of world. The use of intuitive knowledge adds color to our world. The fact that we're able to "know" without knowing, if you know what I mean, comes into play. I frequently have foreknowledge of things - sometimes because an outcome is obvious given similar experiences, and sometimes no logical explanation exists for why we know something before it happens. Then there's personality. What "physical evidence" is there for a) why we have personality, b) where or what determines what personality we have, c) why are all personalities unique, even among identical twins, and d) why are personalities able to recognize other personalities? And e) why are humans the only animals that have personality? "Life" is a similar topic. We have theories for how the organic material could have come about by accident, but there's that one point where that matter goes from lifeless to animated. Life is defined as having the ability to adapt, which means its intelligent. We know intuitively that all life is intelligent and yet never ask how that smidgen of intellect made it into the first single celled organism? The source of intellect, is undoubted intelligent, else where would it obtain the intellect it bestowed on that cell? And it would have done it intentionally. And yet "life" itself, while it inhabits a physical form, is not itself physical. It is impossible for life to happen by accident. The evidence for a non-physical reality is staring us in the face all the time, we just have to notice it.

All this sounds great, but it doesn't answer the question that was posed. As intelligent as this man is ,he still can't prove that there is anything beyond the physical world!

As I see it, the problem with positing that there may be something no-physical about the mind, or the universe for that matter, is that we are only able to test the physical. Even if something else was there, we have no way of knowing it, or even explaining how such a realm could exist, or interact with our own. We are left with a situation where people make wild claims of out of body experiences, astral projection, life after death and other non-physical imaginings with nothing to support such ideas except their personal assertion.

The Mary's Room thought experiment would hold if Mary had all knowledge. Not just knowledge of light frequencies. But also precise knowledge about how the brain functions and creates experience. It is not enough to have a simple text book theoretical understanding. It would require detailed and complete descriptions of all of the underlying mechanisms of the brain. If Mary doesn't have understanding of how the brain creates experience, she isn't going to understand what it feels like to experience colour.

I reckon his refutation is right. But if you do grant that Mary really does know everything, except what colors look like, then she knows exactly what her experience of her surprise will be.

I don't think Yujin explained his position very well. It's not that he's saying there is something added to the "stuff" that makes everything up that science can't explain. He's saying that in our world of subjective experience there are realities science cannot explain- like the feeling of love, or the subjective experience of seeing colors. It's not just science that struggles to comprehend such things- you can't even put them into words- words fail us. But these are not part of our physical reality- they are sensations within us. That said- they're every bit as real as any tangible object because they cause things to happen in the real world, they color our experiences, etc.

Of the various questions that this channel addresses, this is one of the easiest. Our minds are completely physical and we experience consciousness through our minds. Once we die, our brain dies as well and there is nothing non-physical that survives. Our brains are remarkably complex products of evolution but it is all physical. I had never heard the phrase "physicalism" previously but that seems to describe it in a nutshell.

