Materialism VS Monism

[cacophonaut]

This thread will probably get sod-all in the way of replies, but I'm too stoned to care so I'm going to put it out there anyway.

For a while now I have been see-sawing between two diametrically opposed worldviews; materialism, which states that everything is matter in various configurations; and monism, which holds that everything is a manifestation of one form, which in various different formats has been called God, Buddha, Tao and Quality. I want to know if anyone has any opinions on this?

My main problems with materialism are that it tends to arrive logically at hard-determinism: consciousness is an accidental function of certain configurations of matter, free will is an illusion and we are decision-making engines with no capacity to effect the course of our lives. Another problem with this is it lends itself to a form of dualism, whereby the subjective and the objective are separated by an impassable chasm. We cannot know anything objectively because all our experience relies on sense-data, which could be false (the old chestnut of "is my red the same as your red"), and for all we know the external world might well be an illusion.

Monism in the form I have been interested in is a lot more appealing, but a little more mystic and less palatable to scientific mindsets. The monism I tend to return to the most is Robert M. Pirsig's "Metaphysics of Quality", which is pretty complicated to explain (I'm hoping someone is already familiar with it) but basically states that the dualistic split between subject and object which materialism necessitates is really not a split at all - the two are unified under what he calls Quality (or value, used in the Aristotelian sense) which is the event of the interaction between the two, and we only experience the illusion (maya) that we are separate from the objective universe. Its not completely unlike Buddhism in that sense, only where he says "Quality" they say "Godhead", or to take Paul Tillich's phrase, "Ultimate Ground of Being", which I like for its avoidance of the usually loaded semantics you encounter when using typically religious terminology. In the monistic worldview (which was also expounded by Berkeley, but with a christian flavour) we are all manifestations of one "being" or "entity", playing, as Alan Watts delightfully suggests, a cosmic game of hide-and-seek with himself. In this framework free will is not an illusion and we have complete control over our destinies. We are also God incarnate, which is pretty fucking cool.

(Its funny actually, because I'm not sure what worries me more; the idea that my future is fixed and immutable, but it might completely and totally suck; or the idea that I have many futures, some of which will suck, and some of which will be amazing, and if I balls it up and end up with the sucky future its completely my fault.)

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Anyway, I used to adhere pretty completely to scientific materialism, but after some research I learned how as a systematic approach to understanding the universe, it has totally failed to even suggest a workable hypothesis for what consciousness is. This seems to me to be the most important question we can ask, but the problem is, when you try to investigate it using formal scientific method, you end up crashing smack-bang into a kind of Observer Effect. You cant measure the performance of a device with the device itself, because the very act of measurement might be changing the measurements being recorded. And I want to reiterate just how little we know about consciousness. Seriously, we have absolutely no idea what it is or where it comes from. Biology wants to hold that it is a product of our pre-frontal cortex activity, but the truth is, there is no actual reason to believe that explanation over any other, except because it happens to fit with your pre-existing scientific worldview, which makes it little more than a faith position.

Now I'm just hovering around, sometimes thinking materialism is the most logical explanation, then getting pessimistic about that whole Newtonian "matter" shit and floating over to some other, slightly wackier, but more pleasing, idea of the universe. Then I start reading about Quantum Mechanics and that just fucks my shit all up and I have to go lie down for a bit.



What does the world of Bluelight think of this quandary, if anything?

 

[fridgebuzz]

Immanuel Kant proposed an intersection between the real world and the world as we see it, claiming consciousness is found along a two-way road traversing the two. J.S Mill proposed we have no control over what happens to us, but paradoxically have total control by choosing how we react to it.

As for the sense data argument, I humbly claim sense data is different for all of us and we might as well be living in alternate universes and are only convinced we occupy and can agree upon the same realm by the shear persuasive properties of the creator's intricate game. I heard it put this way: You think potatoes are carrots, but your friend thinks carrots are potatoes. Provided the two of you eat a balanced amount of both foods, apart from bickering over which is which it wouldn't make a difference.

 

[hiphophippy]

Tl;DR But I'm pretty positive there is an objective physical reality; Humans just develop their own subjective interpretations of it. Likw the is the blue I see the blue you see argument we can measure that asuming were both exposed to a blue light wave with a wave length of about 475 nm we will both technically see a blue light with a wavelength of 475nm. If you're colorblind or have damaged eyese (from UV or any shit) you're brain will not perceive the same color, but both parties still "see" the same light.

 

[ebola?]

It is interesting that you pose this dichotomy in the first place, as very often, materialists will place themselves as proposing a particular anchor for monism (in opposition to substance / spirit (or mental...or subjective...or what have you) dualism). I, for one, am in favor of a prior monism/pluralism by which by which there is some 'flux' (or rather a reality inhering prior to the very division between flux and discrete objects selected thereof) prior to the very ability to posit the division between the material and immaterial. By doing so, do I posit some objective reality? Maybe, but I would also argue that such an 'absolute condition' also inheres prior to our very ability to posit a distinction between the objective and subjective.

In short, first ontology is an arena very difficult to discern, and thus open to a plurality of viable models of it.

ebola