Is Consciousness a Miracle? feat. Hamza Tzortzis | Thought Adventure Podcast #5 (2021-03-14) ​

0:00:07 i am
0:00:31 assalamualaikum everyone welcome back
0:00:34 to the thought adventure podcast and
0:00:36 today we have a special episode this is
0:00:39 episode number five here on the podcast
0:00:42 uh today we're going to be discussing if
0:00:45 consciousness
0:00:46 is a miracle now it's a little bit
0:00:48 tongue-in-cheek
0:00:49 um but the main thrust of what we're
0:00:51 going to be talking about
0:00:52 is whether or not consciousness can be
0:00:55 grounded
0:00:56 on materialism and so we're going to
0:00:59 intro the topic give our thoughts on
0:01:02 answering that question
0:01:03 um and then we will eventually make it
0:01:06 to the audience
0:01:07 to where you guys can call in and give
0:01:09 us your thoughts and comments on it uh
0:01:12 we especially would like to hear from
0:01:13 atheists or materialist because we want
0:01:17 to hear what you guys
0:01:18 have to say about this he's mainly going
0:01:20 to be addressing
0:01:21 the naturalists here in the audience but
0:01:24 i do want to point out that we've got a
0:01:26 special guest on our panel today his
0:01:28 brother hamza
0:01:29 uh he's nice enough to bless us with his
0:01:32 presence and join us
0:01:33 um he's got a little bit of an expertise
0:01:36 on the matter because
0:01:37 he's done his master's on consciousness
0:01:39 so
0:01:40 we do want to hear his thoughts and uh
0:01:43 brother hamza if you want to start off
0:01:45 by just
0:01:45 addressing the audience maybe uh most
0:01:48 people here i'm sure already know who
0:01:50 you are but if you want to just explain
0:01:52 a little bit of your background um in
0:01:54 the field because you've done a masters
0:01:56 on
0:01:56 and then answer the question as to
0:01:59 whether or not you think
0:02:01 consciousness can actually be grounded
0:02:03 on materialism or not
0:02:06 okay good thanks for the introduction
0:02:08 jake well i bless you all
0:02:09 just ask me for the opportunity
0:02:13 well my name is hamza and uh
0:02:16 i wrote a book called the divine reality
0:02:19 and
0:02:20 i did an m.a in philosophy
0:02:24 my dissertation was on the heart problem
0:02:26 of consciousness
0:02:27 and other bits and pieces and i'm
0:02:30 continuing my postgraduate research at
0:02:32 the university of london
0:02:33 and i have a particularly interesting
0:02:35 consciousness because
0:02:37 i had a bit of an issue when i was i was
0:02:39 around i don't know maybe 11 or 12 years
0:02:41 old
0:02:42 i had this kind of existential crisis
0:02:46 not from the point of view of meaning or
0:02:47 the point of view of
0:02:49 um you know purpose and life it was more
0:02:53 on it was more a form of solipsism which
0:02:56 was
0:02:57 i had a realization just dawned on me
0:03:00 that
0:03:01 i was the only one aware of my own
0:03:03 conscious awareness
0:03:05 and i wasn't aware of other people's
0:03:07 conscious awareness
0:03:08 at the same time that i'm aware of my
0:03:10 own awareness

0:03:14 that might be confusing but that was
0:03:16 extremely lonely
0:03:18 it just dawned on me it was such a
0:03:19 lonely thing
0:03:21 that i i think i started crying i'll get
0:03:23 slightly you know
0:03:24 contextually depressed because i felt
0:03:27 like i was maybe the only one who
0:03:29 really exists right now people may not
0:03:32 empathize with this at all because they
0:03:34 haven't had this experience
0:03:36 thank god but some people just have
0:03:38 those experiences and i think that was
0:03:40 the kind of emotional
0:03:42 existential driver in order for me to
0:03:44 try and
0:03:45 explore the whole topic of consciousness
0:03:47 a little bit more
0:03:48 and that's why i was very fascinated
0:03:50 with the hard problem of consciousness
0:03:52 now
0:03:53 as many of you may know or not know the
0:03:56 hard problem of consciousness
0:03:57 in the philosophy of the mind is really
0:04:01 based on two key questions people think
0:04:03 it's only one question but in actual
0:04:04 fact is two key questions
0:04:06 the first key question is what is it
0:04:09 like for a particular
0:04:10 organism to have a in a subjective
0:04:12 conscious experience
0:04:14 okay so i know i have inner subjective
0:04:17 conscious experiences
0:04:18 and i know what it's like for me to have
0:04:20 a hot chocolate on a sunday looking at
0:04:22 the sunset
0:04:23 but what about jake's in a subjective
0:04:26 conscious experience
0:04:27 can i know what it's like for jake to
0:04:30 have a hot chocolate on a sunday
0:04:32 looking at the sunset no i just have my
0:04:35 own
0:04:36 now it's subjectivity for sure
0:04:39 however it is a first person fact no one
0:04:42 can deny the fact that they
0:04:44 have an awareness of their own awareness
0:04:46 or they are
0:04:47 undergoing or they're experiencing a a
0:04:50 form of phenomenal consciousness because
0:04:52 in the literature it's also called
0:04:54 known as phenomenality or phenomenal
0:04:56 experience which basically means
0:04:58 in a subjective conscious experience so
0:05:01 i may be able to describe
0:05:03 my experience as warm sweet
0:05:06 beautiful and you may use exactly the
0:05:09 same words and we're thinking we're
0:05:10 talking about the same type of
0:05:12 in a subjective conscious experience but
0:05:14 in actual fact we still wouldn't know
0:05:16 why because words are vehicles to
0:05:18 meaning and meaning is like a reflection
0:05:20 a
0:05:21 mirror of the inner subject of conscious
0:05:23 experience so when i say
0:05:24 warm and beautiful and amazing
0:05:28 i have a certain kind of experience that
0:05:30 backs it up that's personal to me but
0:05:32 that doesn't necessarily mean
0:05:34 that jake has exactly the same type of
0:05:36 experience even though he's using the
0:05:38 same words
0:05:39 right so this is what you may call the
0:05:42 epistemic
0:05:42 gap there's an epistemological gap
0:05:44 meaning there is a gap of knowledge
0:05:46 how do we bridge that gap under
0:05:48 materialism and by the way
0:05:49 when we use the word materialism and the
0:05:51 philosophy of the mind
0:05:53 it's used synonymously with physicalism
0:05:56 yes they have two different histories
0:05:59 however they really mean the following
0:06:01 that
0:06:02 consciousness can be reduced to or
0:06:06 is identical to physical processes
0:06:09 materialism historically used to talk
0:06:11 about uh
0:06:12 sorry materialism historically used to
0:06:13 talk about bits of matter
0:06:15 but in the philosophy of the mind in the
0:06:17 literature as far as i'm aware of it
0:06:19 that those two terms are used
0:06:20 synonymously and
0:06:22 they're used in the context that we've
0:06:24 just said that all
0:06:26 conscious consciousness can be reduced
0:06:28 to in some way or identical to
0:06:30 physical processes so that's the first
0:06:32 question of the hard problem
0:06:34 the second question is not an
0:06:36 epistemological question
0:06:37 it's not an epistemic question because
0:06:39 people a lot of the naturalists they say
0:06:41 oh you know we're going to bridge the
0:06:43 gap right we're going to bridge that gap
0:06:45 when we know the science we learn more
0:06:47 science we'll bridge it
0:06:49 which i think is a huge fallacious
0:06:50 argument we could discuss later and
0:06:51 unpack it later
0:06:52 but the point here is they say we could
0:06:54 bridge the gap but they've misunderstood
0:06:56 the hard problem because the heart
0:06:57 problem is not just an epistemic issue
0:06:59 it's an ontological issue meaning the
0:07:01 source and nature of reality
0:07:03 so the second question is why and
0:07:06 how do phenomenal experiences meaning
0:07:09 how and why do inner subjective
0:07:11 conscious experiences
0:07:12 arise from neurobiological processes
0:07:16 this is has some epistemic issues but
0:07:19 it's also an ontological issue
0:07:21 given the fact that we have a kind of
0:07:23 first person fat
0:07:24 sincere sensation of what it's like to
0:07:27 have in the subject of conscious
0:07:28 experiences and we know
0:07:30 what kind of physical processes are
0:07:33 supposed to be because even according to
0:07:35 the naturalists physical processes are
0:07:37 what
0:07:37 they're blind and non-conscious what
0:07:39 does that mean let's unpack that
0:07:41 when we say physical processes are blind
0:07:44 it means there is no intentional force
0:07:45 directing them anywhere
0:07:47 when we say they're non-conscious we're
0:07:48 saying physical processes
0:07:50 do not have something called
0:07:52 intentionality i know that's a massive
0:07:55 issue in the philosophy of the mind
0:07:57 there's lots of
0:07:58 as they say differences of opinion but
0:08:01 just to
0:08:01 break it down in in a simple way
0:08:03 intentionality is about aboutness
0:08:06 for example i'm looking at my mobile
0:08:09 phone
0:08:10 my my stream of consciousness now is
0:08:12 about something other than
0:08:15 what's in here it's outside it's about
0:08:17 something else
0:08:18 physical processes by definition
0:08:22 are not about anything they're not even
0:08:24 about themselves they just are
0:08:26 cold and non-conscious from that
0:08:28 perspective so one would argue
0:08:30 if that's the ontology of physicalism
0:08:32 which also relates to
0:08:34 philosophical naturalism then
0:08:37 how can we have inner subjective
0:08:39 conscious experiences
0:08:40 arise from seemingly
0:08:43 cold and non-conscious physical
0:08:45 processes
0:08:46 it's like whoa right so how do they
0:08:49 try and answer these questions so let me
0:08:52 go backwards
0:08:53 the first way they're trying to answer
0:08:55 this question
0:08:56 especially from the kind of atheistic
0:08:58 perspective is that science
0:09:00 neuroscience neurobiological studies is
0:09:03 going to solve the problem now with all
0:09:05 due respect
0:09:06 right with all due respect
0:09:09 neuroscience is predicated on a
0:09:12 philosophical assumption
0:09:13 this is well known if you read the works
0:09:15 of um
0:09:16 rex wilson anti romancio manzotti
0:09:19 moderato
0:09:20 blah blah blah blah the philosophers of
0:09:23 the mind and even neuroscientists
0:09:25 themselves
0:09:26 understand that neurobiological studies
0:09:28 neuroscience
0:09:29 it assumes physicalism
0:09:33 so all new biological studies can do
0:09:37 is basically give you a physicalistic
0:09:40 approach or a materialistic approach to
0:09:42 this question
0:09:43 and by definition it won't really solve
0:09:45 the problem because it will be always
0:09:48 assumed
0:09:50 what we're trying to show is well is
0:09:52 physicalism true
0:09:53 is materialism of physicalism the
0:09:55 correct philosophy of the mind
0:09:57 to understand the reality of
0:09:59 consciousness right they can't even
0:10:01 start dealing with that question because
0:10:02 all neurobiological studies are
0:10:04 basically
0:10:05 uh predicated on this philosophical
0:10:08 assumption which is
0:10:09 physicalism so neuroscience will never
0:10:12 be able to address this issue because
0:10:13 neuroscience generally speaking is a
0:10:15 study of correlations as one of my
0:10:17 friends
0:10:18 who's a who did a master's in
0:10:19 neuroscience he called it pixelated
0:10:21 phrenology
0:10:22 yeah the phenology of the study of the
0:10:24 brain is pixelated phonology
0:10:26 and and listen to this this is my
0:10:28 challenge even if we're to map out the
0:10:31 entirety of jake's brain
0:10:32 right say we might be out
0:10:36 and we can correlate every single
0:10:38 pattern
0:10:39 and the minutiae the differences and
0:10:42 correlate them
0:10:44 to in the subject of conscious
0:10:46 experiences
0:10:47 and correlate those to his utterances of
0:10:50 the descriptions of his inner
0:10:52 experiences
0:10:53 it still would not he still won't solve
0:10:55 the problem he will still answer both
0:10:57 questions
0:10:57 he won't answer okay well what is it
0:10:59 like for jake to undergo a particular
0:11:01 inner subject of conscious experience we
0:11:02 just have his
0:11:03 we just have his descriptions right
0:11:05 right but what is it like
0:11:07 and we won't be able to answer the
0:11:09 question well how on earth does he have
0:11:10 this inner subjective conscious
0:11:12 experience
0:11:12 arising arising from
0:11:15 seemingly cold blind physical processes
0:11:20 so even if neuroscience were to map
0:11:23 everything in the brain because this is
0:11:24 one of the arguments from the atheist
0:11:26 look man when we know everything about
0:11:28 the brain we'll know everything about
0:11:29 consciousness
0:11:32 that would only make sense if you're an
0:11:33 eliminative materialist right but we
0:11:35 could discuss a bit later
0:11:37 so neuroscience can't really deal with
0:11:38 the problem and
0:11:40 i've got something here from professor
0:11:44 forgot his name now he's from king's
0:11:47 college university in london
0:11:49 he actually articulated a really
0:11:51 powerful undercutting defeater
0:11:53 to people who claim that neuroscience is
0:11:56 actually
0:11:57 if we know more about the brain will
0:11:58 know more about consciousness from the
0:12:00 point of view of inner subjective
0:12:02 conscious experiences so he makes a
0:12:05 really beautiful point here
0:12:07 it's pepino the professor papinel yeah i
0:12:10 think his name is david papino he
0:12:11 presents
0:12:11 a really nice argument i want to
0:12:13 summarize the argument for you it's the
0:12:14 seven statements
0:12:16 so he says number one and i'm
0:12:18 paraphrasing a neurochemical event
0:12:20 e is identical with the conscious
0:12:23 experience
0:12:24 p number two e
0:12:27 cannot be absent when p is testified to
0:12:31 be present
0:12:32 three e cannot be present when p
0:12:36 is testified to be absent four
0:12:39 e must be present to be necessary for p
0:12:43 five e is sometimes absence when p
0:12:46 is testified to be present six e
0:12:49 is sometimes present when p is testified
0:12:51 to be absent
0:12:52 seven conclusion therefore e is not
0:12:55 necessary for p
0:12:56 so his conclusion is that the
0:12:57 neurochemical event e is not
0:12:59 necessary for in a subjective conscious
0:13:02 experience
0:13:03 p because when you do a study of all the
0:13:05 neurobiological
0:13:07 correlations you will see that sometimes
0:13:10 the neurobiological event e
0:13:12 is not always present for a particular p
0:13:14 and sometimes it's absent sometimes it's
0:13:16 present and so on and so forth
0:13:17 so it shows that the correlations they
0:13:20 have found so far
0:13:21 are not necessary for p which is a
0:13:23 really interesting argument by
0:13:25 papino now i've gone too long i don't
0:13:27 want to take too much time so i just
0:13:28 want to
0:13:28 mention what are the physicalist claims
0:13:31 so i'm not going to go into them and
0:13:32 refute them i think we should do that
0:13:33 together
0:13:34 right so one approach
0:13:37 is what you would call eliminative
0:13:39 materialism okay
0:13:42 and one would argue that the church
0:13:44 lands had this view
0:13:45 then it had this view in 1991 he wrote
0:13:47 the book consciousness explained
0:13:49 some philosophers said that book should
0:13:51 have been called consciousness explained
0:13:52 away
0:13:53 because he doesn't deal with the
0:13:56 questions of the hard problem of
0:13:57 consciousness he just he just thinks
0:13:58 that we're just like you know
0:13:59 robots we don't have any consciousness
0:14:01 right yeah so it's eliminative
0:14:03 materialism which basically says that
0:14:04 there is no consciousness that's
0:14:05 essentially what they're saying
0:14:06 and we could unpack what it means and
0:14:08 unpack and how we can address that
0:14:10 during
0:14:10 the podcast today and by the way a lot
0:14:14 of the
0:14:14 empirical neurobiological studies that
0:14:16 have fancy names right there are so many
0:14:18 fancy names for many different
0:14:20 you know uh neuro
0:14:23 the neuro correlations and all that
0:14:25 fancy names right all of these things
0:14:27 still have
0:14:28 these um approaches as the philosophical
0:14:31 assumptions so it's very important to
0:14:32 deal with the philosophical assumptions
0:14:34 because
0:14:34 the kind of minutiae of the empirical
0:14:36 neurobiological study
0:14:38 is interesting but it's really
0:14:39 predicated on these approaches anyway
0:14:41 so one is eliminative materialism the
0:14:43 other one is reductive materialism
0:14:45 which basically says it doesn't deny
0:14:47 inner subject of conscious experience
0:14:48 but it says
0:14:50 that that the brain or
0:14:53 understanding or science or
0:14:54 understanding of the brain would
0:14:56 eventually close the gap
0:14:58 and we'll be able to understand that
0:15:02 that that that that consciousness can be
0:15:05 explained or reduced due to physical
0:15:07 processes
0:15:07 in some way so don't say individual
0:15:10 process or individual bits of matter
0:15:12 they will say you know you could reduce
0:15:14 it to physical processes in some way
0:15:16 then we could discuss
0:15:17 why that's that fails right the other
0:15:20 the other physicalist approach which is
0:15:21 very popular
0:15:22 is called functionalism functionalism
0:15:25 just to
0:15:26 really make you understand this is like
0:15:27 a mirroring a computer system
0:15:29 you have inputs mental states and
0:15:31 outputs
0:15:32 and you know they say when you have an
0:15:34 input for example
0:15:35 your your your bus is coming right
0:15:39 and your mental state is oh my god i'm
0:15:42 going to be late
0:15:43 right you have the inner subjection
0:15:44 cause experience i'm actually late
0:15:46 and then the output is that you start
0:15:48 running for your bus
0:15:49 so there is a connection between inputs
0:15:51 outputs and mental states
0:15:54 but as you know that doesn't even answer
0:15:55 any of the problems of the heart
0:15:57 the problems of consciousness but we
0:15:59 could address that later
0:16:00 another view well probably the final
0:16:02 physical is to be main physicalist views
0:16:04 what you call
0:16:05 emergent materialism which is getting
0:16:07 quite popular and there are two forms of
0:16:09 emergent materialism you have strong
0:16:11 emergent materialism and weak emergent
0:16:13 materialism
0:16:14 strong emergent materialism says look
0:16:16 consciousness exists
0:16:19 but it's based on complex physical
0:16:21 processes
0:16:22 and these physical processes have
0:16:23 complex causal relations
0:16:25 and it's impossible to impossible to
0:16:27 unravel them
0:16:28 and they said to try and understand it
0:16:30 it's equivalent of putting for example
0:16:32 darwin's book on the original species in
0:16:35 a hamster's cage
0:16:36 thinking that hamster is going to
0:16:37 understand its origins right it's a good
0:16:39 it's an interesting
0:16:40 point but it's a failed point because
0:16:43 all they're doing they're really
0:16:44 assuming
0:16:45 some type of physicalism like reductive
0:16:47 materialism anyway or reductive uh
0:16:50 yeah reductive materialism and it's a
0:16:52 bit of a compound we can unders we could
0:16:54 discuss later why that's the case
0:16:56 the other version which is called weak
0:16:57 emergent materialism
0:16:59 which basically says yes it's based on
0:17:02 complex physical processes and these
0:17:03 physical processes have complex
0:17:05 causal relations when we unravel them
0:17:08 we'll be able to understand subjective
0:17:11 consciousness
0:17:12 but really that's not a philosophy in
0:17:14 itself
0:17:15 that's reductive materialism you're
0:17:17 assuming reductive metabolism
0:17:18 to be true and if you've dealt with
0:17:20 reductive materialism then you've dealt
0:17:22 with
0:17:22 uh weak emergence and they give you
0:17:24 things like you know what about water
0:17:26 you know you have the the molecules of
0:17:29 oxygen
0:17:29 and and hydrogen and they combine
0:17:32 together to give you properties that
0:17:34 don't exist in
0:17:35 in the original individual processes
0:17:37 that's what emergent materialism
0:17:38 basically says
0:17:39 that you're going to get something an
0:17:41 emergent property like consciousness
0:17:43 and the properties of consciousness
0:17:45 cannot be found in the individual
0:17:46 processes or in the
0:17:48 physical system that is causally related