I think we are approaching a convergence point in our understanding of the universe. I think, very soon, scientists will need to acknowledge the fact that consciousness appears to be external and seems to play a major role in shaping objective reality. How do I know this? Well the physicalist vs panpsychist debate can be traced back to a single point in history. The origin of calculus and who got the credit. Just a brief overview, the mathematical proof of calculus was arrived at independently and simultaneously by two stupendous geniuses. Newton and Leibniz. And while their mathematical proofs were nearly identical, Leibniz’s was actually slightly more polished and is ironically the version we use today, the two geniuses had radically different views on what exactly the “space” was that the bodies they were calculating we’re moving through. Newton had an absolutist, physicalist, Cartesian view of the universe. Space and Time were absolute and everything that exists in the universe could be plotted out somewhere on this infinite grid. Leibniz on the other hand maintained a view of the universe that today we would describe as panpsychist. He felt that space and time were not things that existed in themselves, but whose only utility was in measuring the relationship between consciousness bodies or entities. These bodies were made of things called monads which were like particles that maintained some degree of consciousness. Which I suppose is the foundation of monism. A school of philosophy until today I was not aware of. Anyways why is any of this important? Well it’s because after Newton and Leibniz published their proofs for calculus, Newton accused Leibniz of plagiarism. Even though Leibniz’s work was more polished and theirs evidence suggesting Leibniz arrived at his conclusions first. But, because Newton was the most powerful scientist in the world at the time, his claim of plagiarism was upheld and Leibniz’s reputation was largely destroyed. Even to this day very view people outside the realms of philosophy and mathematics have ever heard of Leibniz, but everyone has heard the story of Newton and the apple. But Leibniz was every bit Newton’s intellectual equal and in fact could have been his superior. The work of Leibniz impacts our lives in profound ways every day. It was his creation of base 2, which is the mathematical language of computers, that allows me to type this comment now. There was no reason to discount Leibniz’s panpsychist view of the universe at the time. We only adopted Newton’s view arbitrarily because of the power he held. And look where the Newtonian view has led us. Neuroscience continues to attempt to prove our nonexistence by finding a biological cause of consciousness, to no avail. Cosmologists are only able to measure and observe 5 percent of the universe. The other 95 percent is comprised of dark matter and dark energy. Material that can not be measured or observed but the existence of which is clearly inferable. Odd how inference is enough to prove the existence of something so long as it isn’t consciousness. Quantum Mechanics, well it’s practitioners can’t find a way to divorce the implications of consciousness from the measurement problem. And lastly physicists. Physicists have imprisoned us by determining no thing in the objective universe can travel faster than the speed of light. Condemning us to all watch helplessly as a universe of infinite possibility and potential sails away. Ironically at a speed that surpasses that of light. I contend the solution to these problems and more is simple. Acknowledge the elephant in the room. We exist in a universe of mind as well as matter. Consciousness is an external force. In fact when you adopt that mindset the problems sort themselves out easily. I’m no scientist. I’m not a mathematician. But since adopting this world view I’ve come up with several thought experiments that show Einstein’s theory of special and general relativity apply much more easily, in fact perfectly, to a universe of consciousness then of matter. The ramifications of which could lead to the discovery of faster than light travel. I’d be happy to post these experiments should anyone ask. Assuming anyone even reads this post.

I watched your video “Anything Non-physical About the Mind?” with guest Yujin Nagasawa. I may be way off, but here’s my take. I thought more about your guest’s statement regarding things that can only be experienced. I think that idea needs to be explored more carefully to understand this type of argument (i.e. Mary) and the reason I believe this type of discussion is ever presented for others to contemplate. There is one key thing that was very pertinent to the Mary situation. That is the physical nature of her eyesight. Mary is able to see colors (if presented with that type of visual input) but can only see black and white due to the setup of the scenario. This got me thinking about what the Mary situation really is. I feel she is being denied a sensory input due to the setup. This got me thinking of sensory inputs like smell and hearing (and this probably works for all senses). Let’s start with smell. If a person never had a sense of smell, I feel you could never describe smell to that person (“describe” being analogous to Mary having all the knowledge available to her) to the point where the person would truly understand the experience of smell without an actual sensory input (like a nose that communicates with the brain). Sensory inputs seem like a starting point for the brain, where two people could smell the same odor and communicate their feelings about it. I feel you could not say to someone “that smells like a grilled steak” unless you have first smelled a grilled steak and communicated that’s where the smell originated. All sensory inputs are communicated to the brain which then translates that input into your conscious (or unconscious) activity. So, I feel like this Mary problem is analogous to trying to explain vision is to a person blind from birth. No matter how much information you provide to make a blind person understand sight, you would have to “fix her vision so she could have that sensory input” before she could truly experience vision. In the Mary situation, this “fixing” it’s allowing the electromagnetic waves with all the colors hit Mary’s sensors (eyes). So, let’s get to my main point. First of all, I’ll identify one of my bias’s. I am a very determined atheist. In fact, the only reason I don’t speak in absolutes regarding religion and spirituality is what we have discovered about Quantum Mechanics and probability. And yes, we could be in a simulation, but that’s another story. I have this sneaking suspicion that the persons presenting this type of argument are trying to present evidence to support their supernatural beliefs. It appears their arguments are not really getting any better, but the arguments are getting so contrived (and complicated) as to make the normal person not want to go through the mental gymnastics to come to a logical conclusion and therefore these beliefs might seem plausible. It may sound weird, but I get a slightly nauseous feeling when I hear or read this type of story, similar to when I used to watch Jordan Peterson, and I didn’t realize his true nature. Again, just my take. I really enjoy our videos

