Penrose is a physicist that has worked on the great mysteries like cosmology and consciousness. For Penrose, he reluctantly calls himself a materialist because he admits he doesn’t know what matter really is even tho he ostensibly is a materialist in practice.

What do you make of this?

In light of the recent “religion” decree on lemmy, how does Penrose’s reluctance interact with notions of religon? If there is a non-physical world that interacts with the physical world, then is the non-physical world somehow immaterial? Or could it be material? Can the material be subdivided into “alternative materials” with seperate functions, similar to how structural forces give rise to attitudes, and attitudes give direction to maintain or change structures? Sometimes ideas become so entrenched that they become structural and affect matter beyond what happens in the brain. Similarly, material forces that are not present still affect us (and then those affects re affect us as we contextualize things), for example the actions of our ancestors or the past itself. Furthermore, with any amount of predictive ability, the looming, foreseen future affects the present even though it has not materialized.

Oftentimes we may be off put by a seperation between material and spiritual or non physical, but what if they are still basically the same thing and the distinction is a red herring.

  • @PolandIsAStateOfMindMEnglish
    9•1 year ago

    For some reason i thought this guy died a long time ago. Anyway he’s like 10 times smarter than me at least so i won’t pretend to understand him. Experimental physics is weird science, some things they suspect are proven, some are not and some remains for very long in a limbo, even if math is sound. Therefore such careful agnosticism is understandable. Unfortunately, it often develops into the God in cracks (afaik did not for him), which do sometimes occur in most unlikely places. Also mention that scientists often tends to be crap philosophers.

    consciousness

    I would be very careful there. I’m far from even hobbyism, but some things there are pretty outrageous, as expected from a scientific discipline in its infancy.

    If there is a non-physical world that interacts with the physical world, then is the non-physical world somehow immaterial?

    I don’t think material/immaterial is even very important distinction, after all we all remember the issues with air or light. Or ideas, which too have material reason in brain activity.

    Similarly, material forces that are not present still affect us (and then those affects re affect us as we contextualize things), for example the actions of our ancestors or the past itself. Furthermore, with any amount of predictive ability, the looming, foreseen future affects the present even though it has not materialized.

    Well yeah, that’s why have dialectical materialism to make sense in that.

    Oftentimes we may be off put by a seperation between material and spiritual or non physical, but what if they are still basically the same thing and the distinction is a red herring.

    Personally i think everything that exist is susceptible to materialist analysis (or might be in the future with better tools), therefore something like supernatural simply do not exist at all, even if one day people suddenly start to manifest magical powers or if angels descent from heaven, those too will be the part of material world.