• fear@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Forces of Nature

    1. electromagnetism
    2. strong nuclear force
    3. weak nuclear force
    4. gravity
      5?. whatever the hell might be acting on the muons in this article

    Quick, everyone ignore 0 because it’s “too hard”, even though it’s the only reason we can study 1-5: consciousness

    • Zalack@startrek.website
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      1 year ago

      Why would you assume consciousness is a fundamental force rather than an emergent property of complex systems built on the forces?

      • fear@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Why would you assume it’s an emergent property and thus should be dismissed as not being a force of nature? I’m making fewer assumptions than you are by wanting to list it alongside the other forces until we can determine if it is emergent or not, and the implications of such emergence. It’s kind of a big deal that we can sit here and ponder the forces of nature with some degree of control over our little sack of atoms.

        It’s safe to say that this list is going to change over time and represents a current snapshot of humanity’s limited understanding. Under the current snapshot of human understanding, leaving it off of the list seems to me to indicate an ironic bias on the behalf of researchers who must use the very force in question to do anything. By necessity, it is the overarching phenomenon surrounding all other forces since the only place we can definitively know these forces even exist is within our own mind. To say anything more is to make assumptions.

        While I agree that a certain level of assumptions are necessary if we’re going to get anywhere, I’m also acutely aware that they’re still assumptions and that assumptions are not scientific. If we’re going to be scientific about this, we need to make as few assumptions as possible.

        • JillyB@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          The fundamental forces are physical forces. Consciousness is not a force, as far as we know.

          • 133arc585@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            Your comment doesn’t make any sense.

            The fundamental forces are physical forces.

            It is feasible for consciousness to be something like a force (more accurately, perhaps, a field) and as such it would be by definition a “physical” force. The use of the modifier “physical” on force doesn’t make much sense here: all forces are physical, as are all things that actually exist. It could be useful to consider the objects of consciousness as emergent, and the force of consciousness as fundamental; I don’t know enough about this line of thought to say much on that.

            Consciousness is not a force, as far as we know.

            That’s literally what the comment you’re replying to says. Emphasis on “as far as we know”. There’s no obvious way to dismiss it outright as not being a force, it’s just that as far as we know currently, it isn’t a force.

            I don’t personally have a well thought out stance on the matter.