0:17:51 and causally connected
0:17:53 and they say look this exists in science
0:17:55 anyway look at look at water h2o
0:17:57 you have hydrogen you have oxygen
0:18:01 and you put them together and they
0:18:03 causally relate in some way
0:18:05 and you have properties of water that
0:18:07 don't belong to the individual
0:18:09 uh molecule molecules for example the
0:18:12 individual
0:18:12 atoms hydrogen atoms oxygen atoms right
0:18:15 so you have water that is shiny and it's
0:18:17 a transparent liquid but those
0:18:18 properties cannot be found in the
0:18:19 individual process themselves
0:18:21 which we know that example is a really
0:18:23 bad example for many reasons
0:18:24 which we could discuss so those are the
0:18:26 main type of physicalist ontologies if
0:18:28 you like
0:18:29 or the physical asses of physical
0:18:31 approaches to the mind
0:18:33 and i would argue from this we could
0:18:34 even talk about god's existence from the
0:18:36 heart problem of consciousness but
0:18:37 that's
0:18:38 maybe for another day sorry for waffling
0:18:41 but that's the introduction no that was
0:18:44 great no no no it was a great
0:18:45 introduction
0:18:46 really do appreciate it so as far as
0:18:49 what i understood you saying brother
0:18:50 hamza is that
0:18:52 there there's two main problems uh with
0:18:54 consciousness
0:18:55 and materialism uh one is an ontological
0:18:59 problem and one is an epistemological
0:19:01 problem
0:19:02 and then you went over various different
0:19:04 um possible
0:19:05 responses that are offered in the
0:19:07 literature
0:19:08 in philosophy of mind from a materialist
0:19:12 or
0:19:12 physicalist paradigm and then you
0:19:15 explain some of the
0:19:16 some of the issues or potential issues
0:19:18 with each one of those
0:19:20 responses to the to the two problems
0:19:23 that you mentioned
0:19:24 so i think that was a great intro to
0:19:26 explaining sort of the foundations for
0:19:29 the discussion
0:19:30 um i do want to point out to the
0:19:32 audience that um
0:19:33 we are going to spend a little bit more
0:19:35 time on the introduction portion of this
0:19:38 because it is a bit more in-depth and
0:19:41 kind of uh gets in the weeds a little
0:19:43 bit philosophically so we want to
0:19:45 lay the groundwork for the discussion
0:19:47 before we invite guests on
0:19:49 and we're probably going to shoot for
0:19:51 maybe around 45 minutes to an hour to
0:19:54 when we start to
0:19:55 invite guests on um but yeah once again
0:19:58 hamza do appreciate that intro now
0:20:01 brother sharif i want to hear what your
0:20:03 thoughts are on the question
0:20:05 can materialism actually account for or
0:20:08 ground consciousness what are your
0:20:10 thoughts on that
0:20:12 yeah um so i think brother hames has
0:20:14 mentioned a lot of points and
0:20:16 really covered the subject area
0:20:17 comprehensively
0:20:19 it seems on this uh how i i also see it
0:20:23 is
0:20:24 when we look at the issue of
0:20:26 consciousness what we're asking
0:20:28 is how is it that non-physical
0:20:31 things become self-aware become have
0:20:34 this
0:20:34 internal experience how do non-physical
0:20:37 sorry
0:20:37 physical non-conscious things have this
0:20:39 internal experience
0:20:41 that's the first question we're trying
0:20:42 to work out the second question
0:20:44 is okay how do we approach that how can
0:20:47 we
0:20:48 analyze the internal experiences of
0:20:51 something that's physical
0:20:53 you know what what do we do so normally
0:20:55 the scientists will say well
0:20:57 we'll use science to try to investigate
0:20:59 that and i think as hamza's mentioned
0:21:01 and
0:21:02 also yourself jake is that there is a
0:21:04 problem there's like an
0:21:05 in-principle problem the in principle
0:21:07 problem is this let me give an example
0:21:10 if i've got a color red yeah uh i
0:21:13 thought this bottle was red but it's
0:21:14 actually more purple
0:21:15 but if i've got this this purple ribena
0:21:18 yeah
0:21:18 shouldn't be showing that we're not
0:21:20 sponsored by them so
0:21:21 if we've got this yeah which is sort of
0:21:23 a purpley color yeah
0:21:25 we experience it as purple yeah
0:21:28 now science what's science going to tell
0:21:30 us about this science is going to say
0:21:33 well it has a particular reflection of
0:21:36 light at a specific wavelength and a
0:21:38 specific energy
0:21:39 it will tell me the properties of the
0:21:41 light none of those properties
0:21:44 are related to my experience yeah
0:21:48 so there's an experience there's an
0:21:50 attribute that i'm sensing
0:21:52 which is not physical for the light
0:21:55 itself
0:21:56 yeah it goes beyond the light in essence
0:21:58 beyond the physical
0:21:59 so what science is going to tell me is
0:22:00 going to give me a third person
0:22:02 objective analysis of some reality
0:22:05 but consciousness my experience of this
0:22:09 is a first person subjective experience
0:22:12 and there's nothing about the reflection
0:22:15 of the wavelength of
0:22:16 light and its energy that tells me i
0:22:19 will experience it
0:22:20 as being purple or red or whatever color
0:22:24 there's another problem if i have a
0:22:27 person who's been blind from birth
0:22:30 and i try to describe that color this
0:22:33 color here
0:22:34 there is no language there's no
0:22:37 descriptive way to describe the color to
0:22:40 the person who's never seen it
0:22:42 yeah so we've got another problem in
0:22:44 terms of being able to describe
0:22:46 something because the language doesn't
0:22:48 exist because it is
0:22:50 first person experience which means if
0:22:52 you've not experienced it or i've not
0:22:54 experienced it
0:22:54 there's no way of being able to describe
0:22:56 it because nothing in the property
0:22:59 that allows us to describe describe it
0:23:02 as the experience that we're having
0:23:04 and that's not just like color that's
0:23:06 everything else as well taste
0:23:08 pain you know as hamza mentioned you
0:23:11 know
0:23:12 see you know having a coffee on a sunset
0:23:15 aftermarket maybe with salah and stuff
0:23:17 like that so
0:23:18 you know this this is uh so these things
0:23:22 we don't any experience it's these
0:23:24 things we can't describe
0:23:25 because the quality is not in the object
0:23:28 yeah it's within our own mind so the
0:23:31 question then becomes well how do i
0:23:32 access the mind now some people say well
0:23:34 as hamza mentioned about this
0:23:36 correlation about how
0:23:38 the brain states tells us
0:23:41 you know if we work out the brain states
0:23:43 we can work out the correlation
0:23:45 yeah and this is very the analogy that
0:23:48 you know strikes home to me is if i had
0:23:52 ones and zeros
0:23:53 which are binary code for computer
0:23:55 programs yeah
0:23:56 now there's nothing in the ones and
0:23:58 zeros that tells me what the computer
0:24:00 program is
0:24:02 you need something that occurs before
0:24:04 the computer program
0:24:06 and that's the mind that's the conscious
0:24:09 ability to interpret the ones and zeros
0:24:12 it's like most code dashes and dots
0:24:14 the dashes and dots are not gonna give
0:24:16 me information what's going to give me
0:24:18 information is the fact that i can
0:24:20 interpret the dashes and dots
0:24:22 into a language that i can understand so
0:24:24 i need a mind
0:24:26 before the signals
0:24:29 whether that signals in the brain you
0:24:31 know the action potentials and the
0:24:32 neurons
0:24:33 or whether that is the ones and zeros on
0:24:34 a computer i need something that has the
0:24:37 has already existed separate from
0:24:40 the actual code in order to interpret
0:24:43 the code
0:24:44 and the third example or the third
0:24:45 problem
0:24:47 is even if people are able to point to
0:24:50 and say okay
0:24:50 this neuron or these group of neurons in
0:24:52 the brain if they fire
0:24:54 they'll make you perceive the color
0:24:56 purple yeah
0:24:57 but the problem is is that the ability
0:24:59 to say well okay the firing
0:25:02 how does that make it purple it's like
0:25:05 and this is a an example that professor
0:25:07 donald hoffman said
0:25:09 it's like you've got a bottle and you
0:25:11 rub the bottle
0:25:12 yeah you rub the bottle and a genie pops
0:25:14 out
0:25:15 yeah okay fine we rub the bottle
0:25:18 yeah and the genie pops out every time
0:25:20 but you're not going to say that the
0:25:21 bottle is causative
0:25:23 of the genie you're going to say well
0:25:25 this phenomenon is occurring and i can't
0:25:27 necessarily connect the two yeah and
0:25:29 that's what's happening when it comes
0:25:31 to the hard problem of consciousness
0:25:33 consciousness is the inability to
0:25:35 you know have the tools in science to
0:25:38 access it
0:25:39 there's nothing within the properties of
0:25:41 the reality or the brain that tells us
0:25:44 how we're going to experience a reality
0:25:46 and even if we're able to show a
0:25:48 correlation between the
0:25:50 nerves and the neurons in the brain we
0:25:52 still don't have the ability to explain
0:25:54 how this first person subjective
0:25:56 experience comes about
0:26:01 right so yeah that was uh
0:26:04 a little bit more to tack on with this
0:26:06 discussion about consciousness i mean
0:26:08 there's so many different ways um we can
0:26:11 explain it
0:26:12 so i think each one of us giving our own
0:26:15 perspective
0:26:15 and describing the problems should be
0:26:17 really helpful to the audience
0:26:19 i really appreciate your explanation uh
0:26:21 brother sharif
0:26:22 um now brother abdul what are your
0:26:24 thoughts on the question
0:26:26 uh can consciousness be grounded on
0:26:29 materialism
0:26:30 what do you think um well i think it
0:26:33 can't
0:26:33 uh but um i think this question really
0:26:37 is
0:26:37 the most essential question when it
0:26:39 comes to these
0:26:40 um theist atheist discussions because
0:26:43 um i think this is as brother hamza and
0:26:46 sheriff mentioned this is just an
0:26:48 in-principle problem for science which a
0:26:51 lot of atheists do rely on
0:26:52 to account for their naturalism right
0:26:55 and uh
0:26:56 like when we talk about cosmological
0:26:58 arguments you you can conceive of
0:27:00 you know at least a naturalist account
0:27:03 that at least
0:27:03 gives you some sort of a causal chain
0:27:06 back to some sort of beginning
0:27:08 and then they just cut the calls will
0:27:11 change short
0:27:12 at some arbitrary point we think it's
0:27:13 arbitrary but at least there's a
0:27:15 coherent picture there
0:27:17 from their point of view but my view is
0:27:19 that on the consciousness discussion
0:27:21 they can't really get off the ground in
0:27:23 the first place because
0:27:25 it's about a state of self-awareness
0:27:27 that's just categorically
0:27:29 unlike anything else in the natural
0:27:31 world
0:27:32 and and it is the starting point of our
0:27:36 interaction with the world right so i
0:27:38 mean we start from this sort of like
0:27:39 epistemic dualism that we already have
0:27:42 our experiences of things and what the
0:27:45 things themselves
0:27:46 are right so it's uh for me this poses
0:27:50 an
0:27:50 in-principle problem for science and if
0:27:53 we're going to define naturalism as
0:27:56 you know if naturalism is committed to
0:27:59 the idea
0:28:00 that everything in reality is explicable
0:28:03 through uh natural means or you know if
0:28:07 they're committed to the causal closure
0:28:08 of the physical or if they say that
0:28:10 everything is reducible
0:28:11 to the physics and the chemistry that
0:28:14 we see in the world then this is the imp
0:28:18 principle problem that they face because
0:28:20 you have this sort of qualitative leap
0:28:23 when it comes to uh consciousness that
0:28:25 you don't find in
0:28:27 anything else really in the observable
0:28:29 world so
0:28:30 like brother hamza mentioned the wetness
0:28:32 and and these other like let's say
0:28:34 emergent properties that you can think
0:28:36 of uh
0:28:37 that can be a result of physical
0:28:38 interactions at the end of the day
0:28:41 you're not going to have that
0:28:42 qualitative leap there
0:28:43 they are going to be explainable in
0:28:46 physical terms and
0:28:47 you know we wouldn't disagree that a lot
0:28:49 of those properties and a lot of those
0:28:51 things
0:28:51 are reducible to the physical but when
0:28:54 it comes to consciousness
0:28:55 and a lot of materialist philosophers
0:28:57 like john searle agree that
0:29:00 it is really irreducible to the physical
0:29:02 because you can't reduce your
0:29:04 experience of the physical to the
0:29:07 physical you
0:29:08 actually couldn't possibly do that and
0:29:10 the in principle problem
0:29:12 comes for many reasons is because first
0:29:14 of all you can't put consciousness under
0:29:16 a microscope i can put your brain under
0:29:18 a microscope
0:29:19 but i can't put your experience under a
0:29:20 microscope so
0:29:23 and science relies on third-person
0:29:25 perspectives
0:29:26 in the first place right so
0:29:27 consciousness is a first-person
0:29:29 perspective thing
0:29:30 so you have an in-principle problem and
0:29:32 when you do have an in-principle problem
0:29:34 we're not saying that you know
0:29:36 you know this is a problem because of a
0:29:37 lack of information that future
0:29:39 science can solve no we're saying that
0:29:41 you couldn't possibly solve it
0:29:43 without some kind of radical paradigm
0:29:45 shift that would
0:29:47 kind of change the meaning of science
0:29:49 has naturalists understand it right now
0:29:51 and maybe would be able to encompass
0:29:53 some kind of supernaturalism right
0:29:55 but science as it is right now and
0:29:57 naturalism as it describes the world
0:30:00 in physical and chemical terms and as
0:30:02 they attempt to reduce
0:30:04 everything to the material couldn't
0:30:06 possibly account for something that is
0:30:09 so
0:30:09 qualitatively unlike everything else in
0:30:12 the physical world
0:30:12 and i think the bigger problem actually
0:30:15 for me comes
0:30:16 with uh when we talk about grounding
0:30:18 rationality
0:30:19 right and arguments from reason and i
0:30:22 know we put that in the poster it is
0:30:24 related
0:30:24 but i think that's really the bigger
0:30:26 problem for naturalism in the sense that
0:30:28 it makes it really self-defeating
0:30:30 if all your beliefs couldn't possibly be
0:30:34 explained in non-non-rational terms or
0:30:36 couldn't be reduced to it
0:30:38 then your belief in naturalism is
0:30:39 self-defeating so
0:30:41 generally speaking i think this is
0:30:42 really the biggest problem for for
0:30:44 naturalism
0:30:46 in general and i think it's a more
0:30:49 powerful of an argument whether we're
0:30:50 talking about consciousness or reason
0:30:52 than any argument uh against naturalism
0:30:55 we could come up with
0:30:58 i mean i would agree with you i think
0:31:00 it's a it's a huge problem
0:31:02 um for naturalism and the way that i see
0:31:06 it is that
0:31:07 when we talk about consciousness
0:31:08 generally speaking there's five states
0:31:10 of consciousness so
0:31:12 there's things like sensations thoughts
0:31:14 beliefs desires and acts of will
0:31:17 none of which i think can reasonably
0:31:20 be grounded on a materialist paradigm
0:31:23 whatsoever
0:31:24 i mean you guys have kind of gone into a
0:31:26 lot of detail about that
0:31:28 um but thomas nagle who's
0:31:32 an atheist philosopher he's famous he
0:31:34 has his paper on what it's like to be a
0:31:36 bat
0:31:36 and he explains that it's a sort of
0:31:39 in-principle
0:31:40 problem that science and we could really
0:31:42 never
0:31:43 understand what it's like to be a bat
0:31:46 because in order to do so you would need
0:31:47 to be a bad
0:31:48 and we just don't even have the language
0:31:51 to explain that as you guys were talking
0:31:53 about
0:31:54 science deals with what's called the
0:31:56 third person perspective
0:31:58 and it only has uh language that can
0:32:01 describe the phenomenon
0:32:03 uh via this third person perspective not
0:32:06 by the first person perspective which
0:32:08 consciousness is so it's an in-principle
0:32:11 problem that science can't really deal
0:32:13 with the subject
0:32:14 in a meaningful way to explain it
0:32:17 whatsoever
0:32:19 and there's one thing that brother hamza
0:32:21 mentioned which is something that i
0:32:23 like to focus on it's something that i'm
0:32:24 personally really interested in
0:32:26 and it's what you talked about
0:32:28 intentionality and it's a bit
0:32:30 difficult to understand so i'm going to
0:32:32 do the best that i can explain it but
0:32:34 if you do the research on it there's a
0:32:37 well-known problem called the problem of
0:32:38 intentionality
0:32:40 and basically the problem is uh from a
0:32:43 physicalist stand up uh standpoint
0:32:45 how you can explain how the neurons in
0:32:48 our brain
0:32:49 would be intrinsically about things
0:32:52 outside of our brain
0:32:54 um and i'm gonna i'm gonna show you guys
0:32:57 an example i don't know if you can see
0:32:58 it but there's a book here by
0:33:00 alex rosenberg an atheist guy to reality
0:33:03 which he describes this issue
0:33:05 he's got a diagram here and he says how
0:33:08 can you understand
0:33:10 how the top picture which is the neurons
0:33:12 in the brain
0:33:13 can be intrinsically about the bottom
0:33:16 picture which is
0:33:17 paris and so he he talks about the issue
0:33:20 of
0:33:21 uh the paris neurons um and the
0:33:24 basically the neurons that are
0:33:26 responsible um
0:33:28 these neurons that are responsible uh
0:33:31 for
0:33:32 your thoughts about this physical object
0:33:34 which is paris
0:33:36 now the question is how on a physical
0:33:39 physicalist paradigm do these thoughts
0:33:41 in your brain
0:33:43 these neurons how could they
0:33:45 intrinsically
0:33:46 be about paris it just doesn't it
0:33:49 doesn't add up it doesn't make any sense
0:33:50 it's
0:33:51 it's it's so mysterious and when you
0:33:53 start to think about it more and more
0:33:55 um you get to a point which he talks
0:33:58 about in the book that he
0:34:00 he makes the argument that on
0:34:02 materialism you can't actually think
0:34:04 about
0:34:05 anything whatsoever and it it devolves
0:34:08 into sort of this um
0:34:10 you know very strange uh picture i'll
0:34:12 just read one paragraph from this book
0:34:15 um it's on a page 179 and
0:34:18 in the title the chapter is the brain
0:34:21 does
0:34:22 everything without thinking about
0:34:23 anything at all
0:34:25 and he says this to explain the problem
0:34:27 that i'm talking about he says
0:34:28 physics has ruled out the existence
0:34:32 of clumps of matter of the required sort
0:34:35 meaning the the clumps of matter that
0:34:37 are
0:34:38 um used to talk about intentionality
0:34:42 the function of the brain in this case
0:34:44 which
0:34:45 we would disagree with but he's saying
0:34:47 physics has ruled out the existence of
0:34:49 clumps of matter of the required sort
0:34:52 there are just fermions and bosons and
0:34:55 combinations of them
0:34:57 none of that stuff is just all by itself
0:35:00 about any other stuff there is nothing
0:35:03 in the whole universe
0:35:04 including of course all the neurons in
0:35:07 your brain
0:35:08 that just by its nature or composition
0:35:11 can do this job of being about some
0:35:14 other clump of matter
0:35:16 so when consciousness and listen to this
0:35:19 so when consciousness
0:35:20 assures us that we have thoughts about
0:35:23 stuff
0:35:23 it has to be wrong the brain
0:35:26 non-consciously stores
0:35:27 information and thoughts but the
0:35:30 thoughts are not about stuff
0:35:32 therefore consciousness cannot retrieve
0:35:34 thoughts about stuff
0:35:36 there are none to retrieve so it can't
0:35:39 have
0:35:39 thoughts about stuff either and so what
0:35:42 he's explaining to you
0:35:44 is that on a physicalist paradigm and
0:35:47 based on physics
0:35:49 you have to come to the absurd
0:35:51 conclusion that you can't actually
0:35:53 think about anything but the very
0:35:56 thought
0:35:57 about not being able to think about
0:35:59 anything is a thought about something
0:36:01 itself
0:36:02 so the view become devolves into this