The argument doesn't hold. In black and white she's already seeing light. However, her perceptibly isn't there for certain frequencies. So now she somehow gets the ability to "see color." She had the definition of the frequency of say, "red," before, but now can perceive it. Now, she has the frequencies for gamma rays, but can't perceive them. She's functionally in the same state. It is conceivable that she could be returned to the state of black and white, due to destruction of certain parts of the eye. So then, in that case, where did the non-physical part of the color go? It went away with the cells. The cells give color.

I think a good question to postulate for those that believe Mary's experience is physical. Is what is experience? We can equate emotions and sensations and even knowledge with perhaps a brain process but what even is experience? What is 'to be' and 'to come to know'? I think those are very interesting notions.

Physical processes can only yield physical results. But the mind can abstract form from matter. Therefore the mind is not purely physical.

The ‘knowledge’ argument isn’t really about physicalism. It’s about rationalism versus objectivism. Mary in her black and white world is a rationalist. The introduction of observation introduces objectivity.

Not Closer to Truth at its best.

This is the problem with explaining any “experience”

Mind is not a product or “byproduct” of the physical world. Mind is first and foremost and prime. Mind makes the perceived physical universe. Scientists always put the cart before the horse which is why they never get anywhere in understanding the situation. And yes, I’m a scientist, a vision scientist and this colour concept muse was thought of by numerous people around this time.

Very clearly explained. I wonder if perhaps there might be a sort of physicalist version of Godel's theorem that shows that there are certain logical constraints on physical explanations in monism ie we are able to describe aspects of reality but some hypotheses are simply not verifiable. Obviously hypotheses in physics are not the same as mathematical ones but you get the idea.

The way Mr. Kuhn phrases the question implies that there isn't anything inherently special/magical about the physical universe we inhabit, that the afterlife has to exist outside of the physical, and that a physical self cant be preserved in a physical space after death.

you have to consider that time and space is just a construct, and it is all, all once and never.

