英文摘要 |
This article addresses one fundamental controversy in philosophy. That is whether our minds, consciousnesses, and spirits are derivatives of the biochemical events occurring in our brains. In this respect, materialists and religionists hold essentially opposite views. The discussion of this article begins with showing that some human beings' intelligent capabilities are not the derivatives of the material effects that have been found occurring in our brains. Logically, this observation implies that some natural effects other than those that have been identified by scientists to be existent in our brains must play important roles in formation of our minds, consciousnesses, and spirits. The discussion is followed by showing that the existing scientific knowledge about our universe is still very limited. In particular, it is estimated that only about 4% of the total mass-energy in the universe can be detected by modern technologies. The remaining 96% is composed of dark matter (about 22%) and dark energy (about 74%), which we still do not quite understand yet. Therefore, it is likely that there are some other forms of natural forces in the universe yet to be discovered and some of these undiscovered forces and effects, which may or may not be related to dark matter and dark energy, may be the key for unwinding the mystery of how minds, consciousnesses, and spirits take shape. Accordingly, one main theme of this article is that we should open our minds and acknowledge the religious philosophies and the phenomena that have been filed by religionists because they may provide us with valuable clues in our journey toward obtaining a comprehensive picture about our universe. Based on this logic and numerous reports of religious experiences, this article proceeds to propose one form of spirit-matter monism. The proposed model of spirit-matter monism hypothesizes that some natural forces and interactions that have not been well investigated in modern physics must play major roles in formation of minds, consciousnesses, and spirits. In this respect, the proposed model does not exclude the possibility that the well-known natural forces and interactions, e.g. the electromagnetic field and chemical interactions, also play some roles. |