Physicalism or materialism. The idea that everything there is arises from physical matter. If true would mean there is no God or Free Will, no immortal soul either.
Seems to be what most of academia bases their world view on and the frame work in which most Science is done.
Often challenged by Dualism and Idealism but only by a loud fringe minority.
I’ve heard pan-psychicism is proving quite the challenge, but I hear that from people who believe crystals can cure autism
I hear that “Oh actually the science is moving away from materialism” as well, but that seems to be more crystal talk as well.
So lemme ask science instead of google.
Any reason to doubt physicalism? Is there anything in science that says “Huh well that seems to not have any basis in the physical at all and yet it exists”
Edit: I have heard of the Essentia Foundation and Bernado Kastrup but since it’s endorsed by Deepak Chopra I’m not sure I can trust it
If it had no basis in the physical, then what would it mean to say that it “exists?” How you define “existence” is a very big philosophical question. Excuse me while I nerd the fuck out about something.
Physics tells us that the observable universe is 93 billion light years in diameter. However, we can sometimes observe objects leaving the observable universe. This is because of complicated physics reasons:
Physical space is expanding with time. Everything is getting farther apart from everything else, and the more distance there is between two points, the faster the space in between them is expanding. At a sufficiently large distance, the rate at which the distance between the two points is increasing, is faster than the speed of light. Neither point is actually moving faster than the speed of light, it’s only the space between them that is expanding. This might be hard to understand, but think of it as if you drew two dots on a balloon and then inflated it.
Once an object gets far enough away from us that the space between is expanding faster than the speed of light, it becomes impossible for us to make any further observations about that thing. This is actually what defines the bounds of “the observable universe.”
So, what happens to objects that leave the observable universe? Strictly speaking, it’s impossible to say. Intuitively, we would expect that they’re still there doing their thing and obeying the same physical laws as when we could observe them. But, if you told me that the stars simply vanish, or that they magically transform into butterflies as soon as they leave, there’s no evidence that anyone could ever produce that would falsify that belief, because, by definition, there is no way to observe what happens outside of the observable universe. If we are defining what exists based on what is physically observable, then it follows that things outside the observable universe do not exist, even if it really seems like they should.
My conclusion from this line of thought is that existence is a relational property. I am not prepared to reject the idea that a thing has to be in some way observable in order to exist, but in that case, nothing can exist in isolation. Because for a thing to be observable means that there must exist a being which could observe it. This could be said to contradict physicalism, because physicalism would say that the material world exists regardless of our senses. I would say that the physical world only exists so long as there are beings capable of sensing it, and, should all sentient beings ever become extinct, the physical world would no longer exist in any meaningful sense.
To be clear, the observable universe is centered on Earth (technically, on you). For a being that is closer to the object that leaves your observable universe before it leaves theirs. It can still be observed by them. There is no objective point at which something becomes unobservable by the expansion of space.
Excepting maybe the big rip.
Yes, but this is assuming an objective, universal frame of reference, and that’s not really a thing. For example, things like time dilution mean that there is no universal “clock.” There is an objective point at which things become unobservable to my (Earth’s) frame of reference.
It’s true that there could be some alien halfway across the observable universe that could observe the stars that have exited our observable universe. But, we could not observe the alien observing them, because information still can’t travel faster than the speed of light.
Not really. Nothing I said has any dependence on a universal clock.
Right and this is my point. Any philosophical theory that has anything to do with the observable universe is inherently self-centered. Not even Earth centered. Not even conscious-being centered. Literally self-centered. The observable universe is subjective. And so that puts it in the class of philosophies that insist that the universe arises from your own consciousness.
Which is not to invalidate it, but it’s not objective, and it has nothing to do with science.
The way I see it, this places quite a lot of physics into the category of “nothing to do with science.” The Copenhagen interpretation of QM, for example, is based on what we can observe and detect, and asserts that particles do not have an exact position because there are limits on how closely it is possible to measure it. To me, it’s the same principle.
There is a subtle distinction in my position. I’m defining existence as a relational property, meaning that what I am claiming is that things outside the observable universe do not exist relative to me. They may exist relative to someone else, although I have no way of knowing if they do. Therefore, I don’t consider it self-centered.
In opinion, the thing that has nothing to do with science is making claims about things that we can’t observe, because they are outside of the observable universe. How can we say, from a scientific perspective, that the universe continues beyond that if we can’t test that theory? By definition, such claims cannot be considered empirical or testable.