0:36:05 sort of self-refuting
0:36:06 understanding and so i'm just pointing
0:36:09 out
0:36:09 um this one aspect that i think that i
0:36:13 actually
0:36:13 think rosenberg's conclusion is correct
0:36:17 that he's trying to give an what he
0:36:19 calls the atheist guide to reality
0:36:21 that if you are a physicalist it results
0:36:24 in these
0:36:25 absurd position that you can't actually
0:36:27 think about anything
0:36:28 which is ridiculous because most
0:36:31 assuredly the the words in his book have
0:36:33 to be about something
0:36:35 otherwise what is he telling us he's
0:36:37 just wasting our time putting
0:36:38 ink on paper right so um
0:36:41 and then i do want to touch on an issue
0:36:44 that results in this which is what i
0:36:46 think
0:36:48 is the problem that you can't actually
0:36:49 ground knowledge
0:36:51 on uh materialism whatsoever based on
0:36:55 this account of what we're talking about
0:36:57 with intentionality
0:36:58 and i'm just going to give a very brief
0:37:00 argument for this is that
0:37:02 knowledge is typically understood as
0:37:04 justified true belief
0:37:06 now this means that knowledge assumes
0:37:09 truth because in order for it to account
0:37:11 for knowledge it has to be true
0:37:13 now truth in the literature uh for the
0:37:16 most part is
0:37:17 understood as that which corresponds to
0:37:20 reality
0:37:21 now this notion of corresponding to
0:37:23 reality or
0:37:24 matching up meaning that the things in
0:37:27 your brain match
0:37:28 up to something real outside of it
0:37:30 assumes the function
0:37:32 of consciousness intentionality which is
0:37:34 the thing that i was describing
0:37:36 now if the materialist cannot actually
0:37:39 ground
0:37:40 intentionality on their own paradigm
0:37:43 then that means they wouldn't be able to
0:37:45 ground truth
0:37:46 because truth assumes this sort of
0:37:48 corresponding
0:37:50 or matching up now if it cannot ground
0:37:53 truth
0:37:54 it cannot ground knowledge because
0:37:56 knowledge assumes truth
0:37:57 so it's this domino effect in which if
0:38:00 you cannot ground
0:38:01 intentionality on a materialist paradigm
0:38:04 you cannot ground truth and if you
0:38:06 cannot ground truth
0:38:07 you cannot ground knowledge and then
0:38:10 therefore
0:38:11 atheists or materialists cannot actually
0:38:14 ground
0:38:14 knowledge on their paradigm whatsoever
0:38:17 now i know this is a little bit of a
0:38:18 shift from consciousness
0:38:20 but i do want to point out because that
0:38:22 people may thinking well
0:38:23 this is kind of an abstract concept you
0:38:26 guys are going into so much detail about
0:38:28 consciousness is it really that
0:38:30 important and i'm saying yes it has
0:38:32 massive implications for our ability to
0:38:36 even ground the concept
0:38:37 of knowledge or something like it and so
0:38:40 i do want to point that out
0:38:41 um but yeah so you know in summary i
0:38:45 think we've done
0:38:46 a a great job of sort of explaining
0:38:49 what the hard problem of consciousness
0:38:51 is the different facets related to it
0:38:54 um some of the potential responses from
0:38:57 a materialist that they could possibly
0:38:59 make
0:39:00 what the problems with that are and the
0:39:02 implications of this
0:39:04 in general that we cannot ground things
0:39:06 like intentionality
0:39:07 which results in not even being able to
0:39:09 ground things like knowledge
0:39:12 so yeah i do want to open it up back to
0:39:14 you guys we're at about the 40 minute
0:39:16 mark i don't know if there's
0:39:18 anything else any of uh the panels here
0:39:21 i just want to say something about the
0:39:24 hard problem
0:39:24 in particular it's not really a hard
0:39:27 problem unless you're a materialist
0:39:30 and you can really see the significance
0:39:32 of this question i think over the past
0:39:34 100 or 200 years the philosophy of mind
0:39:37 in general in in in
0:39:38 western you know contemporary philosophy
0:39:42 i think the whole domain of the
0:39:44 philosophy of mind has been just
0:39:46 an attempt to get as far away from
0:39:49 dualism as they possibly can
0:39:51 and it was just a bunch of um basically
0:39:54 bandwagoning
0:39:55 on these physicalist theories of mind
0:39:58 very mindlessly to the extent that they
0:40:00 adopted some very radical
0:40:02 and i mean how to put it nicely
0:40:05 like ridiculous ideas like behaviorism
0:40:09 eliminative materialism is probably the
0:40:10 worst but i think identity theory is up
0:40:13 there as well i mean your mental states
0:40:15 are identical to your brain states i
0:40:17 think that's just as
0:40:18 ridiculous as eliminative materialism
0:40:22 and right now they've they shifted to
0:40:24 things like what brother hamza mentioned
0:40:25 with functionalism which doesn't really
0:40:27 deal with the problem i mean
0:40:28 i can be a dualist and accept what
0:40:30 you're telling me about functionalism
0:40:32 so it doesn't really deal with the
0:40:33 problem of qualia so i think
0:40:35 yes it is a problem and and you can
0:40:37 really see that from
0:40:38 their very desperate attempts to get
0:40:41 away from dualism
0:40:43 we we we're not saying it's it's a
0:40:45 problem in general
0:40:46 we're saying it's a problem for
0:40:48 materialism and because they have so
0:40:50 radically you know
0:40:52 uh invested themselves in this
0:40:54 materialist world view in general
0:40:56 uh in the western world over the past
0:40:59 couple centuries
0:41:00 all of their attempts in explaining
0:41:03 explaining consciousness
0:41:05 have been uh basically attempts at
0:41:07 getting away from any notion of dualism
0:41:10 yeah i mean just to add to that to be a
0:41:12 little bit more
0:41:13 maybe reflective of what's going on in
0:41:15 academia there are a bunch of atheists
0:41:18 that are not physicalists believe it or
0:41:19 not
0:41:20 right so i try to mention this when i
0:41:22 define atheism sometimes when we deliver
0:41:24 courses that
0:41:25 yes most atheists practically speaking
0:41:28 are philosophical naturalists
0:41:31 but it's not the case that all of them
0:41:34 are
0:41:35 so yes to be an atheist you know
0:41:38 uh so to be a philosophical naturalist
0:41:40 you have to be an atheist
0:41:42 but to be an atheist it doesn't doesn't
0:41:44 necessarily necessarily entail that
0:41:46 you're gonna be
0:41:47 a a a philosophical naturalist so for
0:41:49 example you have
0:41:51 professor david sharma's who adopts what
0:41:53 you call the spooky thing called pan
0:41:55 psychism i don't know if you've read a
0:41:56 book
0:41:57 yeah yeah yeah like i think some of
0:42:00 these things are just god replacements
0:42:01 man
0:42:02 i'm telling you you know the multiverse
0:42:04 pan psychism
0:42:05 all of this stuff these are just like
0:42:07 you know almost conceptual
0:42:09 replacements for god really bad versions
0:42:12 of them right anyway so i just wanted to
0:42:13 just
0:42:14 mention that because uh sometimes hamza
0:42:16 could you explain what pan psychism is
0:42:18 just in case yeah well i i think i i
0:42:21 think
0:42:21 psychists have a problem in explaining
0:42:23 what it is as well but basically
0:42:26 psychics are basically saying in a
0:42:27 really brief nutshell
0:42:29 that you have physical properties in the
0:42:31 universe
0:42:32 right and you also have conscious
0:42:34 properties in the universe right
0:42:35 so some would argue there's a form of
0:42:38 proto-consciousness in an electron
0:42:40 so an electron maybe can have a proton
0:42:43 consciousness of having an existential
0:42:45 crisis
0:42:46 why am i here why am i whisping around
0:42:49 and i know that's a crude representation
0:42:51 of it but basically what they're saying
0:42:52 is
0:42:53 in the physical universe it's not just
0:42:55 physical properties
0:42:56 you also have conscious properties a
0:42:59 form of proton consciousness
0:43:01 the problem with pan psychism there are
0:43:03 many problems and they try to address
0:43:05 them
0:43:06 is the problem of having a unified
0:43:08 conscious experience so if for example
0:43:10 in the in the fundamental building
0:43:12 blocks of the physical world
0:43:13 call them electrons or whatever you want
0:43:16 to call them
0:43:17 if there's a form of proton
0:43:18 consciousness in them then if they
0:43:20 amalgamate together to form a human
0:43:22 being for example how can you explain
0:43:24 the unified conscious experience
0:43:26 from that perspective so pang psychism
0:43:28 uh is is
0:43:29 you know some people just laugh at it
0:43:31 but it's actually gaining i think a
0:43:32 little bit more traction
0:43:34 but the interesting thing that brother
0:43:35 sharif mentioned was i felt that he
0:43:37 summarized everything beautifully and he
0:43:39 summarized the heart problem of
0:43:41 questions really well
0:43:42 it really echoes i don't know if you've
0:43:44 heard of frank jackson's mary's example
0:43:46 mary thought experiment
0:43:48 so the mary thought experiment is
0:43:50 basically
0:43:52 that he knows all the kind of
0:43:55 science if you like and all the
0:43:58 everything about color
0:43:59 everything about the visual processes
0:44:01 from a kind of
0:44:02 physical fact point of view she knows
0:44:04 all the physical facts about seeing
0:44:06 color
0:44:06 she knows all the physical facts about
0:44:08 the visual processes
0:44:09 and so on and so forth but she's been in
0:44:12 a black and white
0:44:13 grey room all her life she's never seen
0:44:16 color in her life
0:44:17 yeah but she is the master
0:44:20 of understanding the physics and the
0:44:22 biology and the chemistry and the
0:44:24 physical processes concerning color and
0:44:26 visual experience
0:44:28 now one day she's allowed to go out of
0:44:31 her room
0:44:32 and she sees the red rose for the first
0:44:34 time
0:44:36 the question here is does she learn
0:44:39 something new does she now know what
0:44:42 it's like
0:44:43 to observe a red rose many people
0:44:46 intuitive will say yeah it's the first
0:44:47 time she's seen a red rose so she's now
0:44:49 learned or she has knowledge or
0:44:51 knowledge of an experience of what it's
0:44:53 like to see a red rose this shows
0:44:55 that knowing all the physical facts is
0:44:58 not
0:44:58 knowing all the facts and there are
0:45:01 facts
0:45:02 other than physical facts now obviously
0:45:03 in the literature there are
0:45:05 um responses to this one is called the
0:45:07 ability hypothesis and so on and so
0:45:08 forth but they're really weak
0:45:10 um but i i i think what's interesting
0:45:12 maybe to move forward just as a
0:45:14 suggestion
0:45:15 there are physicalist responses to
0:45:18 our kind of attack or our understanding
0:45:21 of the heart
0:45:22 of consciousness for example eliminative
0:45:24 materialism
0:45:25 reductive materialism which i just
0:45:27 summarized i didn't really discuss
0:45:29 why there's problems in and maybe we
0:45:32 should we could allow
0:45:33 for our guests who come on board to ask
0:45:35 us those questions relate to those
0:45:37 uh approaches or maybe we should
0:45:40 summarize it ourselves
0:45:42 it's up to you you're the host but i
0:45:44 don't want to preempt anything but
0:45:45 usually
0:45:46 you know people either talk from the
0:45:48 perspective of an eliminated materialist
0:45:50 point of view
0:45:51 reductive materialist and they have
0:45:53 their own arguments
0:45:54 functionalism and measured materialism
0:45:56 as some are quite you know
0:45:58 they think they have a good argument but
0:46:00 really uh
0:46:01 obviously they don't but i don't know if
0:46:03 you want to summarize them and respond
0:46:05 to them now or just leave that for later
0:46:08 uh about about the pan psychism i just
0:46:10 wanted to say real quickly
0:46:12 that it's it's it's actually gaining so
0:46:14 much traction to the extent that
0:46:16 some people are actually proposing for
0:46:18 that to be
0:46:20 the basis for a scientific paradigm
0:46:22 shift
0:46:23 in order to allow us to account for
0:46:25 consciousness
0:46:27 and i think my problem with
0:46:30 non-physicalist
0:46:31 uh atheist accounts of consciousness and
0:46:34 reality
0:46:35 is that they really blurry the lines
0:46:37 between naturalism and supernaturalism
0:46:39 to the extent that as i was saying
0:46:41 earlier if you're gonna make that kind
0:46:43 of a radical paradigm shift
0:46:44 you can even you know include
0:46:47 supernaturalism within your worldview as
0:46:49 well so
0:46:50 we don't really have a meaningful
0:46:51 distinction between the two at this
0:46:52 point
0:46:55 and he makes he um theism far more
0:46:57 credible
0:46:58 credible in the secular academy
0:47:01 right yeah well you know if you're
0:47:03 willing to talk about pansexism
0:47:05 well there is another new phenomenon
0:47:06 phenomenon which you don't really find
0:47:08 it in the online world but it's in
0:47:10 academia it's called the phenomenal
0:47:11 concept strategy
0:47:13 so brian law he developed this thing
0:47:15 called phenomenal concept strategy
0:47:17 and it's been developed by others now
0:47:19 but basically what the idea is that you
0:47:20 have one property which is a physical
0:47:22 property in the universe so it's a
0:47:24 physical scientology
0:47:25 but they say you have two types of
0:47:26 consciousness yeah so two types of
0:47:28 concepts
0:47:30 so one concept is what you call a
0:47:32 physical functional concept and another
0:47:33 concept is
0:47:34 a disciplination of conscious experience
0:47:37 conflict it's a phenomenal
0:47:38 concept so they say that when you
0:47:41 observe a physical reality you
0:47:45 the the the mind what emerges from it
0:47:48 is a physical concept and
0:47:51 a phenomenal concept so they're trying
0:47:54 in so many different ways to try and
0:47:56 understand all of these are trying to
0:47:58 respond to all of these
0:47:59 uh points of view um
0:48:02 and uh obviously they have their own
0:48:04 problems as well in actual fact i had to
0:48:05 write an essay on brian law's
0:48:07 phenomenal concept strategy and uh it's
0:48:10 like
0:48:10 you know as jake said in the beginning i
0:48:12 think it was jake um
0:48:15 it's a contradictory paradigm
0:48:18 consciousness
0:48:19 is the final frontier if you like yeah
0:48:22 and you know maybe we could also discuss
0:48:24 about artificial intelligence because
0:48:26 professor johnson's got the very famous
0:48:27 chinese roman experiment argument which
0:48:29 i think is very powerful
0:48:30 against a strong artificial intelligence
0:48:33 and i don't believe
0:48:34 that they share these articles and take
0:48:35 them seriously like
0:48:37 a.i is going to be fully conscious like
0:48:39 a human being like
0:48:40 i'm like what on earth right
0:48:43 and brian professor um sells
0:48:47 chinese room folks from it's very
0:48:49 powerful so maybe we could get to
0:48:50 discuss that later as well inshallah
0:48:52 and jon searle is a materialist right so
0:48:54 he um
0:48:58 no no no no no i think he's emergent
0:49:03 he believes it's non it's not reducible
0:49:06 but i don't know how that's materialism
0:49:08 but whatever we can yeah
0:49:09 yeah that's that's the thing i was gonna
0:49:11 actually comment on is because
0:49:13 uh both what abdul and brother hamza are
0:49:15 saying
0:49:16 is that um i agree with you that there's
0:49:19 accounts from
0:49:20 a atheist naturalistic paradigm
0:49:23 in which they allow for some of these
0:49:25 things like john searle's emergentism
0:49:27 the problem is that they're starting to
0:49:30 muddy the waters
0:49:31 and from what i see in my research in
0:49:34 academia
0:49:35 is that the naturalists are actually
0:49:38 starting to move closer to what we would
0:49:41 call
0:49:42 supernatural things like the
0:49:45 consciousness being immaterial
0:49:47 um even pan psychism to me it just
0:49:50 confounds the problem even more because
0:49:52 it's saying
0:49:52 well not only is our brain or human
0:49:55 beings conscious
0:49:56 but every little tiny molecule is some
0:49:59 kind of
0:50:00 uh has some level of consciousness in it
0:50:02 well it doesn't really to me
0:50:05 it just makes it even more difficult to
0:50:08 for me
0:50:08 from my perspective to fit in a
0:50:10 naturalist ontology
0:50:12 because once you allow for something
0:50:14 like that
0:50:15 then your most of your arguments against
0:50:18 a
0:50:19 theism or supernatural supernaturalism
0:50:23 seem to fade away
0:50:24 because you have a large a lot of the
0:50:27 same things within your ontological
0:50:29 scheme
0:50:30 and so the way i see it is well
0:50:33 yeah naturalism is starting to move
0:50:36 closer to
0:50:37 supernaturalism but it's it's in doing
0:50:40 so
0:50:41 it's losing ground to criticize the
0:50:44 theistic picture
0:50:46 and so that that's what the issue is i
0:50:49 i think i think it's better to try to
0:50:52 push the
0:50:53 the naturalist more towards what
0:50:55 rosenberg is saying and you guys may
0:50:57 disagree but
0:50:58 i think it's i think it's to try to show
0:51:00 them well no
0:51:02 once you start redefining terms in such
0:51:04 a way that you can
0:51:06 be a materialist and also be a pan
0:51:09 psychist
0:51:10 and what does materialism really mean at
0:51:12 that point
0:51:13 i think we start to lose track of of the
0:51:16 distinction between the terminology
0:51:19 so what i try to do normally is i try to
0:51:21 push them towards well no this is
0:51:23 you know a hard physicalist picture is
0:51:25 really what the true
0:51:27 understanding of naturalism would be
0:51:29 otherwise okay you can move closer
0:51:32 towards me but then
0:51:33 don't try to criticize me on on my
0:51:36 picture of god or
0:51:37 um angels or things like that because
0:51:39 you guys are allowing for this
0:51:41 you know i don't know i don't know i
0:51:44 don't know if you remember it jake but i
0:51:45 think you were on the call and we were
0:51:47 having a discussion with an atheist
0:51:49 friend
0:51:49 of ours i think he was an ex-muslim who
0:51:51 who was like a proponent of pan psychism
0:51:54 and i was talking to him and he accepted
0:51:56 like cosmological arguments generally he
0:51:59 accepted that there is a necessary
0:52:00 foundation for reality
0:52:02 and then i think he sort of forgot that
0:52:04 he was a pan psychist i'm like so you
0:52:06 believe that there is some kind of a
0:52:08 conscious cause
0:52:09 or a conscious necessary foundation and
0:52:11 he was like uh he really hesitated
0:52:14 i'm like even if you say it's some kind
0:52:15 of a proto-consciousness
0:52:17 we're really blurring the lines here
0:52:18 between what it is to be a naturalist
0:52:20 and a supernatural is because right now
0:52:22 you believe in a conscious
0:52:23 uh foundation for reality so do i now
0:52:25 let's talk about what the nature of that
0:52:27 what
0:52:28 which which theory better explains the
0:52:30 data
0:52:32 since we have this huge common ground
0:52:34 right so um
0:52:35 i i do think the reason i think uh
0:52:37 philosophers like graham opie are
0:52:39 very good at building this common ground
0:52:41 is because he's very straightforward in
0:52:43 his definitions of what it means
0:52:45 to be a naturalist and a supernaturalist
0:52:47 when he said when he says he believes in
0:52:48 a natural
0:52:50 initial item as he puts it that created
0:52:52 the universe or that caused the universe
0:52:54 he explicitly says that it's a
0:52:56 non-conscious
0:52:57 initial so i can work with that right i
0:53:00 but then when you say you know it can be
0:53:02 anything and you just slap the label
0:53:03 natural on it
0:53:05 i'm just not not sure how how how that
0:53:07 can be philosophically
0:53:08 useful in fairness to them if they adopt
0:53:12 psychism they've already moved away from
0:53:14 a terrorism anyway because yeah
0:53:17 is not considered a physicalist uh
0:53:20 uh conception of the philosopher of the
0:53:22 mind so
0:53:23 right they've already moved way away
0:53:25 from materialism step on psychists
0:53:26 that's for sure
0:53:27 right right yeah yeah and the the issue
0:53:30 with that like i said is that
0:53:32 um one of the things that i'm noticing
0:53:35 is that you have people like chalmers
0:53:36 moving towards pan psychism
0:53:39 and what i see from the theistic
0:53:40 paradigm is even with the all the new