Imagination - Process of Pure Creation The process of creation starts with thought - an idea, conception, visualization. Everything you see was once someone's idea. Nothing exists in your world that did not first exist as pure thought. This is true of the universe as well. Thought is the first level of creation. Next comes the word. Everything you say is a thought expressed. It is creative and sends forth creative energy into the universe. Words are more dynamic (thus, some might say more creative) than thought, because words are a different level of vibration from thought. They disrupt (change, alter, affect) the universe with greater impact. Words are the second level of creation. Next comes action. Actions are words moving. Words are thoughts expressed. Thoughts are ideas formed. Ideas are energies come together. Energies are forces released. Forces are elements existent. Elements are particles of God, portions of ALL, the stuff of everything. The beginning is God. The end is action. Action is God creating - or God experienced. Hang on. There's one thing more I have to tell you. You are always seeing what by your terms you would define as the "past," even when you are looking at what is right in front of you. I am? It is impossible to see The Present. The Present "happens," then turns into a burst of light, formed by energy dispersing, and that light reaches your receptors, your eyes, and it takes time for it to do that. All the while the light is reaching you, life is going on, moving forward. The next event is happening while the light from the last event is reaching you. The energy burst reaches your eyes, your receptors send that signal to your brain, which interprets the data and tells you what you are seeing. Yet that is not what is now in front of you at all. It is what you think you are seeing. That is, you are thinking about what you have seen, telling yourself what it is, and deciding what you are going to call it, while what is happening "now" is preceding your process, and awaiting it. To put this simply, I am always one step ahead of you. My God, this is unbelievable. Now listen. The more distance you place between your Self and the physical location of any event, the further into the "past" that event recedes. Place yourself a few light-years back, and what you are looking at happened very, very long ago, indeed. Yet it did not happen "long ago." It is merely physical distance which has created the illusion of "time," and allowed you to experience your Self as being both "here, now" all the while you are being "there, then"! One day you will see that what you call time and space are the same thing. Then you will see that everything is happening right here, right now. This is....this is....wild. I mean, I don't know what to make of all this. When you understand what I have told you, you will understand that nothing you see is real. You are seeing the image of what was once an event, yet even that image, that energy burst, is something you are interpreting. Your personal interpretation of that image is called your image-ination. And you can use your imagination to create anything. Because - and here is the greatest secret of all - your image-ination works both ways. Please? You not only interpret energy, you create it. Imagination is a function of your mind, which is one-third of your three-part being. In your mind you image something, and it begins to take physical form. The longer you image it (and the more OF you who image it), the more physical that form becomes, until the increasing energy you have given it literally bursts into light, flashing an image of itself into what you call your reality. You then "see" the image, and once again decide what it is. Thus, the cycle continues. This is what I have called The Process. This is what YOU ARE. You ARE this Process. This is what I have meant when I have said, you are both the Creator and the Created. I have now brought it all together for you. We are concluding this dialogue, and I have explained to you the mechanics of the universe, the secret of all life. Okay. Now as energy coalesced, it becomes, as I said, very concentrated. But the further one moves from the point of this concentration, the more dissipated the energy becomes. The "air becomes thinner." The aura fades. The energy never completely disappears, because it cannot. It is the stuff of which everything is made. It's All There Is. Yet it can become very, very thin, very subtle - almost "not there." Then, in another place (read that, another part of Itself) it can again coalesce, once more "clumping together" to form what you call matter, and what "looks like" a discreet unit. Now the two units appear separate from each other, and in truth there is no separation at all. This is, in very, very simple and elementary terms, the explanation behind the whole physical universe. Wow. But can it be true? How do I know I haven't just made this all up? Your scientists are already discovering that the building blocks of all of life are the same. They brought back rocks from the moon and found the same stuff they find in trees. They take apart a tree and find the same stuff they find in you. I tell you this: We are all the same stuff. (I and the Father are One Energy) We are the same energy, coalesced, compressed in different ways to create different forms and different matter. Nothing "matters" in and of itself. That is, nothing can become matter all by itself. Jesus said, "Without the Father, I am nothing." The Father of all is pure thought. This is the energy of life. This is what you have chosen to call Absolute Love. This is the God and the Goddess, the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. It is the All-in-All, the Unmoved Mover, the Prime Source. It is that which you have sought to understand from the beginning of time. The Great Mystery, the Endless Enigma, the Eternal Truth. There is only One of Us, and so, it is THAT WHICH YOU ARE.

Sean Carol lecture express the problem as gap between subatomic particles and the physical chair. But I think Robert is right, the physical chair is human condtruct.

The qualia implication of the Mary's room thought-experiment and the continuity-problem that occurs when trying to link a chair to consciousness within the confines of a metaphysically homogeneous universe are the same problem. So the real question and conundrum emerges with the last two sentences uttered at the end of the video and the hard problem remains very much hard: materialistic monism, after all, is as plausible or implausible as dualism or idealistic monism when taking the implications of the discussed epistemological impasse into account.

All my dear fellow Scientists and the rest, please get the fact that the Universe/Multiverse/Infinite-verse is subjectively ONE (MONOISM) there is no second thing in the Universe. I am not my mind rather I am aware of my mind, and that awareness ( consciousness) is universal. In simple language, it is a JUST SUBJECTIVE EXISTANCE.

Better example is, science can explain the the physical chemical mechanism and the biological/evolutionary process by which humans developed and experience love for our children but it can not explain the subjective experience.

