Anders Honore wrote:Namdrol wrote:No, it is not a problem at all.
Matter possesses the capacity for intelligence.
Sure, but this can not account for the qualitative experience of consciousness.
Qualitative experience of consciousness is mediated by sense organs. No sense organs, no cognitions.
Namdrol wrote:Consciousness and matter are inseparable.
You are merely restating the lower Buddhist position regarding substance dualism ala Descarte.
From a tantric perspective, for example, thoughts (citta) are movements of vāyu in the channels of the body.
There is only a contradiction of you regard mind and matter as different in some essential way.
They are not.
Again, you have the same problem as the radical physicalists with such an explanation. You may be able to account for the process in a physical sense, but nevertheless can not account for how this physical process gives rise to, or is, the qualitative experience of something mental.
The problem is yours merely for framing the question in that way. There are six dhātus -- earth, water, fire, air, space and consciousness. They form a continuum from gross to subtle. But even so called consciousness has the properties of the other five, so it stands to reason that the other five have the properties of consciousness as well. Hence, nāma and rūpa are completely inseparable -- not because "everything is mind" as our friend adinatha would have it, but rather because the six dhātus themselves describe six different fields which are completely intermeshed and interrelated. In other words, the physical universe innately possesses the capacity for intelligence. There is no consciousness at any time, anywhere that is free from matter.
I'm not actually restating any sutra position here. This is such a basic philosophical issue of continual relevance in the face of modern science that hasn't produced a satisfactory answer so far, and you're basically trying for a freebie pass on this by re-hashing totally standard failed arguments on this topic under the guise of 'it's nondual man'. What you have advanced so far is no different really to the debunked scientistic claims of "aside from c-fiber stimulation, there is no such phenomena as pain."
It's different in that it is based on the most subtle Buddhist principles that discuss these things. This point of view that I am enunciating it not physicalism.
It still doesn't account for the connection between the epistemic experience of mentality and the physical process this is supposedly the same as. It remain a 'magic' factor here and this isn't changed by going nondual on it without accounting for how it is supposedly so. It is the basic question the philosophical zombie can not ask: If mind is something physical, how is it that my experience is something mental? Claiming it is nondual simply moves the obvious problem of dualist mind-body causation in a lateral and less obvious direction, but it doesn't resolve the problems of it.
It completely resolves the problem. Matter is intelligent. If it was not, then we would be inert corpses. Assuming that mind and matter are somehow uniquely different in an absolute substantial sense is Cartesian Dualism. In fact, you can either say matter is the gross manifestation of consciousness or that consciousness is the most subtle manifestation of matter, it does not really matter. The sadadhātu has one cause — avidyā. When that cause, avidyā is removed, all six sadadhātus vanish. In the meantime, consciousness is not separable from the pañcamahābhutani. This nature of consciousness argument engaged in by Chalmers, and the physicalists is pretty boring. There is no split between mind and matter -- thinking there is one is a double delusion.