0:53:43 scientific evidence
0:53:44 even the philosophical discussions our
0:53:47 view
0:53:47 for the most part has stood the test of
0:53:50 time
0:53:51 all of these things like consciousness
0:53:53 and what we're talking about now
0:53:55 fit very nicely and neatly within the
0:53:57 theistic
0:53:58 ontology whereas they don't for
0:54:00 naturalism and
0:54:01 naturalism is the thing that is having
0:54:03 to make room for it
0:54:05 where all along we're just saying well
0:54:06 yeah guys this is what we've been saying
0:54:08 for thousands of years pretty much so i
0:54:11 i
0:54:12 see that as a a genuine thing that
0:54:15 people should be paying close close
0:54:17 attention
0:54:18 attention to in the sense that
0:54:20 naturalism
0:54:21 seems to be moving a bit more towards
0:54:24 the supernatural
0:54:25 and not having as clear of a hard line
0:54:28 in between those two things
0:54:30 whereas we are perfectly fine with it
0:54:32 and it fits very nicely
0:54:34 in our ontological uh structure so yeah
0:54:37 i want to ask brother hamza a
0:54:38 quick question maybe before we bring
0:54:40 guests on because um
0:54:42 i mean generally uh when we talk about
0:54:45 consciousness or arguments from reason
0:54:46 they're they're generally arguments
0:54:48 against naturalism
0:54:49 uh and not necessarily a direct you know
0:54:53 we can't
0:54:53 we don't have an a direct route to god
0:54:56 necessarily it's not like a direct
0:54:57 inference
0:54:58 i don't know if you disagree with that
0:55:00 but um how would you
0:55:02 turn this discussion about consciousness
0:55:04 to a
0:55:05 you know an inference to the to theism
0:55:08 basically
0:55:10 yeah well i think for me what i would do
0:55:12 is
0:55:14 it depends what kind of conception of
0:55:16 non-physicalistic conception of the mind
0:55:18 you adopt so
0:55:19 if you adopt a dualistic integrated type
0:55:22 of
0:55:23 dualism so an integrate type of judaism
0:55:25 which basically says that your ontology
0:55:27 is
0:55:28 that there are physical properties and
0:55:30 non-physical properties but at the same
0:55:32 time
0:55:33 we can still engage with the project of
0:55:35 neuroscience neuroscience
0:55:37 in order to understand you know how the
0:55:39 brain works and so on and so forth
0:55:41 but with that kind of metaphysical
0:55:43 backdrop that there are
0:55:45 physical and non physical properties and
0:55:48 all of that makes sense together
0:55:50 so you know can you be can you adopt a
0:55:54 kind of integrated type of dualism
0:55:56 uh like professor tell your pharaoh and
0:55:58 others
0:55:59 yes you can can that be a good argument
0:56:01 for god's existence
0:56:03 well from a metaphysical point of view
0:56:05 one would say well
0:56:06 you know in meta what is metaphysics
0:56:08 really it's like your first principles
0:56:10 it's like you kind of um first principle
0:56:13 framework if you like your lenses in
0:56:15 order to understand reality
0:56:16 it coheres well with understanding
0:56:19 yourself
0:56:20 reality and how you relate to reality so
0:56:23 one would argue
0:56:25 does integrated dualism make sense
0:56:28 under theism and then you'd have to make
0:56:30 her inference between the two and make a
0:56:32 connection between the two
0:56:33 and you'd have to show how it's some
0:56:35 kind of metaphysically necessary
0:56:37 and i don't mean that in a kind of
0:56:39 philosophical sense necessary yeah
0:56:41 how it's metaphysically necessary
0:56:44 to to to to bring in the to bring in
0:56:47 theism
0:56:49 in order to upgrade and enhance your
0:56:52 metaphysics
0:56:53 and make sense of integrated dualism
0:56:56 that's how you would make the link you
0:56:57 say fine
0:56:58 okay we believe in dualism we believe in
0:57:01 non-physical and physical properties and
0:57:03 we also believe that you could do the
0:57:04 science to understand the physical no
0:57:05 problem so neuroscience is not thrown
0:57:07 under the uh you don't throw the baby
0:57:09 out with the bath water but it has its
0:57:11 scope because it only can deal with the
0:57:12 physical stuff
0:57:14 no problem right what makes sense of
0:57:16 that what makes sense of the fact that
0:57:18 there are non-physical
0:57:19 properties in the universe and physical
0:57:20 properties in the universe and we'd be
0:57:22 given a mind
0:57:23 to do the science in order to understand
0:57:24 the physical stuff what makes sense of
0:57:26 that
0:57:27 then you say well god makes sense of
0:57:28 that how and then you start
0:57:30 you have to talk about well who is god
0:57:33 and what are the kind of
0:57:34 you know essential names and attributes
0:57:35 of god that would make sense
0:57:37 of of integrated dualism for example so
0:57:39 you can
0:57:40 say that theism a theistic type of
0:57:42 integrated dualism actually makes sense
0:57:45 uh but that's how you would have to try
0:57:46 and do it and that would be a starting
0:57:48 point
0:57:49 and would when we bring rationality into
0:57:51 the picture i think it just makes it
0:57:52 much stronger right like because it's
0:57:54 not
0:57:54 right now it's not just self-awareness
0:57:56 you have self self-awareness but
0:57:58 also these truth-bearing faculties that
0:58:00 we've been given
0:58:01 and if they are reliable then i think
0:58:03 that just makes the case for
0:58:05 a rational foundation of reality just
0:58:08 much stronger
0:58:09 well yes it depends if
0:58:12 because funny enough i did an essay on
0:58:14 this so michael dean
0:58:16 he he did a response to planting and
0:58:18 stitch
0:58:19 on the issue of basically
0:58:23 reliable of cognitive faculties
0:58:26 so can does natural selection can it
0:58:29 basically
0:58:29 explain the fact that we have um
0:58:34 truth bearing cognitive faculties we
0:58:35 have we have reliable cognitive
0:58:37 faculties that can produce
0:58:39 true beliefs right reliable true beliefs
0:58:42 and obviously you know planting his
0:58:43 argument you know stitch's argument
0:58:45 i think prank taker goes too far in my
0:58:47 view he goes way too far i think there
0:58:49 is a middle ground
0:58:50 i think the the thing that we should
0:58:51 suggest is that
0:58:53 if you're going to adopt
0:58:56 a naturalistic explanation like the
0:58:57 darwinian mechanism to explain your
0:58:59 truth bearing cognitive faculties that
0:59:00 could produce
0:59:01 um reliable true beliefs um
0:59:05 you they they have to basically adopt
0:59:07 skepticism
0:59:08 which really undermines their claims
0:59:10 about religion and their claims about
0:59:12 other things right
0:59:13 but that's a big topic that is actually
0:59:16 quite a lengthy topic because if you
0:59:18 think plantinga went too far then i
0:59:20 i i'd say you'd probably say the same
0:59:21 about cs lewis because cs lewis makes
0:59:23 basically
0:59:24 an incompatibility argument between
0:59:27 reason and naturalism that
0:59:29 it's not just it's not a probabilistic
0:59:31 argument that
0:59:32 reliable rational faculties would be
0:59:34 unlikely under naturalism
0:59:36 he says they're completely incompatible
0:59:38 as and it's impossible
0:59:39 so would you make that strong claim or
0:59:42 or would you make america
0:59:44 my reading and it could be totally wrong
0:59:46 i would say that's a bit too far
0:59:49 so um but
0:59:53 both would have to actually provide some
0:59:54 evidence for the position the best thing
0:59:56 that you can do i think which is safest
0:59:58 philosophically
0:59:59 is just to say you can't claim truth
1:00:03 you have to be a skeptic if you adopt
1:00:05 natural selection
1:00:07 as your primary mechanism to explain
1:00:10 your cognitive faculties your reliable
1:00:12 cognitive factors that supposedly
1:00:14 uh bring about uh reliable true beliefs
1:00:17 if you believe natural selection leads
1:00:18 to that well you have a problem
1:00:20 the safest thing you need to do
1:00:21 philosophically is adopt skepticism yeah
1:00:24 and you're talking about like a radical
1:00:26 kind of skepticism not a healthy
1:00:28 kind of skepticism global skepticism
1:00:31 you can't make more claims you can't
1:00:33 make truth claims you can't even make
1:00:35 claims
1:00:36 you go to sleep don't enter the debate
1:00:38 you're not in the forum
1:00:39 you don't even have the keys to the
1:00:41 house of reasons you've lost the keys to
1:00:43 the house of reason my friend
1:00:44 yeah and um uh yeah so i'll show you the
1:00:47 essay i did for that it's quite
1:00:49 interesting it was for university but
1:00:51 yeah so i think it's a little bit too
1:00:53 far but to be honest if we bring it up
1:00:54 now
1:00:55 so it will just take divert tests for a
1:00:57 totally different topic yeah yeah yeah
1:00:59 yeah i agree but other things should be
1:01:01 uh quite crazy so
1:01:03 um but yeah so i mean i think yeah i
1:01:06 think we're there i mean we've explained
1:01:07 what the hard problem of consciousness
1:01:09 is two main problems what is it like for
1:01:12 a particular conscious organism to have
1:01:14 an inner subject of conscious experience
1:01:16 and how and why do these inner
1:01:18 subjective conscious experiences arise
1:01:20 from
1:01:20 seemingly cold
1:01:23 physical processes physicalism can't
1:01:26 answer that
1:01:27 you have eliminative materialism which
1:01:28 just denies the fact that you have
1:01:30 inner subjective conscious experiences
1:01:32 obviously they got more to say but we
1:01:34 could unpack that when we speak to
1:01:35 people today
1:01:36 we've got reductive materialism you've
1:01:37 got functionism you've got a limited
1:01:39 materialism
1:01:40 and you should and inshallah we'll be
1:01:41 able to deal with these when we get
1:01:42 people on board
1:01:43 there's no point i'm packing them right
1:01:45 now yeah but yeah
1:01:47 let's do that inshallah all right so we
1:01:49 got um
1:01:50 elmo here in the stream i'm going to add
1:01:53 you uh mr elmo
1:01:57 just maybe a reminder as well to the
1:01:59 guests to try to keep their comments
1:02:01 questions short
1:02:02 unless you want to engage in a pushback
1:02:04 and critique the points
1:02:07 yeah so how's it going elmo hello what's
1:02:09 up hey man
1:02:10 yeah i just came from justin's debate
1:02:12 with a christian
1:02:13 i moderated but i wanted to join here
1:02:17 but um
1:02:18 yeah you got um well thanks for having
1:02:21 me back guys
1:02:23 no problem so um i don't know how long
1:02:26 you've been watching but we're talking
1:02:27 about um
1:02:28 consciousness and whether or not it can
1:02:30 be grounded on materialism did you have
1:02:33 a particular comment or question
1:02:37 uh i guess to hamza um
1:02:41 in this case then you you talked about
1:02:43 like how
1:02:44 would we link i guess or directly
1:02:46 correlate
1:02:47 integrated dualism with theism
1:02:50 can you clarify like how you
1:02:53 you would do that for yourself in your
1:02:55 own belief system
1:02:58 uh no i just don't have it in my head
1:03:02 i didn't really prepare for the god's
1:03:04 existence stuff to be honest
1:03:06 uh all right so i'll leave it to someone
1:03:08 else to answer
1:03:09 i'd have to think about back what i
1:03:11 wrote in one of my chapters from my book
1:03:13 which had to do do with the fact that
1:03:15 you know
1:03:16 does you know if god is an all-aware
1:03:19 being
1:03:20 and the all-knowing being does it make
1:03:22 sense that
1:03:23 he created organisms that have a mind
1:03:26 that have a brain that can also be aware
1:03:28 of themselves as well does that follow
1:03:30 so it's along the lines of that now one
1:03:33 would then argue now well
1:03:35 how do you know there is this kind of
1:03:37 all aware being
1:03:38 that can bring into existence beings
1:03:41 with minds that can be aware of
1:03:42 themselves but
1:03:44 that misses the point of actually having
1:03:46 a coherent metaphysic to explain reality
1:03:48 because
1:03:49 if you continue like that then you'll
1:03:50 have no metaphysical assumptions and
1:03:52 therefore you'll have no
1:03:53 understanding of most of reality so you
1:03:55 need what they call
1:03:57 a metaphysical stopping point that makes
1:03:59 sense
1:04:00 of reality so um i haven't really
1:04:04 prepared for it i don't really remember
1:04:05 what i wrote or stuff so
1:04:07 you'd have to ask someone else to be
1:04:08 honest okay so can you tell me like what
1:04:10 your definition of consciousness is like
1:04:13 what
1:04:13 exactly is consciousness for you
1:04:16 i guess consciousness okay so
1:04:22 echoing professor david chalmers he
1:04:25 makes a distinguishing
1:04:26 a distinction between the easy problems
1:04:29 and
1:04:30 the hard problems okay so when he
1:04:33 discusses the problems of consciousness
1:04:35 he elaborates on what consciousness is
1:04:37 so with regards to the easy problems is
1:04:40 that you're able to
1:04:41 think you have a stream of thoughts
1:04:45 you have the ability to
1:04:49 to perform cognitive functions that
1:04:52 result
1:04:53 in thinking such as
1:04:56 mathematical thinking you can make
1:04:58 inferences
1:04:59 you can make deductive arguments you can
1:05:02 conceptualize
1:05:03 you could infer you could deduce you can
1:05:07 reflect you can ponder you have
1:05:11 memory for example that's another aspect
1:05:13 the connected to consciousness
1:05:15 and then the other aspect was is that
1:05:17 you have what you call
1:05:19 the experience the inner subject of
1:05:21 conscious experience
1:05:23 so for example when you eat a
1:05:24 marshmallow something is happening
1:05:27 obviously to your physical senses
1:05:30 something is happening in your brain for
1:05:31 sure
1:05:32 but you're also undergoing a particular
1:05:35 experience
1:05:36 eating that nice soft i don't know
1:05:39 strawberry flavored marshmallow whatever
1:05:41 kind of marshmallow you like right
1:05:43 so there's the inner sub innocent in it
1:05:46 in the subjective experiences like pla
1:05:49 and pleasure and the experiences of
1:05:52 having
1:05:53 i don't know a romantic dinner with your
1:05:55 wife or whatever the case may be right
1:05:57 um and then you have the easier problems
1:05:59 which you know one would argue
1:06:00 functionalism may address or the other
1:06:02 kind of
1:06:04 physicalist ontologies may address which
1:06:06 include things like
1:06:07 you know we have a stream of of thinking
1:06:09 of conscious thought
1:06:10 we can infer we can deduce and so on and
1:06:12 so forth
1:06:14 so that would basically hopefully
1:06:16 summarize what it means
1:06:18 when we're saying consciousness so
1:06:21 can i ask you so you said that um for
1:06:23 the easy definition like it's
1:06:26 the ability to think would you say that
1:06:28 a computer
1:06:29 you know that a very complex complex
1:06:32 computer
1:06:33 is it would you say that's that
1:06:35 something that's able to think
1:06:36 and have this stream of cognitive
1:06:38 functions or would you say that oh
1:06:41 like consciousness is only limited to
1:06:44 biological uh
1:06:46 material and not something like a
1:06:48 microchip
1:06:49 it's a very good question well it
1:06:51 depends what you mean by thinking
1:06:53 so if thinking you relate it to meaning
1:06:56 and to meaning you relate to
1:06:57 intentionality
1:06:58 then computers don't do anything like
1:07:00 that computers
1:07:02 are just about syntactical arrangements
1:07:05 so
1:07:06 the basis of all computer programs are
1:07:08 zeros on ones so
1:07:09 it's based on syntax in other words
1:07:11 symbols it's a rearrangement of zeros
1:07:13 and ones
1:07:14 do these zeros on ones are they aware of
1:07:16 their own
1:07:18 zero and one and or are they aware of
1:07:20 something outside of themselves right
1:07:22 do they have an ability to attach
1:07:24 meaning to the symbols
1:07:26 and that's a kind of interesting
1:07:27 argument in consciousness
1:07:29 so you know as uh brother charisse
1:07:32 mentioned earlier he
1:07:33 eloquently talked about the kind of
1:07:35 computer system and then zeros and ones
1:07:38 and when it comes to computer systems
1:07:40 the problem that you have is that really
1:07:42 it's a you need a mind to interpret the
1:07:44 zeros on ones anyway you need an
1:07:46 external
1:07:47 mind to do that and that's why william
1:07:48 hasker he makes a really good point
1:07:50 he basically says that computer programs
1:07:52 or computer systems are just a
1:07:53 protraction
1:07:54 of human of human consciousness anyway
1:07:57 of human rationality anyway right
1:08:00 so can computers think like us of course
1:08:03 not
1:08:04 can they do kind of abstract reasoning
1:08:06 based on their syntactical arrangements
1:08:08 and come up with you know very fast
1:08:11 kind of uh solutions to complicate
1:08:13 algorithms
1:08:14 for sure can computers be seemingly more
1:08:17 intelligent than humans
1:08:18 in this particular way 100 they already
1:08:22 they're already showing this
1:08:23 but what do you mean by thinking if
1:08:25 you're talking about meaning and
1:08:26 intentionality as well
1:08:28 which is the kind of you know the
1:08:30 cautious stream of
1:08:31 thoughts right then absolutely not
1:08:34 because
1:08:35 let me let me show you what i mean by
1:08:37 making a distinction between
1:08:39 syntactical and semantic arrangements so
1:08:42 for example let me give you three
1:08:43 sentences
1:08:44 in in language
1:08:50 and i love you a lot so that's greek
1:08:53 turkish
1:08:54 and english okay they all have the same
1:08:57 meaning which is
1:08:59 i love you a lot now say you only know
1:09:02 english
1:09:03 if i give you the greek alphabet and
1:09:05 i'll tell you to put
1:09:06 sigma which is the like the s sigma
1:09:11 epsilon right which is like the e then
1:09:13 have a space and i'll tell you take
1:09:15 the alpha and put it here take the gamma
1:09:18 put it next to the alpha take the alpha
1:09:20 again critics of the gamma so
1:09:22 i could train you on without even
1:09:25 talking about meaning
1:09:26 on arranging those symbols in a
1:09:29 particular way
1:09:31 by virtue but by by virtue of you
1:09:34 knowing how to arrange those symbols in
1:09:36 a particular way
1:09:37 it will never give rise to the meaning
1:09:38 of i love you a lot
1:09:40 you just never know because you have no
1:09:41 way of attaching the meaning to those
1:09:44 symbols right
1:09:45 so that's an interesting distinction to
1:09:48 make between
1:09:49 uh syntactic and semantic arrangements
1:09:52 and computer programs are very similar
1:09:54 they're based on basically zeros and
1:09:55 ones fundamentally
1:09:57 and even when you talk about machine
1:09:59 learning and all of these crazy
1:10:00 beautiful terms that you learn about now
1:10:01 in artificial intelligence it's still
1:10:03 reduced to
1:10:04 zeros on ones arranged in a particular
1:10:06 way yeah so
1:10:07 just to wrap this up professor john so
1:10:10 came
1:10:10 uh developed a really powerful thought
1:10:13 experiment he was on a plane i think
1:10:15 when he was thinking
1:10:16 about this and he's called the chinese
1:10:17 normal experiment and he wants to make a
1:10:19 distinction between strong ai and weak
1:10:21 ai
1:10:21 which is the kind of distinction that
1:10:22 we're making now can computers really
1:10:24 think like reading kind of thing
1:10:26 and the chinese room experiment in in
1:10:30 summary is this you have someone in a
1:10:31 room
1:10:34 and there are chinese speakers outside
1:10:35 of the room
1:10:37 and the chinese speakers are giving
1:10:39 questions in chinese
1:10:41 to the person in the room the person in
1:10:43 the room does not know chinese
1:10:46 but they do have an english rule book
1:10:48 and the english rule book is telling him
1:10:50 when you see a squiggly thing plus
1:10:53 another squiggly thing that looks like
1:10:54 this
1:10:55 then give some cards about to the people
1:10:59 outside of the room
1:11:01 that include these squiggly things so
1:11:03 he's got a rule book
1:11:04 that teaches them how to look at the
1:11:07 shapes
1:11:08 and the syntactic arrangement of the of
1:11:11 the symbols and shapes of chinese
1:11:13 the characters and the rule book tells
1:11:15 them if you see this type of
1:11:17 kind of arrangement then give them these
1:11:21 characters now the people outside of the
1:11:23 room every time they ask a question
1:11:25 they're getting the right