I particularly like this segement a lot in this series. If the universe began from a single point than there must be a connection between consciousness and the chair.

Fact is, there IS no “chair”….it’s just a shape of atoms. It’s only a “chair” in my mind.

If you break this Mary's black and white / color argument down, it goes like this: Mary had perfect knowledge of the physical world, and then one day she discovered something new. That doesn't mean that the something new wasn't part of the physical world. You would still have to prove that this newfound knowledge was separate from the physical world. So it's our old friend god of the gaps dressed up so you can take it out (well not really). This argument sounds like it was cooked up by a Vatican lawyer. What if we reverse the god of the gaps argument in turn it on its head? Suppose all the knowledge that ever could be was contained in the Library of Alexandria, but unfortunately, as you know, it burned down. Now, we are trying just to recreate what we already knew. The probability that Mary's something new is something outside the physical world has the same probability as all knowledge once being contained in the Library of Alexandria. There's no proof for either Mary's World or all knowledge once being in the Library of Alexandria. Unfortunately, a thought experiment just can't cut it.

Purpose.

might different levels and combinations of energy be part of phenomenal conscious experience?

Awareness is known by awareness alone.

The Mary argument fails to refute physicalism because the same awareness in which she sees black and white also is the one in which she sees red - albeit for the first time. It is the same awareness that sees both. Physicalism says this awareness is illusory- an emergent property of neurons. Therefore nothing refuting physicalism has been established.

Modern research on Near Death Experience by Raymond moody, reincarnation memories by Ian Stevenson/Jim trucker and past lives regression by Brian Weiss all independently but coincidentally show that our consciousness survive death, we live many lives and our thoughts and actions matter in the hereafter. So be kind and helpful to others, be virtuous, meditate and cultivate ourselves to higher spiritual levels. Cheers.

Non materialist physicalism and constituitive panpsychism have good explanatory arguments that consciousness is physical

