First of all, attribute are not, "assigned," to anything, they are discovered. Secondly, I do not recognize what you are calling a, "problem." When the nature of something has been discovered and described, that is all that can or needs to be known. The fact that all objects with momentum attract one another (gravity) and all electrons repel one another (electro-magnetism) does not require an additional explanation, "why is there gravity or why is there electro-magnetism," without assuming the universe is in some way contingent on something else. It is that assumption all religions and superstitious notions are based on.bahman wrote: ↑Mon Sep 13, 2021 11:17 amI understand what you are trying to say. You simply assign an attribute to matter and think that the problem is resolved. The problem is not resolved.RCSaunders wrote: ↑Sun Sep 12, 2021 4:58 pm
Can you see a person's life or consciousness? The physical is all that can be directly perceived: seen, heard, felt, smelled, or tasted. The false assumption that those properties of things that can be directly perceived are all the properties of reality there can be is baseless. It is as superstitious a notion as the assumption there can be the supernatural. Since there are the attributes of life and consciousness and they cannot be directly perceived, it is apparent there are natural properties of existence that are not physical.
The two principles of reason are: 1. nothing can be known without evidence available to be observed or examined by anyone, and 2. nothing can be true which denies or evades evidence available to be observed or examined by anyone. The physicalist only observes the first of those principles and ignores the second. The physicalist simply ignores (or evades) the fact that for the first to be true, there must be consciousness that is capable of observing (perceiving) and examining physical evidence, but since consciousness itself cannot be directly perceived (seen, heard, felt, smelled or tasted) it cannot be physical. To be a physicalist one must evade or deny the evidence of their own consciousness.
Life and consciousness cannot be explained (and do not need to be) in terms of physical properties, because they are not physical properties. They are real, natural properties of existence in addition to the physical properties.
I know these are new ideas you have never seen before and lt will be difficult to grasp immediately. Here is one way to start. On what basis do you assume the only attributes reality can have are those which you call physical? You know you are living and conscious and have a mind and you know you cannot directly perceive them (and can only know your own introspectively). There is no physical evidence for life, or consciousness, or minds that anyone can perceive or examine, but you cannot deny your own life, consciousness and mind. If they were physical you could perceive them in some way, but you cannot, so they exist and are not physical.
Now I do not care if others want to believe in a contingent universe and want to pursue discovering some imagined mystical cause of everything, "behind the scene of existence," so to speak, and call their not being able to find it, "a problem," but it's only their problem. There is certainly no requirement for anyone else to be worried about or influence by other's personal interests, is there?
Attributes and properties do not, "come from," anything. Something just has to be what it is without having some previous, "cause," or, "explanation." A mystic will make that thing a God or some supernatural force, but it will be assumed to just be. No one doubts that there is something that just is and has the nature it has and that whatever they believe it is, that is the explanation for everything. The only difference between the mystics view and mine, is that what I am actually conscious of and the fact of my own consciousness of it are all that I (or anyone else) can possibly know, and there is no reason to suppose anything more. What exists that I can know is all there is and requires no additional explanation and it is only necessary to discover the nature of what exists--and nothing else.
Of course. I'm not a physicalist. My life, my consciousness, and my mind are perfectly natural knowable attributes of existence, but they are not physical attributes and not caused by something else. You certainly do not have to agree with that, but I would think, for your own understanding, you would have to explain what evidence you have for there being anything more than what there obviously is, or why there needs to be.