1:11:26 answer so the people outside the room
1:11:27 who know chinese they think
1:11:29 the person in the room actually knows
1:11:31 chinese
1:11:32 but he doesn't he just has an english
1:11:34 rule book
1:11:35 that helps him uh deal with the kind of
1:11:38 syntactic arrangements not the semantic
1:11:40 arrangements because that has no way of
1:11:42 adding semantics to syntax right
1:11:44 so that shows that the computer system
1:11:48 can do
1:11:49 complex uh symbolic arrangement or
1:11:52 syntactic arrangements but
1:11:53 there's no way of attaching meaning to
1:11:55 the symbols now one would
1:11:56 there's there is a reply to this is
1:11:58 called the system's reply
1:12:00 and one would argue is well doesn't the
1:12:02 whole system know the meaning
1:12:04 well what does that mean there is no way
1:12:06 of the system attaching meaning to the
1:12:08 symbols
1:12:08 in in any shape or form even if the rule
1:12:11 book was in the person's head
1:12:13 they would still not know uh chinese the
1:12:16 meaning of
1:12:17 of those words right yeah okay uh one
1:12:19 letter
1:12:20 yeah elmo i just i just want to say that
1:12:23 we've got a bunch of people waiting
1:12:25 so yeah we're gonna we're gonna yeah
1:12:26 we're gonna have to move on to the next
1:12:28 guest
1:12:29 but sorry uh yeah yeah i do appreciate
1:12:31 you calling no no no no no problem
1:12:33 brother hamza
1:12:34 but i do appreciate you um calling in
1:12:37 and uh
1:12:38 asking some questions thank you guys
1:12:39 thank you take care
1:12:41 thank you nice to meet you take care
1:12:45 all right we're gonna go to uh muzzy
1:12:48 here
1:12:50 hey mazzy you hear me yeah yeah
1:12:54 sound welcome so uh what i wanted to ask
1:12:57 you
1:12:58 is um how do you
1:13:02 not not reconciling a way but square up
1:13:04 this idea of them
1:13:06 you know like traumatic incidents to
1:13:07 like people who have had like brain
1:13:09 injuries
1:13:10 who have lost their um in way sense of
1:13:13 self
1:13:14 like there was a famous um incident back
1:13:16 in the 1800s when someone got a ball
1:13:19 um through their head it was a train
1:13:20 it's quite famous they teach it in
1:13:21 psychology medical school they did
1:13:23 everything
1:13:23 and he had a pole go through his um
1:13:26 brain
1:13:27 and his perception changed but he was
1:13:30 still himself
1:13:31 but something changed about him so i was
1:13:32 thinking if they could use this as an
1:13:34 argument to say that
1:13:35 there's something physical about
1:13:37 consciousness and but just another
1:13:39 interesting thought
1:13:40 obviously i'm like a medical school i
1:13:41 mean so i
1:13:43 you know like you know when you study
1:13:44 conjoined twins who are conjoined in the
1:13:46 brain
1:13:47 it's interesting that they still have
1:13:49 this individualistic will
1:13:50 despite their motor functions in the
1:13:52 brain it's quite interesting
1:13:54 but then obviously i was going to ask
1:13:56 you about the um thing about traumatic
1:13:57 brain injuries to see what you guys
1:13:59 think
1:14:01 yeah i don't know who wants to tackle it
1:14:05 first if anybody
1:14:06 i'll just say one sentence that i think
1:14:09 i mean if i'm not misunderstanding this
1:14:11 i think this is more related to the easy
1:14:12 problem of consciousness
1:14:14 because we do we do acknowledge that
1:14:16 there are interactions and there are
1:14:17 correlations between
1:14:19 the physical aspects of our neural
1:14:21 activity and our consciousness
1:14:23 and and this is more a question to do
1:14:25 with you know personal identity and
1:14:27 mental continuity and stuff
1:14:29 which i think is is a problem that is
1:14:31 related to consciousness but it's not
1:14:33 i don't think it's dire like like the
1:14:34 hard problem of consciousness itself
1:14:36 which
1:14:37 deals with like self-awareness and
1:14:39 qualia but um
1:14:40 yeah but it's it's a good question i
1:14:42 just i don't think it's it's it's it
1:14:44 directly tackles the hard problem of
1:14:46 consciousness it
1:14:48 all shows us is that there are
1:14:49 correlations between our neurological
1:14:52 activity and our uh perceived personal
1:14:54 identity
1:14:55 or even our consciousness which we do
1:14:56 acknowledge i mean dualists don't deny
1:14:59 that there is uh you know some kind of a
1:15:01 correlation or an
1:15:03 inter interaction or interdependence
1:15:04 between the physical and the
1:15:05 non-physical
1:15:07 yeah so yeah
1:15:10 any any of those scientific uh
1:15:13 uh medical examples to know in any shape
1:15:16 or form
1:15:17 undermine the kind of independence of
1:15:20 non-physical consciousness
1:15:21 and the physical brain it doesn't
1:15:23 undermine it at all in any shape or form
1:15:24 and a really easy thought experiment is
1:15:26 to think about someone driving a car
1:15:28 right so in order for the so you have a
1:15:31 driver you have a car
1:15:33 in order for the driver to start driving
1:15:36 the car
1:15:37 the car has to work right if the car
1:15:40 doesn't work and the driver is okay
1:15:43 then the the driver is not going to go
1:15:45 anywhere
1:15:46 conversely the car
1:15:49 even if it's working and this and the
1:15:50 drive is dead right
1:15:52 the car's not going to go anywhere so
1:15:54 that's a really interesting
1:15:56 simple way of showing that the guy in
1:15:58 the car is like the mind
1:15:59 and the car itself is like the brain
1:16:02 yeah just because they need each other
1:16:05 to kind of
1:16:06 uh function in the physical world it
1:16:08 doesn't mean they're the same thing
1:16:11 it's and that's why you can make a very
1:16:12 clear distinction between the driver and
1:16:14 the car
1:16:15 just because the brain is damaged in in
1:16:18 this case maybe the car's damaged maybe
1:16:20 i don't know the the gear stick's not
1:16:22 working properly
1:16:23 if something's gonna happen the the
1:16:25 driver he may be a fully functional
1:16:27 great driver but if the gear stick's not
1:16:30 working properly then the car's not
1:16:31 gonna be moving that well right
1:16:33 so these examples in
1:16:37 medicine even in medical history do not
1:16:39 undermine in any shape or form the fact
1:16:41 that consciousness can be independent
1:16:44 to physicality in any shape or form um
1:16:48 and yes i would echo what abdul said as
1:16:50 well even if they were to try and make
1:16:52 that claim
1:16:52 still doesn't undermine doesn't solve
1:16:55 the hard problem of consciousness which
1:16:57 is
1:16:57 what is it like for an individual human
1:16:59 being to have an inner subject of
1:17:00 conscious experience
1:17:01 and why do these phenomenal conscious
1:17:03 states in a subject of conscious states
1:17:05 arise
1:17:06 from neurobiological physical things in
1:17:08 the first place so
1:17:09 that would be my answer to that
1:17:11 particular question right and even when
1:17:13 you have
1:17:14 cases like when they remove half of
1:17:17 someone's brain
1:17:18 it's not like you have half of the
1:17:20 consciousness or half of the person
1:17:22 there's still a unified consciousness so
1:17:25 if you thought that there was a direct
1:17:26 correlation we would expect to find
1:17:28 something different
1:17:30 and interestingly enough there are some
1:17:32 people
1:17:33 you can actually look it up i forget the
1:17:35 name of uh
1:17:36 the brain disorder issue but there are
1:17:38 people that actually only have
1:17:40 10 percent of the normal brain matter
1:17:44 and yet they can function to up to 75
1:17:47 percent
1:17:47 as quote-unquote normal as we would with
1:17:50 a full brain
1:17:52 so if that were true we would expect to
1:17:54 see something
1:17:55 dip radically different than that so i
1:17:57 think that also
1:17:58 helps to understand and capture what's
1:18:00 happening well you throw something
1:18:03 in the way i'm sorry just very quickly
1:18:05 to throw something as a span into the
1:18:07 works this new thing called
1:18:08 neurocardiology
1:18:09 that's been discussed for the past 20 or
1:18:11 30 years or something
1:18:13 that the heart now has its own brain
1:18:15 it's
1:18:16 like 40 000 neurons right stomach as
1:18:19 well
1:18:20 sorry the stomach as well yeah
1:18:24 and it makes it's very interesting when
1:18:27 you refer to some hadith talking about
1:18:28 the stomach right the stomach lied
1:18:30 right now obviously there's an
1:18:32 interpretation to that but it just gives
1:18:33 a different spin to these hadith
1:18:35 so the heart you know and
1:18:38 neuroscientists by the way are not i
1:18:39 haven't studied this properly it's in
1:18:41 the literature it's in the medical
1:18:42 literature they're not studying this
1:18:43 probably it's actually cardiologists
1:18:44 that are studying the kind of
1:18:45 uh the brain of the heart if you like
1:18:47 it's got about 40 000 neurons
1:18:49 and this also shows the scientific
1:18:52 method is based on induction we'll have
1:18:53 new data that can undermine previous
1:18:55 conclusions it's influx
1:18:57 so god knows you know and that's why
1:18:59 there's been some evidence to show i'm
1:19:00 not saying it's conclusive that when
1:19:02 heart
1:19:02 when people have heart transplants
1:19:04 people's memories they have different
1:19:06 memories
1:19:07 or slight personality personality
1:19:09 changes as well
1:19:10 so you know what they're going to say
1:19:12 about that that now consciousness is is
1:19:14 in the heart
1:19:14 okay well thank you that's like the
1:19:16 islamic paradigm do you see my point
1:19:18 i just want to throw that in there
1:19:19 because that's very interesting so yep
1:19:22 yep and um you can make a quick comment
1:19:25 and then we're going to have to go to
1:19:27 the next guest
1:19:28 if you have any final thoughts yeah i
1:19:30 was going to say with what you said
1:19:31 about
1:19:32 it's the um they split the corpus
1:19:33 callosum which is the land of like nerve
1:19:35 fibers in the middle of the brain
1:19:37 and your right consciousness doesn't
1:19:38 really split and i've seen atheists try
1:19:40 to redefine it and saying that we've
1:19:41 discovered
1:19:42 changes but they they mean like uh
1:19:44 certain like physical emotional
1:19:45 experiences
1:19:46 because you're affecting physical brain
1:19:48 so they try to redefine the term but
1:19:50 yeah it's funny
1:19:50 even when you split them in the
1:19:52 consciousness is still unified yeah
1:19:54 all right well appreciate you coming on
1:19:56 and asking your question muzzy uh i
1:19:58 guess we'll talk to you another time
1:19:59 so i'm like
1:20:03 just really quickly before you move on
1:20:05 to the next guest really quick
1:20:06 to make one point which is that i think
1:20:08 the discussion here is not necessarily
1:20:10 about whether
1:20:11 if you affect the neurons are you going
1:20:13 to affect certain perceptions or
1:20:15 emotional states
1:20:17 i think the discussion is is that does
1:20:19 the brain state does the physical matter
1:20:21 of the brain
1:20:22 does it provide us the complete picture
1:20:24 of consciousness
1:20:25 can it bridge the gap between
1:20:27 understanding the physical processes of
1:20:29 the brain
1:20:30 and consciousness itself and the point
1:20:32 being is that it doesn't
1:20:33 and it's not because we just don't know
1:20:35 the science enough
1:20:37 it's because it's an in-principle
1:20:39 problem there's an unbridgeable gap
1:20:41 yeah so you can so even if i think there
1:20:43 was a question somebody asked uh
1:20:45 in a in a comment when we were
1:20:47 advertising this uh stream
1:20:49 he said well yeah but you could you know
1:20:51 do a head transplant
1:20:52 yeah and you could you know take the
1:20:54 consciousness of a person into another
1:20:56 person
1:20:56 then i said okay look even if they were
1:21:00 able to do this it still does not
1:21:02 explain consciousness
1:21:04 yeah and i think hamza's exact example
1:21:06 of the car in the drive is a very good
1:21:07 example
1:21:08 in order to explain that point it's not
1:21:10 really explaining
1:21:12 where that consciousness comes from it's
1:21:15 just simply explaining that
1:21:16 one of the facets or the vehicle by
1:21:19 which consciousness
1:21:21 comes into the world is for a brain
1:21:24 right right all right we're gonna go to
1:21:27 the next
1:21:28 guest we've got adnan here
1:21:32 salaam alaikum everyone
1:21:37 i have a quick question uh what do you
1:21:39 guys think
1:21:40 is the islamic definition of
1:21:42 consciousness
1:21:44 not like the philosophical you know in
1:21:46 terms of the western tradition
1:21:48 but what is the islamic like where is
1:21:50 somewhere we can point in the quran and
1:21:52 sunnah
1:21:53 and say this is consciousness
1:21:56 that's my question basically
1:22:00 uh i don't know which one you guys want
1:22:02 to start to address that that's a little
1:22:04 bit out of my
1:22:04 house i think the question is
1:22:08 is when we're talking about
1:22:09 consciousness are we talking about a
1:22:11 phenomena
1:22:12 that we can ascertain from the mind by
1:22:15 our investigation
1:22:17 or are we talking about a phenomena that
1:22:19 requires some textual information to
1:22:22 inform us about
1:22:23 for example when we talk about angels
1:22:25 maletica
1:22:26 that's not something that i can sense
1:22:28 rationally yeah or scientifically in
1:22:30 order to come to the conclusion that
1:22:31 angels exist
1:22:32 that comes from the text so because it
1:22:35 comes from the text and the text informs
1:22:37 us
1:22:38 we don't try to rationalize it now other
1:22:40 things that we can
1:22:42 sense and we can understand for example
1:22:44 the earth is round
1:22:45 yeah or is a sphere then we can sense
1:22:48 these things so then we can
1:22:49 interpret and understand that from the
1:22:51 reality so this this would be considered
1:22:54 yeah rational evidence as opposed to
1:22:58 which is like textual evidence from the
1:23:00 quran in the sunnah
1:23:01 now there may be an overlap yeah so
1:23:04 there are certain things that the text
1:23:06 will refer to which are phenomenas that
1:23:09 you can sense within the real world
1:23:11 yeah and one of those may be the aspects
1:23:13 of consciousness or the fitra of a human
1:23:15 being
1:23:16 if there were you know the prophet
1:23:18 sallallahu alaihi
1:23:23 of opinion as to what the fitra means
1:23:26 some
1:23:26 explain it to mean the desire to worship
1:23:28 one god some believe it's the
1:23:30 innate you know instinctual behaviors
1:23:32 within human beings others say it's the
1:23:34 uncle the mind
1:23:36 there's discussions within the mentions
1:23:38 in the quran about the
1:23:40 heart some explain this to be like the
1:23:42 rational center the ability to make
1:23:44 those thinking processes
1:23:46 so there are things that the text may
1:23:48 say which has some correspondence to
1:23:50 reality
1:23:51 so if we can we can try to harmonize the
1:23:53 two being sincere to the text and also
1:23:56 correct the reality if there isn't then
1:23:58 it's a textual matter which we believe
1:24:00 in
1:24:00 and we don't try to superimpose upon the
1:24:02 text so
1:24:04 the original discussion about
1:24:05 consciousness is a discussion that
1:24:07 exists that we can sense we can talk
1:24:10 about in the real world
1:24:11 irrespective whether we've got
1:24:12 revelation or not yeah
1:24:14 so that's where the the area of
1:24:16 knowledge exists
1:24:18 and in the quran allah talks about
1:24:21 you know uh that there are signs for
1:24:24 people of thinking of death you have to
your own people
1:24:28 of thought so there's mentions many
1:24:30 points about
1:24:32 this uh phenomena of being able to think
1:24:35 and come to certain conclusions
1:24:37 uh and being rational uh and come to
1:24:39 conclusions all those panels that exist
1:24:41 quran is a rational process that's going
1:24:45 on in the mind
1:24:46 i don't know if uh hamster wants to
1:24:52 add or mention anything no i think it
1:24:53 was very good but i think just to add to
1:24:55 that i think some brothers they
1:24:56 mistakenly
1:24:58 yeah sure uh so
1:25:01 i some brothers and sisters they think
1:25:04 that when we talk about this issue
1:25:07 um can you hear me
1:25:20 looks like we lost him there um
1:25:23 yeah sorry about that uh brother but
1:25:26 none of that answered your question or
1:25:29 because the temptation is to talk about
1:25:31 nerfs and
1:25:32 raw yeah exactly be careful whether
1:25:35 these things
1:25:36 are something that's mentioned in the
1:25:38 text yeah
1:25:40 and they're talking about the phenomena
1:25:41 of consciousness or they're just talking
1:25:43 about the text
1:25:44 that's mentioned in the quran and sunnah
1:25:46 but we shouldn't try to interpret it or
1:25:48 rationalize it in the way
1:25:49 so hamza's backing now so i think we can
1:25:51 go back
1:25:52 yes sorry so basically some people
1:25:55 conflate the whole consciousness issue
1:25:57 with
1:25:58 the with the reality of the raw and the
1:26:00 soul
1:26:01 and we have to understand that allah
1:26:03 subhanahu wa ta'ala when he talks about
1:26:05 he said it's the command of your lord
1:26:06 and you've been given this little
1:26:08 knowledge
1:26:09 so we're not going into the in-depth you
1:26:11 know what is this the nature of the soul
1:26:13 and the essence of the soul the makeup
1:26:15 of the soul
1:26:16 this that allah who created the soul and
1:26:19 created us
1:26:19 is telling us we've been given very
1:26:21 little knowledge what we're doing is
1:26:23 if you read the quran in the sunnah just
1:26:25 like what brother shuri said
1:26:27 our understanding that we have the
1:26:30 ability to have inner
1:26:31 inner subject of conscious experiences
1:26:33 is assumed throughout the quran and the
1:26:36 sunnah
1:26:37 it's assumed throughout the quran and
1:26:38 the sunnah in so many different hadith
1:26:40 so many different ayat in the quran
1:26:43 the issue of that we have inner
1:26:45 subjective conscious experiences
1:26:47 is assumed in the quran and the sunnah
1:26:49 so even if you wanted some kind of
1:26:50 texture evidence
1:26:51 then you can go to the text and
1:26:54 understand right what is the assumption
1:26:56 here well the assumption is that there
1:26:58 is a conscious human being that has an
1:26:59 ability to have inner subjective
1:27:01 conscious experiences
1:27:02 and that's not necessarily the same as
1:27:04 saying oh we're gonna know what the
1:27:06 essence of the soul is now
1:27:07 no this is beyond us uh because it's
1:27:11 part of the unseen and allah subhanallah
1:27:13 told us
1:27:14 that we have been given this little
1:27:16 knowledge about
1:27:17 so i just wanted to add that because
1:27:19 people usually mention that as some kind
1:27:21 of
1:27:22 you can't talk about this it's
1:27:23 un-islamic because allah says you can't
1:27:25 talk about the law
1:27:26 or you don't have much information about
1:27:28 it but hopefully i've made that
1:27:29 distinction inshallah
1:27:31 yeah one i want to add a very small part
1:27:33 just because it's important to
1:27:34 contextualize these discussions
1:27:37 and as i mentioned earlier that the hard
1:27:40 problem of consciousness
1:27:41 is only a hard problem as far as
1:27:44 materialism or
1:27:45 science is concerned the quran doesn't
1:27:47 really need to come down and tell you
1:27:48 that there is consciousness or what
1:27:50 consciousness
1:27:50 is you you need to be conscious to read
1:27:53 the quran
1:27:53 right and the the common sense
1:27:56 understanding
1:27:57 of our experience is a dualistic
1:28:00 understanding like people common
1:28:03 sensically
1:28:04 have a dualistic ontology of the world
1:28:07 the problem comes the radical shift
1:28:09 comes is when the materialist comes and
1:28:11 says that no no everything
1:28:13 is reducible to the physical now that
1:28:16 radical shift that's not something that
1:28:19 you find
1:28:20 that's not a fatally thing that that you
1:28:22 found throughout human history
1:28:24 it's not widespread in that sense so the
1:28:26 quran is not it doesn't come down to
1:28:28 give you these things about the futuri
1:28:30 aspects that we already know
1:28:32 we we we have to be conscious in order
1:28:34 to
1:28:35 read the quran or receive it or or
1:28:37 whatever