Did you know that there is no inherent illumination or luminosity in photons? “Light,” as such, cannot be found there. Photons are, perhaps, ‘packets’ of energy which have the properties of both spread-out waves and localized particles. Photons only take on the appearance of being luminous as they arise within consciousness, in our mind’s eye. It may be that photons are spread-out energy potentials that fill the immensity of space, and only take on the appearance of being a localized discrete particle of “light” when we become aware of them in consciousness, in this actualized awareness we call mind. Thus, you are the light of the kosmos. This “light” is only arising in us. The world outside of a mind is perfectly ‘dark,’ or empty, unactualized in any way. Of course, what else could it be? What would perceive it as illuminated, or as any “thing”? All of our thoughts are the activity of consciousness, modulations of that consciousness, incarnations within that pure consciousness, rays shining from inside that consciousness. We are agents of that consciousness, emerging from within that consciousness. All there is to experience is the knowing of it, and that knowing is God’s own Self in us, living in us, the source of our life, the energy of consciousness itself. We could say that God lives in us, since consciousness seems to have become localized in this particular body-mind. Or we could say that we live in God, since all that we perceive arises in that consciousness, including our body-mind. Thus, Jesus was right to say, “I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (John 14:10-11, 20). Both are true, and they are true of us as well. We are arising within God, and God is arising within us as well. Sometimes this is called “mutual indwelling,” the Father in the Son and the Son in the Father, also called perichoresis or co-inherence in Christian terminology. God is the field of consciousness in which all knowing occurs, in which all thoughts and perceptions and feelings and sensations arise, like waves in the ocean. Our body-mind and its thoughts are like localizations within that consciousness, temporary manifestations of that Ultimate Reality, expressions of that consciousness, that being, that One. God becomes veiled and hidden from our awareness when the thoughts that arise in and from consciousness believe they are something separate and discrete from the consciousness in which they are arising. The thoughts form a separate entity, a dualistic subjective ego, a separate self identity, an independent being, an “Adam/Eve,” which thinks it is apart from infinite nondual divine consciousness and Ultimate Reality. This seems to be the “Fall,” the beginning of duality and separateness and alienation from God’s Presence. But how could thoughts be separate from the consciousness in which they have arisen? They can’t, but that is exactly what our thoughts and our self-identification with them think they are. It is a kind of psychological illusion. The thoughts take on their own separate identity apart from pure nondual consciousness, forming a self, a person, an entity, seemingly cut off from its own source and essence. Once we look at it like this, it seems impossible, and that is because it is. Our ‘self’ is never actually separate from the source in which it arises, thoughts are never separate from the consciousness in which they emerge, the wave is not separate from the ocean. The thoughts that make up our ‘self’ are just finite actualizations or relative localizations of the infinite potential of absolute consciousness, or Divine Being, or Ultimate Reality. In Christian symbolism we call this the incarnation of God. In Buddhism it is the Dharmakaya that incarnates as the Nirmanakaya Buddha. In Hinduism it is Brahman that manifests itself as each Atman. God becomes incarnate in reality, in the flesh, embodied, in us and all things. There is no time, no space, nowhere we can go, nowhere we can be, that will be outside of this Presence of God, outside of this consciousness, beyond the borders of God, or the Ultimate Reality. God is always present, and is Presence itself, awareness itself, consciousness itself, the “spirit of life” within us, from which we derive all being, all knowing, all our substance, every thought, every sensation. It all arises in God. This is perhaps why, in order to pierce the veil and know God directly, contemplative practices such as meditation help train us to transcend thought, to go back to the source of thought itself, beyond all thoughts of self, to recognize that from which it all arises, this pure open vastness of nondual unitive at-one consciousness. Do you see why we cannot “think” God? Nothing that arises in consciousness as a thought will be that consciousness in which it is arising. No relative finite manifestation in consciousness can be the absolute pure infinite consciousness, even though every manifestation or relativization or actualization of that consciousness is made up of nothing other than that consciousness. God is Present even while we are trying to comprehend God, even in the midst of that very comprehension. God is what makes that attempt at comprehension even possible. God is the very field in which we are trying to know God. When we let go of the trying, the conceptualization, surrendering the thoughts that are trying to know themselves, and rest in the pure still silent open awareness of being, that is when the realization of God may dawn on us, as us.

Imagine if space as an entity has always physically existed in one form or another. It would be impossible to get a complete and accurate timeline. There would be no starting point or ending point just phases and timelines.

Yes, it's called the mind...

The phenomenological experience of colour can be explained from a evolutionary neurological basis(dark greens relax like trees, red impassions the beholder like blushing or blood, etc). The subjective experience of the individual locked in the black and white room is still related to their inherited biology. Are we talking personal bias here for whatever individual preference or dispreference the individual might have based on nature vs nurture?

O two greats! Read Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind

Mary, seeing colour for the first time, is seeing due to her eyes/brain. Her knowledge has just been exposed to its limitations. That is the difference between experience and experiencing, between knowledge and knowing. Experiencing knowing is not reliant upon memory. The verbalization of such does take the perception itself down to the gutter level though. That's why it is a big mistake to take the described as the actual..."Oh Mary, it's just blue". Our senses are dulled by the psychological overlay of memory unless we remain attentive, awake. Likewise with knowledge, it is a huge block to knowing. Knowledge is the wall of ignorance.

Yes, but we have the same phenomenon when it comes to media. The content of a movie is kind of independent of the physical store. The same movie can be stored in different physical forms (tape, celluloid, DVD, SD cards, etc). A movie can’t exist independent of the physical store (and subsequent manifestation/playing) of the movie. Each playing of the movie is entirely dependent on the physical system that makes it happen. The brain is probably not too dissimilar from a jukebox system of memories and experiences. The content is different from the mechanisms of storing and playing the thoughts, but the thoughts aren’t necessarily non-physical. Now, mathematics might be an exception.You may need physical representations of symbols to identify a mathematical construct and to play through the proofs or calculations. But the mathematical properties (of number or space or logic) are kind of non-physical in their own right. :o

Most thinkers observe that the physical world can only be examined and understood by the physical senses. We know consciousness exists in a another realm and the faculty to examine it has not yet been found.

