The mind body problem.
There exists in philosophy an important question which few are capable of considering seriously. As usual, most are quick to dismiss any such questions with humor, irony, or some other carnal distraction. I first learned of this philosopher’s dilemma years ago in Tol Rhun.
The question is this: is the consciousness composed of material, or is it immaterial? Are your thoughts a thing, or are they nothing? To say that your thoughts are nothing would be an axiomatic contradiction. “I think that my thoughts are nothing.”
To say that your thoughts are a thing would seem the safer route, if preserving sanity is safer than accepting insane axioms. In my experiments with the dead I have encountered this famous dilemma. How is it that I am able to command the dead, who have no thoughts prior to my arrival? Is it a physical conjuration that I am able to make, as with frost? And why is nether key to conjuring these thoughts in corpses?
Or am I hijacking what is already there? Am I taking the materials available for potential thoughts and merely giving them new parameters? Perhaps I conjure nothing, and am only able to work with what is given. Yes. That much seems obvious. I’ve yet to conjure a thought into existence without the prior given materials and implements.
My own thoughts are likewise conjured, fiat. I have been given these tools: a mind, a body, teeth to process my nourishment. The product of these tools is my consciousness. My consciousness must therefore be a material, a product of materials, a thing somewhere within my body.
Which leads me to the pendant. The Mummers. I have not spoken to a Mummer about their abilities. I shall arrange for an interview. Perhaps Sullivan can assist.
Rook Philosopher
Re: Rook Philosopher
Further thought and discussion regarding the mind body problem yields more insights:
I met a fool. Like most fools, they were able to glimpse a speck of light, enough to take deep offense, but unable to face it honestly. They fled from our discussion, specifically citing their most cherished delusions as favourable doctrine compared to my "morbidity."
To wit: I met a person who believed in "doing good." I explained clearly and simply that there no is such thing as good, that everything they do stems from selfish motives- their travels and their desires all result in the death of others in order to achieve their selfish desires. I explained that to live is to kill; to eat is to kill and to travel is to trample the living underfoot. I explained that the only true good one can achieve is to kill themselves, or destroy the entire cosmos.
These are undisputable facts. Yet few are able to face them. This is because they have these cherished delusions: Good. Evil. Right. Wrong. Justice. Freedom. None of these are real. They are mere delusions.
Going back to the mind body problem, note that I said it would "seem" the safer route to accept that thoughts are material. This is only the case for a special few, those rationalists brave enough to face the truth no matter where it leads.
To qualify my prior assertion: Those who refuse the precept that thoughts are material do not state "I think my thoughts are nothing." They qualify their concept of nothing thusly: "My thoughts are not of this realm." They mean to say their thoughts are of a higher, lower, or separate realm. A realm out of reach within this world. We shall call this realm the unnatural, supernatural, non-physical, metaphysical, or extranatural.
Thus we have two competing, binary doctrines of philosophy stemming from the mind body problem: the rational materialist, and the spiritual extranaturalist.
The extranaturalist is wont to preserve their cherished delusions, their freedoms, their values, their morals, their justice, their good, their souls. It is true that these things can only exist in another realm, since they clearly do not exist in this one! Freedom does not prove out in any studied phenomena- all phenomena are ordered, lawful, consistent. There are a great many mysteries, indeed, but they always eventually prove out, they are constituted of nothing more than material and the physical laws. To challenge this establishment, to challenge this great chain of being, is to declare the world is magic. What is magic to a fool is mechanical to the enlightened.
So to admit that thoughts are extranatural, immaterial, is to preserve justice, freedom of will, and right and wrong. To reject thought as merely material is a horror to them, it makes of men a sack of meat, an organic machine, a tinkerer's clock, a golem, a construct. These horrors do sometimes result in the madness of a philosopher so learned. And the list of mad philosophers is both long and horrible.
It is good to have my phylactery again.
I met a fool. Like most fools, they were able to glimpse a speck of light, enough to take deep offense, but unable to face it honestly. They fled from our discussion, specifically citing their most cherished delusions as favourable doctrine compared to my "morbidity."
To wit: I met a person who believed in "doing good." I explained clearly and simply that there no is such thing as good, that everything they do stems from selfish motives- their travels and their desires all result in the death of others in order to achieve their selfish desires. I explained that to live is to kill; to eat is to kill and to travel is to trample the living underfoot. I explained that the only true good one can achieve is to kill themselves, or destroy the entire cosmos.
These are undisputable facts. Yet few are able to face them. This is because they have these cherished delusions: Good. Evil. Right. Wrong. Justice. Freedom. None of these are real. They are mere delusions.
Going back to the mind body problem, note that I said it would "seem" the safer route to accept that thoughts are material. This is only the case for a special few, those rationalists brave enough to face the truth no matter where it leads.
To qualify my prior assertion: Those who refuse the precept that thoughts are material do not state "I think my thoughts are nothing." They qualify their concept of nothing thusly: "My thoughts are not of this realm." They mean to say their thoughts are of a higher, lower, or separate realm. A realm out of reach within this world. We shall call this realm the unnatural, supernatural, non-physical, metaphysical, or extranatural.
Thus we have two competing, binary doctrines of philosophy stemming from the mind body problem: the rational materialist, and the spiritual extranaturalist.
The extranaturalist is wont to preserve their cherished delusions, their freedoms, their values, their morals, their justice, their good, their souls. It is true that these things can only exist in another realm, since they clearly do not exist in this one! Freedom does not prove out in any studied phenomena- all phenomena are ordered, lawful, consistent. There are a great many mysteries, indeed, but they always eventually prove out, they are constituted of nothing more than material and the physical laws. To challenge this establishment, to challenge this great chain of being, is to declare the world is magic. What is magic to a fool is mechanical to the enlightened.
So to admit that thoughts are extranatural, immaterial, is to preserve justice, freedom of will, and right and wrong. To reject thought as merely material is a horror to them, it makes of men a sack of meat, an organic machine, a tinkerer's clock, a golem, a construct. These horrors do sometimes result in the madness of a philosopher so learned. And the list of mad philosophers is both long and horrible.
It is good to have my phylactery again.