1:28:38 and as brother hamza said what
1:28:40 consciousness is isn't really this
1:28:42 discussion this this and and i don't
1:28:44 think we can ever say that
1:28:45 because allah says
1:28:49 it's from the command of my lord it's
1:28:51 not something we can ever
1:28:53 you know come to know about in detail
1:28:56 but the question is what world view
1:29:00 best accounts for this reality and
1:29:03 uh what world view is completely
1:29:06 incompatible
1:29:07 uh with this reality i think that's
1:29:09 that's that's the issue but the
1:29:10 existence of consciousness
1:29:12 or self-awareness is is something that's
1:29:14 kind of taken for granted
1:29:15 everywhere yeah all right brother well
1:29:18 we appreciate the question we're gonna
1:29:20 have to move on to the next
1:29:21 guest now but uh thanks for calling it
1:29:24 all right so i'm liking brother
1:29:28 okay let's move to
1:29:32 tushar we have here hello guys
1:29:35 thanks for having me i'm right not too
1:29:38 bad
1:29:39 yeah yeah thank you guys uh i think i'm
1:29:41 here first time with you guys
1:29:43 probably yeah yeah right now do you have
1:29:47 a comment or question
1:29:49 yes comment uh consciousness as your
1:29:51 topic today is consciousness
1:29:53 is a miracle i don't think so it's a
1:29:55 miracle
1:29:56 uh when he said the can you please
1:29:58 explain when david chambers said the
1:30:00 heart problem of consciousness what that
1:30:04 means
1:30:06 i'm sorry you said can we explain the
1:30:07 hard consciousness from
1:30:09 commerce yes what that means when david
1:30:12 was a heart problem of consciousness
1:30:14 yeah brother hamza touched on it earlier
1:30:16 i don't know if you heard it but maybe
1:30:18 he can just repeat it again for you
1:30:20 please if you can't yeah but he's not
1:30:22 very briefly like it
1:30:24 yeah i'll pull out his coffee it's right
1:30:28 in front of me
1:30:29 so david chalmers what he says about
1:30:32 consciousness
1:30:32 is as follows he says the really hard
1:30:35 problem of consciousness is the problem
1:30:37 of experience
1:30:39 when we think and perceive there is
1:30:40 aware of information processing
1:30:42 but there is also a subjective aspect
1:30:45 this subjective aspect is
1:30:47 experience when we see for example we
1:30:49 experience
1:30:50 visual sensations the quality of redness
1:30:53 the experience of dark and light the
1:30:55 quality of depth and a physical field
1:30:57 other experiences go along with
1:30:59 perception in different modalities
1:31:01 the sound of a clarinet the smell of
1:31:03 mothballs
1:31:04 then there are bodily sensations from
1:31:06 pains to
1:31:07 orgasms mental images that are conjured
1:31:10 up internally the felt quality of the
1:31:12 emotion
1:31:12 and the experience of the stream of
1:31:14 conscious thought and what he said
1:31:16 it's as follows what unites all these
1:31:18 states is that there is something
1:31:20 there is something it is like to be in
1:31:22 them all of them
1:31:24 experience if any problem qualifies as
1:31:27 the problem of consciousness
1:31:28 it is this one in this central sense of
1:31:31 consciousness an
1:31:31 organism and a mental state is conscious
1:31:34 if there is something it is like
1:31:36 to be in that state and in his other
1:31:38 works and in the same literature
1:31:40 he talks about that's one of the main
1:31:42 problems of the heart problem
1:31:44 which is what we don't know what it's
1:31:45 like for a conscious organism to have a
1:31:47 particular
1:31:48 in a subjective conscious experience and
1:31:50 you also have example
1:31:51 thomas uh you have professor alter when
1:31:54 he talks about the ontological problem
1:31:56 and he says
1:31:57 how does my brain's activity generate
1:31:59 those experiences
1:32:00 why is more than others indeed why is
1:32:03 any physical event accompanied by
1:32:05 conscious experience
1:32:07 problems is known as the hard problem of
1:32:09 consciousness yeah
1:32:10 so
1:32:18 you explain all the or whatever as you
1:32:21 i've also read
1:32:22 david chalmers and everything you
1:32:24 explain all the parts which is subject
1:32:26 to the brain
1:32:28 the heart problem of consciousness the
1:32:30 part you missed i'm sorry with the
1:32:32 precisely i'm saying that
1:32:34 the heart problem of consciousness is
1:32:36 who experienced the blankness
1:32:39 science neurosciences stuck on that what
1:32:42 you said this is right absolutely right
1:32:44 whatever have we experienced we
1:32:45 experience dreams taste
1:32:47 love emotions everything is we have
1:32:50 found it
1:32:50 there are some neurons in your brain
1:32:52 which experience that now
1:32:54 let me explain you that if you don't
1:32:55 mind so the where the issue comes from
1:32:57 if you come from
1:32:58 when we are awake as you are awake and
1:33:00 we all awake we experience the world
1:33:02 with our
1:33:02 senses i think someone typing behind is
1:33:05 it
1:33:06 a yeah thank you so when we experience
1:33:09 the world we experience with our senses
1:33:11 with our smell we look at things we
1:33:13 touch things so we experience that
1:33:15 so this is what we call awakened world
1:33:17 and then we have a dream world
1:33:19 where you dream the things like you know
1:33:21 when you which is imagined by your brain
1:33:23 and you also experience that as it is
1:33:24 like uh as it has happened
1:33:26 like let's say you wake up tomorrow
1:33:28 morning and you say oh i had a dream
1:33:29 last night
1:33:30 and i felt about it like you know
1:33:31 probably gone for holiday or you had a
1:33:33 bad nightmare or whatever
1:33:34 you experience that but your only brain
1:33:37 you know imagine this
1:33:38 but the problem comes from when you
1:33:40 didn't have a dream
1:33:41 like you know let's say you slept one
1:33:43 night
1:33:44 and you wake up in the morning and you
1:33:46 said i didn't have a dream last night
1:33:47 now the problem come here how do you
1:33:49 know you don't have a dream
1:33:51 when your brain not active your body is
1:33:52 not active so that's the heart problem
1:33:54 of consciousness
1:33:55 which means we the sciences agree to
1:33:57 there is there is something which
1:33:59 witness the blankness but we cannot
1:34:01 establish that
1:34:04 yeah i don't know i don't know if that's
1:34:06 the correct reading of the current
1:34:07 literature from my
1:34:09 understanding the hard problem is based
1:34:12 on two main questions
1:34:13 which is what is it like for me to have
1:34:17 a particular conscious experience and
1:34:19 what is it like for you to have a
1:34:20 particular conscious experience so for
1:34:22 example
1:34:23 we could have the two identical meals we
1:34:25 could have a
1:34:26 biryani right yeah yeah we both have the
1:34:29 same biryani
1:34:30 i am
1:34:34 experience and so are you i know what my
1:34:37 subjective experience feels like
1:34:40 my brother just a second but it is an
1:34:42 experience
1:34:43 yeah but let me finish yeah the problem
1:34:46 is so i just want to articulate the
1:34:47 problem so you can understand the
1:34:49 distinctions that are being made
1:34:50 the problem now is if i were to try and
1:34:53 find out what it's like
1:34:54 for you to have the same biryani
1:34:58 knowing everything about your brain will
1:35:00 not lead to me knowing about your
1:35:03 particular experience as we discussed
1:35:04 earlier in this pro in this in this
1:35:06 podcast
1:35:06 but it's still subject to your senses
1:35:08 i'm sorry sorry to interrupt you that
1:35:10 but it's still your senses experience
1:35:13 people can have a different taste
1:35:14 maybe some people are going to like
1:35:15 biryani some people aren't going to like
1:35:16 it
1:35:20 it is subject to your just a second guys
1:35:22 it is subject to your
1:35:24 senses your taste smell touching
1:35:27 we all have that we all have that it can
1:35:30 be different that's nothing to do with
1:35:31 but the conscious play is the important
1:35:33 part but we all
1:35:34 experience that biryani without with
1:35:36 that conscious
1:35:38 it's in a well i don't know how much uh
1:35:40 well
1:35:41 okay probably next time whatever but
1:35:43 that's the point i want to
1:35:44 make it uh the problem the heart problem
1:35:47 of consciousness is
1:35:49 who witnessed the blankness who told you
1:35:51 you didn't have a dream last night
1:35:53 that's the we are stuck in as a science
1:35:56 i think i think
1:35:57 no one's disagreeing with the fact that
1:35:58 you need you need
1:36:00 senses you need um and and there is
1:36:03 someone experiencing something that's
1:36:05 not undermining the fact that there
1:36:06 isn't a problem there is a problem
1:36:08 the issue is is when we use those senses
1:36:11 and we have experiences then yeah
1:36:15 can we know the reality of someone
1:36:17 else's experiences
1:36:19 by just using your own senses but we
1:36:21 have nothing to do with
1:36:22 others experience it's all about ours
1:36:25 your experience always going to be
1:36:27 different than mine but
1:36:28 who's experiencing that's the one thing
1:36:31 for example
1:36:32 if i give you i'm sorry to interrupt you
1:36:34 you eaten biryani
1:36:36 we depend on our likes and dislikes good
1:36:38 or bad but we all have experience you
1:36:40 guys are making me hungry

1:36:44 i know yeah me too but this is like you
1:36:47 know yeah
1:36:48 please we agree we're both gonna have
1:36:50 experience so the question here is
1:36:52 the first part of the hard problem of
1:36:53 consciousness is then
1:36:55 what is your experience like from my
1:36:57 perspective
1:36:58 if i were to map out everything in your
1:37:00 brain understand all of your
1:37:02 descriptions of that experience
1:37:04 it would never allow me to understand
1:37:05 what it's like for you to have that
1:37:07 experience so what you're saying is
1:37:09 exactly exactly what we're saying
1:37:10 and that's one part of the heart problem
1:37:12 and the second part of the heart problem
1:37:14 is
1:37:14 well how do you have this inner
1:37:16 subjective experience arising
1:37:18 from a so-called physical brain and a
1:37:20 physical brain is based upon physical
1:37:22 processes
1:37:23 which are fundamentally blind and
1:37:25 unconscious so you're right so what
1:37:27 you're saying is it's in a different way
1:37:28 of what we're saying so
1:37:30 i think we just it's a slight
1:37:31 misunderstanding in the way of it's been
1:37:33 articulated
1:37:34 but i agree with you we're both having
1:37:36 experiences for sure
1:37:37 that's it that's the main thing yeah but
1:37:39 that's that's that's the
1:37:40 two absolutely yes yes
1:37:44 yes please do you agree that there is a
1:37:46 hard problem with consciousness
1:37:49 uh becky pardon i i think i missed that
1:37:51 can you repeat the question please i
1:37:52 said do you
1:37:53 do you believe that there is a hard
1:37:55 problem in con
1:37:56 no no no no no i don't believe it can be
1:37:59 explained
1:38:00 yes yes it's already explained oh well
1:38:03 it's already explained
1:38:04 yes yes this is already explained so
1:38:07 just explain what hamza said do you
1:38:08 understand what hamza said hamza says
1:38:10 that your ability to taste and
1:38:13 experience
1:38:14 biryani is going to be very is going to
1:38:16 be
1:38:17 different to the experience of hamza
1:38:20 and even if you want to say that they're
1:38:22 the same
1:38:23 there's no way you can describe them
1:38:26 such that you can say that they
1:38:28 are the same but that's not on about
1:38:31 what is the taste of biryani we are on
1:38:33 about who experience that
1:38:34 no no in in when we talk about hard
1:38:36 problem of consciousness it's like
1:38:37 two areas there's one which is called
1:38:39 qualia which is our experience
1:38:44 not first time just experience of the
1:38:45 world if i see red if i feel
1:38:48 pain this is an experience it's called
1:38:49 qualia
1:38:51 there's a first aspect of uh as amazon
1:38:54 mentioned first problem also
1:38:55 so there's two parts of the problem one
1:38:57 is qualia the other one is how
1:38:59 does physical non-conscious matter
1:39:02 produce
1:39:03 consciousness so how does that that's
1:39:07 the problem the problem is how did you
1:39:09 explain that
1:39:10 can that be reducible to the neurons
1:39:12 alone
1:39:13 so okay right i now we are mixing it up
1:39:16 it is very simple it's not rocket
1:39:17 science if you just put your
1:39:19 the what what what awakened world
1:39:21 experience like what we awake now
1:39:23 that everybody will have a different we
1:39:25 agree to that
1:39:26 even though like you know we have all
1:39:28 have different opinion on anything
1:39:30 that's our experience and the dream
1:39:32 world also we have all experience
1:39:33 separately
1:39:34 but the question rise who experienced
1:39:36 the deep world
1:39:37 deep sleep world we all have
1:39:46 let me ask you a question because i'm
1:39:48 trying to understand you yeah
1:39:50 you don't think that there's two things
1:39:53 do you think there's a hard problem of
1:39:55 consciousness and that it's been solved
1:39:58 or you don't think that there's even one
1:40:00 to start out with
1:40:01 that's what i'm trying to get from you
1:40:03 well there is no heart problem of
1:40:04 consciousness
1:40:06 the the only it's very it is only heart
1:40:08 problem of consciousness
1:40:09 on the basis on on the on the subject of
1:40:11 science because according to science
1:40:13 there is no need would you say on
1:40:15 materialism that it would be hard
1:40:17 if you let me fish my brother all the
1:40:19 science is saying we don't have any
1:40:21 neuron active when you go to deep sleep
1:40:23 so that's why we can't prove it they
1:40:26 acknowledge science
1:40:26 and science acknowledge consciousness
1:40:28 they say there is something which is
1:40:30 experienced nothing
1:40:31 blankness but we can't prove it because
1:40:33 there's no neurons with that
1:40:34 that's why it's called by bipartisa
1:40:36 that's why it says
1:40:37 consciousness is not byproduct of your
1:40:39 brain it has nothing to do with your
1:40:40 thinking
1:40:41 your likes and dislikes that's the
1:40:44 that's
1:40:44 what i want to say maybe maybe just to
1:40:46 try to simplify it a bit further i want
1:40:48 to ask you a question because you were
1:40:50 saying it isn't rocket science i think
1:40:51 it's much more difficult than rocket
1:40:52 science i mean rocket science you can
1:40:54 you can you can explain fully in
1:40:56 physical terms i mean there's no
1:40:58 mystery in rocket science it's difficult
1:41:00 i agree that it's difficult but there's
1:41:02 no mystery
1:41:03 but let me try to give ask you this
1:41:05 question
1:41:06 uh yeah let's say you're looking at a
1:41:08 red car right
1:41:09 so you have this experience of seeing a
1:41:12 red car
1:41:13 yeah now now we both agree that there
1:41:15 are these physical
1:41:16 aspects that lead to the experience as
1:41:19 in
1:41:19 the light hitting your retina and
1:41:22 everything else that follows
1:41:23 yeah very good with that and then you
1:41:26 experience the red car
1:41:27 now the question is from your
1:41:29 perspective just picture yourself
1:41:31 looking at the red
1:41:32 car yeah is your experience of that red
1:41:35 car
1:41:35 identical to the physical processes that
1:41:38 are occurring
1:41:39 are they the same thing yeah because
1:41:41 you're experiencing that red car
1:41:44 but remember remember i'm asking about
1:41:46 your experience two shards of experience
1:41:48 right now
1:41:49 is looking at the red car would you say
1:41:52 that this experience
1:41:53 is literally the electrons and the atoms
1:41:57 bumping into each other out there and
1:41:59 leading to the are they the same thing
1:42:00 no no no it's not the same thing
1:42:02 okay so there's a gap that explains
1:42:04 inventory gap
1:42:05 is what we call the hard problem of
1:42:07 consciousness my brother like you know
1:42:09 what he's saying
1:42:10 when i look at the red car but my sense
1:42:13 my senses say my neural side is a red
1:42:15 color
1:42:15 well it doesn't say red color my neurons
1:42:17 doesn't say red
1:42:18 we made up this word and like and if i
1:42:20 speak
1:42:22 forget about the words experience it's
1:42:24 it's
1:42:25 my experience i agree to that and as i
1:42:27 like what now we speaking in english we
1:42:28 will call it red
1:42:30 right so this is a common this is the
1:42:32 experience of my neurons
1:42:34 we have it's nothing to do with that it
1:42:36 is about who
1:42:37 it is about it is my friend this is all
1:42:39 about who experience your brain
1:42:41 that's the main thing i mean
1:42:47 i think we're actually saying i i think
1:42:49 we're saying the same thing here
1:42:51 yeah i think what you're saying is that
1:42:54 it's not a hard problem because yeah we
1:42:56 know that there is a mind
1:42:58 yeah in the person independent of his
1:43:02 physical
1:43:03 product you know physicality that
1:43:05 experiences things
1:43:07 that therefore you know forget about you
1:43:10 know trying to explain
1:43:11 how the physical causes the
1:43:13 consciousness
1:43:14 is just something called consciousness
1:43:16 so it's just something called the mind
1:43:18 is that what you're saying to me no no
1:43:19 no no no no it's not right
1:43:21 uh i'm sorry i didn't get your name off
1:43:23 brother sharif
1:43:24 sharif yeah look uh mind have nothing
1:43:29 why the reason science says there's a
1:43:31 heart problem of consciousness
1:43:33 because science cannot prove there is
1:43:35 any neuron who experience
1:43:37 emptiness that's why they say it is a
1:43:39 hard problem for us to prove
1:43:40 because as you can as you can understand
1:43:42 science need evidence to prove it
1:43:43 anything if they have to prove
1:43:45 like you know physical evidence like you
1:43:47 know they need to like you know go to
1:43:48 the
1:43:48 algorithms and they need to go formulas
1:43:50 and stuff like that so that's why they
1:43:52 can prove it
1:43:53 the reason they're saying it's a hard
1:43:54 problem because they can't prove it
1:43:56 but they acknowledge something
1:43:57 experience the blankness
1:43:59 that's the two different things yeah but
1:44:01 brother i think we need to understand is
1:44:03 it's a hard problem in relationship to
1:44:06 materialism
1:44:07 of course we don't think it's a hard
1:44:09 problem here because
1:44:10 we have a good response to it based on
1:44:13 our
1:44:14 prior ontological commitments but the
1:44:17 question is
1:44:17 whether or not materialism can respond
1:44:21 adequately to the hard problem
1:44:24 that's what the question is materialism
1:44:26 have nothing to do with consciousness
1:44:27 like you know we have not put it like
1:44:29 this way if we don't if
1:44:31 if the time we didn't know that there's
1:44:33 a gravity
1:44:34 because of gravity we walk on earth so
1:44:36 you think we were we used to fly
1:44:38 we used to walk anywhere so it doesn't
1:44:40 make any materials
1:44:43 i don't think you're understanding the
1:44:44 point too shy you need
1:44:56 is what they're saying is this is it's a
1:44:58 hard problem
1:45:00 because they can't bridge the gap
1:45:02 between physical
1:45:03 matter and conscious experience they
1:45:05 can't do that
1:45:06 that's the problem that they're sensing
1:45:08 yes that's it because
1:45:10 this is what i'm saying they don't have
1:45:12 any neurons to connect that
1:45:14 right
1:45:20 okay then you don't have a heart problem
1:45:21 of consciousness you're good
1:45:24 if you're not a materialist then you
1:45:25 don't have a problem we're in agreement
1:45:27 that's basically what we're telling you
1:45:29 we're saying this is a problem for
1:45:30 somebody who says
1:45:32 that the world is entirely explainable
1:45:35 by the physical
1:45:36 and chemical processes that are out
1:45:37 there that is all you need to explain
1:45:39 the world
1:45:40 someone who says that is gonna face a
1:45:42 problem you're not a materialist
1:45:44 so you're okay so so we agree that it's
1:45:46 not a hard problem
1:45:48 do you think that materialists can
1:45:50 explain it by purely
1:45:52 uh physical means that's the question
1:45:55 well it's depend on them i don't but
1:45:56 i don't think so materialistic would be
1:45:58 any bother about like anything to do