All things arise from, exist in, and are moved by Chaos. But the mind, conditioned by probabilistic statistical modes of causality is consequently limited and therefore tends to lose the ability to perceive the supernatural

Where can I watch the entire show?

Mary's argument is a charade. It's not possible to have the physical knowledge of red without seeing red, so the base premise is nonsensical. When she exits the room she is presented with novel physical stimuli, hence a novel physical brain response. The mind is physical. The more interesting unanswered question is what "physical" means...

It is intrinsically impossible for a mind inside a system to have as broad a perspective as a mind observing from the outside. We'll never know for sure what we can't "see".

Monism is actually Advita Vedanta described in indian Scriptures in much more elegant way. Look for : Advita of Shankaracharya.

Color relates to the animal brain, there was a need to associate a kind of subjective "feeling" to the ranges in wavelength in order to incentivise the animal brain to focus more on parts of the environment displaying certain colors. For example certain fruits or predators.

since mary can see all manor of grayscale, i dont think her first experience with color would be as big a deal as we think. also, seeing color would be a new physical experience for her eyes and brain, so it remains physical.

every thought is a chemical reaction to the physical reality. certain things activate/stimulate different particles to govern how you will make choices according to your entropic survival

A human being sees colors and "reality" in its way, your dog or cat sees colors and reality in its way. Who is right?

I belive that our mind is as non-physical as computer-software and has the same relationship to brain, as computer-software has to computer-hardware!

Everything in existence in the physical world is observed as different constructs of energy. It depends on where you are standing, in relation to different observation points. Everything in existence emits energy of which is not easily observed. Remember, the eye is extremely sensitive and is capable of noticing photons and reflections of light and shadows with velocities and, as a result, can confuse the ignorant mind. I have seen positive and negative energies, depending on the environment. These energies are difficult to explain, however, I will say : It is as the difference between night and day. These energies take on shapes and can be observed as non-aging images similar to what we are familiar with as, spiritual beings. This is a very complex subject and I believe that to understand this subject you would need to understand atomic structures and different dimensions of the universe. Marshall Wright

Perhaps the flaw in encapsulation lies not with science, which is an extension of language, but with language itself. To fully encapsulate experience, we must first distill it and flatten it out in symbolic terms. This flattening out of terms reduces the gamut of expressable knowledge. Thus, it may very well be that a great deal is known about the world that cannot be expressed fully with our current symbol set. Furthermore, that which is often referred to as mental or spiritual may be more fully expressable through some heretofore unknown symbol set. Here's the fun part: If we gain access to a symbol set that expresses mental or spiritual propositions fully, we may say of those things that were previously only referred to as mental or spiritual that they are now physical merely because they are now expressable through a symbol set. That is, we attribute those things fully expressable through language with physicality.

There is the intellect and abstract thought, what comes from the mind that does not come through the senses. Science is about understanding objective reality, it knows nothing about subjective reality nor can it explain consciousness.

The cortex does not have active access to the hive mind Therefore if the cortex is not told, how can the cortex know what it is looking for ? That's like asking the receptionist for the company's overwhelming direction :)

what would against energy being phenomenal consciousness? the different colors having different amounts and mixtures of energy may explain conscious perception of sight?

" The Universe is filled with Nifty ". I thought Dennett took care of this already.

The way I have thought about this is we feel how our organs work relative to where they are placed. We feel a heartbeat in our heart, indigestion in our stomach, etc. why is this not the same for the brain, or at least does not seem so? When I speak to myself in my mind I don’t feel it specifically in my brain, it just sounds like it is all around me. What is different with the brain compared to other organs? Or am I just missing something completely to debunk my thought process?

The black and white argument though has issues. There is random activation of cones in the eye that transmit bits of color information "noise" or "static" to the brain all the time. Also we could likely dream in color.

Hard problem