1:46:00 with the consciousness it's a
1:46:01 brother it's not about being bothered
1:46:03 it's whether or not
1:46:04 it's a philosophical problem it's
1:46:06 whether or not
1:46:08 the materialist paradigm can account
1:46:11 adequately
1:46:12 for consciousness i don't think that you
1:46:15 can i don't
1:46:15 think that you think you can jack well
1:46:18 it's depend on them i don't know how
1:46:19 they're gonna take it
1:46:20 but all i'm here to guys to put add a
1:46:22 bit like you know my side of it into the
1:46:24 conversation and that's it
1:46:25 i don't know what they think and good
1:46:27 luck to them whatever they think yeah i
1:46:28 think we're in agreement
1:46:30 but i think you're you're on our side
1:46:31 here and we're in agreement
1:46:33 yeah yeah i think just just for the
1:46:35 record materialists do care to the
1:46:37 extent that they come up with these very
1:46:39 radical ideas
1:46:41 like they would even deny the existence
1:46:42 of mental states like a limited edition
1:46:46 if if you guys talking about atheists or
1:46:48 i don't buy anything from them like that
1:46:50 okay then we're on the same day yeah
1:46:52 yeah we're i think we're on the same
1:46:54 page you're just uh maybe articulating
1:46:57 it a bit differently but
1:46:59 we're on the same page but i i
1:47:02 appreciate you uh coming on and asking
1:47:04 questions we're gonna have to
1:47:05 move on to the next guest though all
1:47:08 right tuchar
1:47:09 thanks a lot man thanks for coming on
1:47:13 all right take care um
1:47:17 see who we got here i think we've got
1:47:19 mirza waiting i think he's been waiting
1:47:21 a while
1:47:23 how you doing
1:47:28 so i just have a question so
1:47:31 the discussion around consciousness and
1:47:33 the heart problem
1:47:34 effectively we're saying that this is
1:47:37 something that
1:47:38 is coming from god himself as in the
1:47:41 source of consciousness
1:47:43 so if you know your opponents were to
1:47:45 reply saying
1:47:46 that you are effectively putting in a
1:47:48 god of death
1:47:50 how would you respond to that
1:47:53 well we didn't actually we didn't
1:47:54 actually make it necessarily an argument
1:47:56 for god
1:47:58 is this so time that i know yes yes it's
1:48:00 me
1:48:01 all right okay
1:48:05 so i think just said jacob for the other
1:48:07 brothers so he's asked the question
1:48:09 is this a god of the gaps argument yeah
1:48:11 so
1:48:12 so in essence we can't explain this
1:48:14 therefore we're going to put god into it
1:48:16 so we can't explain conscious
1:48:18 we put god i think the the and i'll let
1:48:20 the brothers answer as well but i think
1:48:22 the issue is this is that it's not a god
1:48:24 of the gaps because god of the gaps
1:48:26 presupposes that there's a point which
1:48:27 we just don't know but if we do a bit
1:48:29 more investigation we'll get the
1:48:31 knowledge
1:48:32 yeah so it's a case of imprints it's a
1:48:35 problem
1:48:35 of just not having enough of the science
1:48:37 so far
1:48:38 what we're saying here about
1:48:40 consciousness is that it's an
1:48:41 in-principle
1:48:42 problem it's not a problem that can be
1:48:44 bridged by greater knowledge
1:48:47 yeah so it's not going to be solved just
1:48:49 by ex you know
1:48:50 getting more and more information uh and
1:48:53 more and more knowledge
1:48:54 but rather we won't a be able from a
1:48:56 scientific point of view
1:48:58 access that knowledge that doesn't
1:49:00 necessarily necessarily
1:49:02 mean that it points straight away okay
1:49:05 therefore god exists
1:49:06 but what it does do is it provides
1:49:08 greater indications
1:49:10 that a creator exists especially i think
1:49:13 in our
1:49:14 previous streams um we had discussions
1:49:16 and inshallah we're gonna have another
1:49:18 one about
1:49:18 uh the uh was it stage two of the
1:49:20 cosmological argument and if hans is
1:49:22 free
1:49:22 it'd be great to have him to discuss
1:49:24 that but in stage one of the
1:49:26 cosmological argument where we came to
1:49:27 the conclusion of a necessary being or
1:49:29 necessary foundation
1:49:31 and then the question becomes well is it
1:49:32 conscious or not well you've got an
1:49:35 added reason to believe that this
1:49:36 necessary foundation necessary being
1:49:39 would be conscious because we can't
1:49:41 explain consciousness by materialism
1:49:44 so for the existence of consciousness
1:49:46 you would need something to have caused
1:49:48 it
1:49:48 that itself is beyond quote-unquote
1:49:50 contingent or material beings
1:49:52 and therefore that would be a creator
1:49:54 yeah i think uh maybe let the
1:49:56 other guys as well to answer that
1:49:58 question as well from sultan
1:50:00 yep yeah i just want to point out that
1:50:01 this is not necessarily the discussion
1:50:04 we're having
1:50:04 is not necessarily an argument for god
1:50:08 and hamza touched on that a bit earlier
1:50:10 but it is an
1:50:11 argument against materialism that's what
1:50:14 the argument really is it's an argument
1:50:16 against materialism
1:50:17 not necessarily an argument for god's
1:50:20 existence
1:50:21 but what we would say and and hamza kind
1:50:24 of
1:50:24 hinted at this earlier is that in the
1:50:28 theistic picture where
1:50:29 where we have this ultimate mind in a
1:50:31 sense that is god at the very foundation
1:50:34 of everything
1:50:34 that is responsible for creating
1:50:37 everything
1:50:38 it fits much more naturally and nicely
1:50:41 in a theistic picture of the world
1:50:44 rather than an atheistic one or a
1:50:46 naturalistic one
1:50:47 so it's more based on a worldview
1:50:50 perspective of seeing
1:50:52 which one fits more neatly and easily
1:50:56 into one's ontology given your prior
1:50:58 commitments about the world
1:51:00 and i would argue that it you know in a
1:51:03 probabilistic sense not
1:51:04 in terms of making a such a forceful
1:51:07 necessary argument but i think we can
1:51:09 see
1:51:10 that consciousness fits much more easily
1:51:13 and nicely
1:51:14 with a picture of god being at the
1:51:17 very beginning and center of everything
1:51:19 and responsible for everything
1:51:21 rather than at a mindless sort of
1:51:24 uh production out of nothing or whatever
1:51:27 you want to say
1:51:28 so i think that's kind of what we're
1:51:30 we're explaining we're not even
1:51:31 necessarily going into
1:51:33 making an argument for god's existence
1:51:36 we would just say it's an argument
1:51:37 against materialism
1:51:38 and that the overall structure of one's
1:51:41 worldview
1:51:42 consciousness fits very nicely with a
1:51:45 theistic
1:51:46 picture rather than an atheistic one
1:51:49 so i hope that answers your question uh
1:51:51 brother yeah
1:51:53 just just a broader a broader point
1:51:54 there sorry because i think this is
1:51:56 important
1:51:57 the this whole god of the gaps thing is
1:51:59 a really overused you know
1:52:00 cliche that you know sometimes atheists
1:52:03 just think it's a trump card that can
1:52:04 just
1:52:05 destroy any argument but um the thing is
1:52:08 nobody here is saying that i don't know
1:52:10 x therefore why
1:52:12 nobody's saying that what you what you
1:52:14 can say like if i say that based on the
1:52:16 information i have this is the best
1:52:18 explanation for example if i make an
1:52:20 abductive argument that's not
1:52:22 uh that's not a god of the gaps argument
1:52:24 uh and
1:52:25 and i also think that alongside the
1:52:28 probabilistic
1:52:28 argument there are deductive arguments
1:52:31 i'm going to have to read
1:52:32 brother hamza's papers on that but i
1:52:34 think the deductive arguments the cs
1:52:36 lewis style
1:52:37 arguments from reason are actually
1:52:40 deductive arguments that
1:52:42 make reason and naturalism incompatible
1:52:46 and the conclusion of these arguments
1:52:48 act it actually concludes the existence
1:52:50 of god
1:52:51 and that's also not a god of the gaps
1:52:53 arguments of course there were
1:52:54 he made modifications to the argument
1:52:56 there were many um
1:52:58 responses to it peter van impe wrote a
1:53:00 few papers on it
1:53:02 but i think all in all i think it's a
1:53:03 very solid argument
1:53:05 that makes naturalism and and reason
1:53:08 in general or the reliability of our
1:53:10 reason incompatible
1:53:12 and it concludes god in a
1:53:14 non-question-begging way and
1:53:16 and it has nothing to do with god of the
1:53:18 gaps whatsoever
1:53:19 all right yeah all right brother we
1:53:22 appreciate your question i think um
1:53:24 we're gonna have to move on to the next
1:53:26 guest now but really appreciate you
1:53:28 coming on
1:53:29 thank you all right thanks tom alaikum
1:53:32 all right so i'm gonna go to uh mo
1:53:35 l real quick we got here so i'm like
1:53:43 okay so i have a few comments i want to
1:53:45 say and hopefully
1:53:47 ham's uh brother hans resources can
1:53:49 elaborate you know
1:53:51 so uh i would i believe that
1:53:54 consciousness is uh
1:53:55 mystical okay it's from the divine at
1:53:56 the end of the day because
1:53:58 or else if we deduce it uh realistically
1:54:02 it becomes uh more like zombie robots
1:54:05 identity biological zombie robots
1:54:07 you know what i'm saying but nonetheless
1:54:09 uh it seems as if the academic atheists
1:54:12 are presupposing things beside allah
1:54:16 beside god like
1:54:17 hand psychism for example and they're
1:54:20 taking baby steps
1:54:22 towards allah eventually because that's
1:54:24 the ultimate truth at the end of the day
1:54:26 allah
1:54:26 you cannot presuppose something beyond
1:54:28 that and it's innate and it
1:54:31 provides a coherent worldview and
1:54:34 foundational
1:54:34 worldview at the end of the day you know
1:54:36 it's coherent it's along with our
1:54:37 rational faculties at the end of the day
1:54:39 what i'm trying to say is this
1:54:41 we have a concept that is panned
1:54:42 psychistic as well um
1:54:44 the angels and um everything is
1:54:47 conscious of allah
1:54:48 all the material things in this world is
1:54:50 conscious of the create
1:54:52 of the ultimate being so this pens
1:54:55 pansakism doesn't provide a
1:54:56 justification still you know what i'm
1:54:58 saying
1:54:59 so this is all i wanted to say if hamza
1:55:02 can elaborate and
1:55:03 emphasize more on what i said they'll be
1:55:06 great thanks
1:55:08 a lot
1:55:12 my dear brother it's muhammad muhammad
1:55:18 so basically what i would say is well it
1:55:20 depends what conception of pan psychism
1:55:22 you adopt so if you believe that
1:55:24 like that the fundamental building
1:55:26 blocks or the constituents of
1:55:28 things have a form of
1:55:30 proto-consciousness
1:55:31 then that doesn't necessarily tie in
1:55:34 line
1:55:34 with the islamic narrative because from
1:55:36 what i understand
1:55:39 everything has maybe a form of
1:55:41 consciousness allah says in the quran
1:55:43 that
1:55:43 you know everything in the cosmos you
1:55:46 know
1:55:47 praises of love glorifies allah but you
1:55:49 just don't know how allah says you don't
1:55:50 know the how
1:55:51 but what's interesting when you look at
1:55:53 that hadith concerning the tree that
1:55:55 cried
1:55:56 or you know and and other non-human
1:56:00 objects if you like that seem to have
1:56:02 some form of consciousness
1:56:04 it was always in reference to it having
1:56:06 a kind of
1:56:07 unified conscious experience the
1:56:11 hadith and the ayat from what i
1:56:13 understand and i i
1:56:14 i'm willing to be corrected on this is
1:56:16 that it refers to these whole
1:56:18 things that have a unified sense of
1:56:21 consciousness
1:56:23 pan psychism or at least a particular
1:56:24 conception of psychism
1:56:26 may agree with that but they
1:56:28 specifically say that the
1:56:30 individual constituent parts or the
1:56:32 fundamental building blocks of the
1:56:33 individual things
1:56:35 they have a form of proto-consciousness
1:56:37 and they may affirm a unified conscious
1:56:39 experience
1:56:40 but the problem with that conception of
1:56:42 pansexism is
1:56:43 well how do you make sense of a unified
1:56:46 conscious experience
1:56:47 if that thing that whole thing that is
1:56:50 having that conscious experience
1:56:52 is made up of individual parts or things
1:56:54 or elements if you like that have
1:56:56 forms of consciousness they don't know
1:56:58 how to basically
1:56:59 square the circle here so i wouldn't say
1:57:03 the islamic narrative adopts a pan
1:57:05 psychism
1:57:06 from this perspective but yes you may
1:57:10 want to argue that that trees are
1:57:12 conscious
1:57:13 mountains are conscious you know
1:57:15 everything in the cosmos praises a lot
1:57:16 but allah says you don't know how
1:57:18 but you can't at least make the
1:57:20 inference that when allah mentions these
1:57:21 things in the quran or in the sunnah you
1:57:24 see that it's referred to
1:57:25 whole things that had a unified sense of
1:57:28 consciousness
1:57:29 but rather psychism says something
1:57:31 different especially this conception
1:57:32 protagonism
1:57:33 that's the individual parts that have
1:57:35 formal
1:57:36 consciousness
1:57:50 experiences
1:57:53 uh i think hamza broke up exactly then
1:57:55 yeah i think hanzo we might
1:57:57 did you yeah did you get the uh
1:58:00 did you get what he said hamza was
1:58:02 saying
1:58:03 okay so he's saying that basically he's
1:58:06 talking about proto-conscious
1:58:07 is that it there is a distinction
1:58:10 between islamic pan-sachism and
1:58:13 consciousness and uh and what exactly
1:58:16 because i can't fathom that
1:58:18 how could you explain what you mean by
1:58:20 collective consciousness
1:58:25 well for example when i'm looking at my
1:58:27 computer screen i'm having a unified
1:58:29 conscious experience i'm not basically
1:58:30 having a conscious experience of
1:58:32 every single pixel individually yeah so
1:58:35 whenever i i'm not
1:58:36 it's not an accumulation and
1:58:38 amalgamation of all of these
1:58:40 individual conscious experiences of
1:58:42 every individual pixel that would be a
1:58:43 total nightmare i would never
1:58:45 i wouldn't be able to have any proper uh
1:58:47 meaningful
1:58:48 uh experience so when we experience
1:58:51 things i'm experiencing the whole
1:58:52 right so likewise when the quran sunnah
1:58:56 referred to non-human objects like
1:58:58 trees or stones or or or mountains that
1:59:02 seem to have some kind of consciousness
1:59:04 but even though allah says everything in
1:59:06 the cosmos praises allah but we just
1:59:08 don't know how
1:59:09 so to elaborate more on that i think
1:59:11 wouldn't be that useful but even if you
1:59:13 were to
1:59:13 make the point that there are other
1:59:16 things that can be conscious other than
1:59:18 humans
1:59:18 the point is the quran and sunnah
1:59:20 referred to them as
1:59:22 having a holistic experience a
1:59:25 a a a a a a a a a a unified conscious
1:59:30 experience
1:59:31 but panseikism especially a that
1:59:34 particular conception of pancychism that
1:59:36 we're talking about
1:59:37 it agrees with that but it says that the
1:59:40 whole
1:59:41 has individual parts or things or
1:59:43 fundamental building blocks or elements
1:59:44 whatever the case may be
1:59:45 that have forms of proto-consciousness
1:59:48 and that's why the detractors against
1:59:50 pansexism say
1:59:52 how can individual components of a whole
1:59:55 thing have individual parts of
1:59:57 consciousness
1:59:58 how can you now make a case that that
2:00:01 thing has a unified sense of
2:00:03 consciousness
2:00:04 if every single thing that that it
2:00:07 contains
2:00:08 has proto-consciousness that's one of
2:00:11 the kind of arguments against
2:00:13 panpsychism
2:00:14 so what i would say to brother muhammad
2:00:16 is
2:00:17 i wouldn't say that islam says agrees
2:00:19 with psychism
2:00:21 um i would more say because we don't we
2:00:24 wouldn't really articulate the case
2:00:26 we can't make that strong inference from
2:00:28 the quran and sunnah
2:00:29 that the individual parts of the
2:00:32 mountain or the individual parts of the
2:00:34 tree
2:00:35 are actually conscious as well yes we
2:00:37 can affirm the hadith that the tree
2:00:38 cried
2:00:39 so he had a unified conscious experience
2:00:41 but can we now
2:00:42 make the pancakes claim that every
2:00:45 single part of the tree
2:00:46 had a form of consciousness that's
2:00:48 something that you can't infer from the
2:00:49 hadith
2:00:50 and you can't infer from the quran and
2:00:52 the sunnah so
2:00:54 my conclusion is i would not say i would
2:00:57 not agree with the idea that
2:00:58 islam agrees with psychism from that
2:01:00 perspective
2:01:01 but if it can happen yeah
2:01:04 i was gonna say so if i if i understand
2:01:06 what you're saying maybe also to explain
2:01:08 to
2:01:08 uh muhammad moelle when i experience
2:01:12 something
2:01:13 it's not every molecule in my body
2:01:16 and every atom and every subatomic
2:01:19 particle that is now consciously
2:01:20 experiencing it with me
2:01:22 yeah so it's not every single part
2:01:25 that's having this conscious experience
2:01:27 it's me as a as a whole being yeah
2:01:31 so is is that what you basically say
2:01:33 this is the problem which
2:01:34 causes this this discussion about pan
2:01:36 psychism which is that
2:01:38 in essence when you experience something
2:01:40 your
2:01:41 or every molecule every atom every
2:01:44 electron
2:01:45 within your whole body is also
2:01:47 experiencing it but they're not having
2:01:49 their own
2:01:49 experiences it's you having your
2:01:52 experience
2:01:52 of the whole i want to add something
2:01:55 what about the hadith that says
2:01:58 the hand will testify you know and so on
2:02:01 your limbs will testify against you
2:02:03 if you have used them in a wrong way
2:02:06 what what is that supposed to mean
2:02:07 wouldn't that be in line with
2:02:09 such uh thinking
2:02:14 or no is that a question to hamza anyone
2:02:17 i mean
2:02:18 hamza would be great because he's the
2:02:19 guest
2:02:22 you're not interested in speaking to us
2:02:24 no no i spoke about a lot man
2:02:27 that's my first partner
2:02:33 yeah so did he carry yes so i would
2:02:36 yeah i did i quote i i wouldn't know how
2:02:38 to answer that i haven't looked at the
2:02:40 specific toughest concerning what does
2:02:42 it mean when the hand speaks on the day
2:02:44 of judgment
2:02:45 so i'm not going to talk about something
2:02:47 that i haven't really analyzed already
2:02:49 i have my kind of i have my intuitions
2:02:51 on that i don't think it actually
2:02:53 means that per se um it's more of the
2:02:56 fact that
2:02:57 you know um that type of language is
2:03:00 using the quran
2:03:01 to make an emphasis that our deeds will
2:03:04 be exposed on the day of judgment what
2:03:06 our hands did
2:03:07 is gonna come out on the day of
2:03:09 judgement and we're gonna be taken to
2:03:10 account
2:03:11 but i'm not gonna make a categorical
2:03:12 statement because i haven't really
2:03:13 analyzed that
2:03:16 question so i i allow our beloved to
2:03:19 explain a lot further inshallah
2:03:21 okay i think in a sense
2:03:25 i think in a sense mo it's like almost
2:03:27 theologically insignificant like in
2:03:29 in the sense that um you whether you
2:03:32 have i mean i
2:03:33 i too wouldn't know what to say about
2:03:35 the hadith and the the tafsir of the
2:03:37 hadith
2:03:37 but but it could it could either be that
2:03:41 they're conscious or they're not but
2:03:42 either way we don't really have that
2:03:44 issue in our world view because there's
2:03:46 no problem
2:03:47 with anything at all being conscious so
2:03:50 i i just don't think it's it's very
2:03:52 important i mean once you do have this
2:03:55 dualistic understanding of the world and
2:03:57 once you have this
2:03:58 overarching worldview that can account
2:04:00 for this subjective first-person
2:04:01 experience
2:04:03 uh the finer details of that aren't very
2:04:06 significant i think
2:04:07 philosophically or theologically in my
2:04:09 point of view
2:04:11 okay so yeah that's it thanks
2:04:20 all right we've got momo here he's been
2:04:22 waiting
2:04:30 it's actually regarding the same topic
2:04:32 of pan psychism
2:04:34 so basically uh there's like many
2:04:36 narrations regarding uh
2:04:38 like uh you know how the hill talks to
2:04:40 the prophet and
2:04:41 how stones also talk to the prophet and
2:04:44 stuff like that
2:04:46 yeah and yeah as the previous brother
2:04:48 mentioned
2:04:49 like the hand and like testifying so
2:04:53 and there's also like other narrations
2:04:55 regarding how the sun
2:04:56 prostrate the sun and moon prostrate to
2:04:58 allah
2:04:59 so doesn't that kind of like signify
2:05:01 like uh some sort of
2:05:03 uh pants like i don't know like some
2:05:06 oneness of consciousness or something
2:05:08 well yeah i'm just going to repeat the
2:05:10 same thing i said
2:05:12 the particular conception of pan
2:05:13 psychism we're talking about is that
2:05:15 individual parts of the whole are also
2:05:17 conscious
2:05:18 but when you look at the hadith
2:05:20 concerning the hand or the stone
2:05:22 or the sun or whatever you want to call
2:05:24 it even if you don't take a metaphorical
2:05:26 view on this
2:05:26 right which i i would disagree with
2:05:29 because the majority of the
2:05:32 metaphorical view for example concerning
2:05:34 these type of things right
2:05:36 um the point here is that
2:05:39 it's talking about a unified conscious
2:05:42 experience
2:05:43 and that's the problem of pansysm we
2:05:45 have to understand that pansysm doesn't
2:05:47 just say that it says
2:05:49 that say that this hand is conscious
2:05:52 right and it has a unified conscious
2:05:53 experience they're going to testify
2:05:55 against me
2:05:56 what panpsychism is saying is every
2:05:59 single
2:06:00 atom it has a form of consciousness
2:06:04 so when they articulate that we would
2:06:06 say well how can you now make sense of a
2:06:09 unified conscious experience this hand
2:06:11 having a unified
2:06:12 conscious experience if every single
2:06:14 atom has a form of consciousness
2:06:17 how can you make sense of that how do
2:06:19 you kind of you know make
2:06:20 sense of a unified conscious experience
2:06:23 if you
2:06:24 affirm that every single part of that
2:06:27 thing
2:06:28 also has forms of consciousness that's
2:06:31 one of the problems of pansexism so what
2:06:33 i would say is you can't
2:06:34 say that islam adopts pan psychism from
2:06:38 that perspective because
2:06:39 all you can say is that when if the hand
2:06:42 is going to speak or the stone is going
2:06:44 to speak or the sun's going to persuade
2:06:45 whatever the case may be
2:06:47 these are referring to whole things like
2:06:49 the whole hand
2:06:50 and the whole sun and the whole stone
2:06:52 and the whole tree
2:06:53 that actually has a unified conscious
2:06:56 experience if you
2:06:57 if you even want to call it that right
2:06:59 and if you even want to move away from
2:07:01 a metaphorical understanding even if you
2:07:03 adopt that view
2:07:05 you can't say it's a pan psychist view
2:07:07 because the conception of pansexism that
2:07:09 we're talking about is that
2:07:10 individual each individual element in
2:07:14 each individual part each indiv
2:07:16 each individual fundamental building
2:07:18 blocks whatever you think the
2:07:19 fundamental books are
2:07:21 have a forms of proto-consciousness
2:07:24 and that's one of the conceptual
2:07:25 problems of psychism
2:07:27 is because well you are then you say
2:07:29 well how does that now make sense of a
2:07:30 unified conscious experience that's the
2:07:32 point
2:07:34 okay for that and just one more small uh
2:07:37 question how does the how does the uh
2:07:40 you know the alkali the intellect relate
2:07:42 to the the
2:07:43 soul so is the alcohol connected to the
2:07:47 the physical brain or is it connected to
2:07:49 the soul
2:07:50 or the heart the spiritual heart yeah i
2:07:53 mean
2:07:53 i'm gonna look you know these questions
2:07:56 are debated in our classical traditions
2:07:58 so
2:07:58 the intellect according to many of the
2:08:02 ulama
2:08:02 is a function of the khan what is the
2:08:05 nature of the cult
2:08:07 i'm not even going to go into that i'm
2:08:09 not going to unpack that because that is
2:08:11 a massive school of debate i have my own
2:08:13 particular position on this
2:08:14 but i think it won't be right to
2:08:16 articulate that the point is
2:08:19 not knowing this doesn't affect today's
2:08:21 topic right
2:08:22 not knowing about what is the dynamic
2:08:24 interplay between the akal and the cult
2:08:26 and the roh and the fitra and the nafs
2:08:29 all of these things what is the dynamic
2:08:30 interplay here well there's lots of
2:08:32 discussion amongst our beloved
2:08:34 in the classical tradition and i ask you
2:08:37 to explore that
2:08:38 but even if you take any of those
2:08:40 positions it doesn't undermine what
2:08:41 we're saying today which is there is a
2:08:43 hard problem of consciousness
2:08:44 based on two key questions what is it
2:08:46 like for an individual
2:08:47 conscious organism to have a phenomenal
2:08:49 conscious experience
2:08:50 in a conscious experience and and number
2:08:53 two
2:08:54 how is it how and why does a inner
2:08:57 subjective conscious experience arise
2:08:59 from seemingly non-conscious blind
2:09:01 physical processes
2:09:04 materialism can't answer those questions
2:09:07 and uh
2:09:08 that's the main issue so your question
2:09:09 is a nice question but i
2:09:11 definitely i have to stay in my lane i'm
2:09:13 not going to answer it
2:09:14 although i have my intuitions on the
2:09:16 topic but if anyone else has a complete
2:09:18 answer
2:09:19 on something which i think is uh not
2:09:20 even uh
2:09:22 not even conclusive amongst venue or
2:09:24 lima about the dynamic interplay between
2:09:26 these things
2:09:27 uh yeah no no i mean i totally agree
2:09:31 with you
2:09:32 uh you know there's difference of
2:09:34 opinion within the tradition i don't
2:09:36 think it's really
2:09:37 a hill to die on you know sort of yeah
2:09:40 yeah
2:09:41 yeah so um but momo we appreciate you
2:09:44 uh coming on and appreciate your
2:09:46 question okay
2:09:50 before you just leave did you understand
2:09:52 hamza's response though in terms of the
2:09:53 fact that
2:09:55 what the what the quran and the sunnah
2:09:57 talk about on the matters of the rule
2:09:59 yeah
2:10:01 it does not affect the discussion about
2:10:04 consciousness
2:10:05 and the fact that it cannot be explained
2:10:07 under a materialistic paradigm
2:10:08 yeah yeah yeah i get that okay
2:10:12 yeah one more thing can you can either
2:10:16 like uh one of you guys make a vid on
2:10:17 like uh
2:10:18 like creed like either home brother
2:10:21 hangzar or maybe jake
2:10:23 like regarding creed and just like maybe
2:10:24 as a broad overview of like the
2:10:27 three creeds i i mean it may interest
2:10:30 you
2:10:31 on my own channel uh muslim
2:10:33 metaphysician i just did
2:10:34 a video on divine simplicity
2:10:38 and its position in the islamic
2:10:40 tradition um
2:10:42 so you know broadly speaking in all
2:10:45 three schools
2:10:47 um the ashari matariris and asaris
2:10:50 we all reject uh absolute divine
2:10:52 simplicity in the sense we believe that
2:10:55 uh
2:10:56 god has real distinct uh attributes and
2:10:59 that are not identical to each other um
2:11:02 but going into much more detail
2:11:04 about the you know fine details
2:11:07 and the distinctions between the creeds
2:11:10 um
2:11:10 yeah i don't know if i'm honest i don't
2:11:12 think that that's going to be
2:11:15 the place to really do it on this
2:11:16 podcast um
2:11:18 but maybe i'll touch on it a bit more in
2:11:21 my
2:11:22 on my personal youtube channel
2:11:25 okay exactly
2:11:32 so we've got adam here and adam you're
2:11:35 going to be the last guest because
2:11:37 typically we go for about two hours
2:11:39 uh we've actually gone over the two hour
2:11:42 mark and
2:11:43 brother hamza's been gracious enough to
2:11:45 stay with us this whole time we don't
2:11:47 want to take up too much more of his
2:11:48 time
2:11:50 unfortunately we were looking to get um
2:11:52 some more atheists on
2:11:54 i don't know um maybe they're watching
2:11:56 but they didn't want to this would be a
2:11:57 foreign nonetheless
2:11:59 don't worry yeah so so adam um you're
2:12:02 gonna be the last guest
2:12:03 um you've been on before on
2:12:07 other shows so i'm glad that you came on
2:12:10 with
2:12:10 your correct name this time yeah
2:12:14 no worries so um i
2:12:17 i just have a personal belief that uh
2:12:20 even though i am a muslim i do think
2:12:23 that
2:12:24 uh that everything in the universe is
2:12:27 conscious
2:12:28 um so i don't know if i can i don't i'm
2:12:31 not necessarily a pantheist i don't
2:12:32 believe everything is god
2:12:34 but i do think that everything in the
2:12:36 universe is conscious
2:12:38 because i'm also a a determinist
2:12:43 but i i i'm a compatible
2:12:46 i don't know how to pronounce it sorry
2:12:48 i'm sorry
2:12:50 what's what's the relationship between
2:12:52 determinism and consciousness
2:12:55 it it usually goes the other way around
2:12:58 brother
2:12:58 i'm gonna be honest with you so the
2:13:00 relationship is that
2:13:02 um because due to the contingency
2:13:05 argument
2:13:07 if everything is independent then
2:13:09 everything uh
2:13:11 then that's where i extrapolate and say
2:13:13 that everything's necessary and
2:13:15 conscious who said everything is
2:13:17 independent
2:13:19 uh according to the contingency argument
2:13:21 everything no
2:13:22 there is something that is independent
2:13:24 but not everything
2:13:26 no uh can i you know yeah i'm saying
2:13:28 everything is
2:13:29 independent because according to
2:13:31 determinism
2:13:33 um everything could it must be the way
2:13:36 it is
2:13:36 according to determinism but brother
2:13:39 you're confusing me
2:13:40 like maybe you're making a good argument
2:13:42 but i just don't understand it right now
2:13:43 so you're talking about the contingency
2:13:44 argument
2:13:45 forget about determinism for a bit how
2:13:47 they're deeply related
2:13:49 okay they might be related but you're
2:13:50 gonna have to bridge that gap for me
2:13:52 maybe i'm slow so the contingency
2:13:54 argument right how does it say that
2:13:56 everything is independent
2:13:58 it says that there is something that is
2:13:59 independent the premise
2:14:01 is that anything which could not be
2:14:04 any other way is independent and
2:14:06 necessary
2:14:08 and since i believe that everything in
2:14:10 the universe cannot be any other way
2:14:11 okay
2:14:12 okay yeah and so i believe every
2:14:14 everything in the universe is
2:14:16 independent uh because i'm because i'm a
2:14:18 blueprint it couldn't have been any
2:14:19 other way
2:14:21 there but you're okay okay sorry to cut
2:14:23 you off but you're not talking about
2:14:24 metaphysical necessity here or
2:14:26 independence
2:14:27 so when you talk about a lot of a lot of
2:14:28 people confuse this sometimes so
2:14:30 determinism when you talk about
2:14:31 determinism and how
2:14:33 a certain chain of causation is
2:14:34 necessary we're not speaking of
2:14:37 metaphysical necessity we're just
2:14:39 speaking of like
2:14:40 logical or causal necessities so i think
2:14:42 there might be a bit of an equivocation
2:14:44 between the necessity of like
2:14:46 the necessary entity that the
2:14:48 contingency argument takes us to
2:14:51 the necessary relation between a cause
2:14:53 and its effect those are two very
2:14:54 different things
2:14:55 and adam how does this relate to the
2:14:57 discussion of consciousness
2:14:58 sorry yeah i mean that is a more
2:15:01 important question
2:15:02 because after this i extrapolate to say
2:15:04 that since everything is necessary then
2:15:07 everything
2:15:09 it's it's conscious in that it must it's
2:15:11 basically like an independent being the
2:15:13 everything but i don't consider a god
2:15:15 because i still believe in a
2:15:17 uh god yeah but did you know because i i
2:15:19 understand that that's where you're
2:15:20 going
2:15:21 you understand that you're equivocating
2:15:23 between a metaphysical necessity
2:15:25 and this like cause effect necessity
2:15:28 yeah so the contingency argument even
2:15:31 when i'm not
2:15:32 when i've when you hear it like it's
2:15:35 just by the name it doesn't only deal
2:15:36 with
2:15:37 uh because people will say okay every
2:15:39 they'll use examples of
2:15:41 things which exist in the physical world
2:15:43 the universe
2:15:44 so they'll say okay the sun must be
2:15:47 dependent because
2:15:49 it could have been or any of it could
2:15:51 have been another way so it doesn't
2:15:54 it doesn't necessarily lead to a
2:15:55 metaphysical
2:15:57 conclusion it it deals because what i'm
2:16:00 saying is everything in the universe
2:16:01 it must be independent so that's not
2:16:05 necessarily metaphysical
2:16:06 the idea is that the contingent world is
2:16:08 metaphysically contingent but you're
2:16:10 trying to say that because of
2:16:11 determinism somehow
2:16:13 and the necessary flow between cause and
2:16:15 effect
2:16:16 that somehow that necessity is a
2:16:18 different kind of necessity you're
2:16:19 trying to say that that necessity
2:16:21 implies
2:16:22 some metaphysical kind of necessity
2:16:25 could you clarify what do you mean by
2:16:27 every the metaphysical world the
2:16:30 contingency yeah so so so if i if i
2:16:33 drop my phone it's going to fall maybe
2:16:36 you could call that some kind of an
2:16:38 empirical necessity yeah it's not a
2:16:40 metaphysical necessity
2:16:41 yes so what you're trying to say is
2:16:43 because of determinism and this chain of
2:16:45 cause and effect
2:16:46 because you're a determinist you have to
2:16:48 believe that everything is necessary i
2:16:50 don't think that follows
2:16:51 not in the you know metaphysical sense
2:16:54 or the
2:16:54 you know how we use it in modal
2:16:56 epistemology necessary
2:16:58 not in that sense your example with the
2:17:01 phone being dropped that's
2:17:02 that's a physical uh that's a that's a
2:17:04 cause-and-effect relationship in the
2:17:06 physical world
2:17:06 it's not metaphysical yeah yeah that's
2:17:09 my point
2:17:10 no that's yeah so maybe i'm lost maybe
2:17:13 someone else if someone else understands
2:17:14 what adam is saying i'm just lost
2:17:16 because i think you're trying to say
2:17:17 that the contingent world is necessary
2:17:20 somehow
2:17:21 because of this cause effect
2:17:23 relationships and this determinancy
2:17:25 but what i'm trying to tell you is that
2:17:26 even if you're a determinist even if the
2:17:28 world is
2:17:28 you're truly deterministic that doesn't
2:17:31 make it
2:17:32 metaphysically necessary that that's
2:17:34 what i'm trying to tell you you
2:17:35 understand that point
2:17:36 yeah you're use yeah i understand you
2:17:39 you're using metaphysical even though
2:17:41 i don't i don't think that you're what
2:17:42 you're saying is metaphysical
2:17:45 no so metaphysical necessity is
2:17:47 something that could couldn't have been
2:17:48 otherwise
2:17:49 so let's say let's talk about
2:17:51 determinism there's a certain chain of
2:17:52 causation
2:17:54 cause leads to effect right that's
2:17:57 that's a causal necessity that could
2:17:59 have been otherwise it could have been
2:18:01 that instead of x leading to y x could
2:18:04 have led to someone else
2:18:05 why something else y could have let x
2:18:08 there's a metaphysical possibility that
2:18:10 it could have been otherwise
2:18:12 you don't agree no so that's the whole
2:18:15 idea of determinism is that there is no
2:18:18 there is no there are no multiple
2:18:19 options there is no probability
2:18:21 that's not sorry that's not true
2:18:29 metaphysical necessity it's because of
2:18:31 the causal chain between x and y that
2:18:33 x must lead to y that way
2:18:37 it didn't doesn't mean that there
2:18:38 couldn't be a possible world where y
2:18:40 could lead to x or there could be some
2:18:42 different kind of causal foundation
2:18:44 it's just so so i think you're
2:18:45 conflating two things here
2:18:47 why could there be could you uh you're
2:18:49 just you're assuming that right yeah but
2:18:50 right now
2:18:51 so right now i have to explain it you
2:18:54 can continue
2:18:54 right you're assuming there's no
2:18:59 that's in determinism this world could
2:19:01 not have been any other way everything
2:19:04 like everything of 14 billion years ago
2:19:06 or ever since the first
2:19:08 since the big bang whatever has happened
2:19:11 must have happened there's that's the
2:19:13 whole idea of determinism
2:19:15 there's no i don't think we're gonna
2:19:17 have the time to go
2:19:18 yeah i don't think we're going to have
2:19:20 the time to break this down to you but i
2:19:21 think
2:19:22 you're you just misunderstand what it
2:19:24 means to be determined is because some
2:19:25 determinists
2:19:26 they acknowledge that although this
2:19:29 chain of cause and effect this chain of
2:19:31 causation
2:19:33 is necessary in the sense that no effect
2:19:36 uh is is is is independent of the causal
2:19:40 chain that precedes it
2:19:41 they don't meet by that they don't
2:19:43 elevate that to some kind of uh
2:19:45 they don't make that uh you know modal
2:19:48 shift
2:19:49 right to make it metaphysically
2:19:51 necessary in the sense that
2:19:52 it isn't even conceivable it couldn't be
2:19:55 otherwise
2:19:56 that this cause would lead to this
2:19:58 effect those are two
2:19:59 entirely different things adam how does
2:20:02 this relate to the consciousness
2:20:04 well it does the other point adam is
2:20:07 that
2:20:07 it's what you're describing determinism
2:20:10 they would say it's contingently
2:20:12 necessary
2:20:15 let me finish please so what it means
2:20:18 is that given the current state of
2:20:20 affairs and given the big bang and
2:20:23 everything that you explained
2:20:24 yes it's contingently necessary now that
2:20:27 we are
2:20:28 in the place that we are but it is not
2:20:31 metaphysically necessary in the sense
2:20:34 that it couldn't have been
2:20:35 otherwise in other possible worlds and
2:20:38 existences
2:20:38 so these are two different things that i
2:20:41 don't think you
2:20:42 understand or appreciate i do and i know
2:20:44 where our contention is
2:20:45 our contention is that the first cause
2:20:47 could not
2:20:48 have been any other way i i say that and
2:20:51 you disagree
2:20:52 what do you mean you think it couldn't
2:20:54 have been any other way yeah i say the
2:20:56 first cause could
2:20:57 what was the first cause was the first
2:20:59 cause god
2:21:01 yes and everything which followed he he
2:21:03 had to god didn't have a free will he
2:21:05 couldn't have
2:21:06 been otherwise meaning he couldn't have
2:21:09 chosen not to create is that what you're
2:21:10 saying
2:21:12 yeah this is this is the problem this is
2:21:16 not
2:21:16 my world view for my world right and
2:21:18 this is the issue
2:21:20 i explained it on the stream on my
2:21:22 channel yesterday
2:21:23 when i talked about divine simplicity is
2:21:26 that
2:21:26 divine simplicity results in what you're
2:21:29 explaining
2:21:30 that god doesn't have free will
2:21:32 everything becomes necessary and there's
2:21:34 this modal collapse
2:21:36 if you want to take that position and
2:21:44 but it is not the traditional islamic
2:21:47 position and it's considered heretical
2:21:49 so to claim that god doesn't have free
2:21:53 will when the quran
2:21:54 and the sunnah actually clearly state
2:21:56 that he does have free will
2:21:58 is problematic
2:22:02 okay so you're you're really at you're
2:22:05 posing questions to me so let me
2:22:06 actually
2:22:07 well i didn't ask a question i made
2:22:09 steve no you you said
2:22:11 from okay so let me explain my belief
2:22:12 because that so we've gotten to this
2:22:14 point so far
2:22:16 i think that this so the first cause
2:22:18 which god i don't think it's god
2:22:20 i think so the first cause is not god
2:22:23 i'm talking about the first physical
2:22:24 cause
2:22:25 that god created which led to all the
2:22:28 other
2:22:28 causes the physical causes in the
2:22:29 universe which led up to this point
2:22:32 i think that could not have been any
2:22:33 other way and it was god's free will who
2:22:36 chose that the
2:22:37 before he created it but it you're