Philosophy, Science, & The Unexplained - Main Thread

[smcder]

Ayahuasca, Salvia Divinorum and natural psychedelics sounds pretty specific rather than "loose" to me.

From personal experience, I think meditation as a non-religious practise can be beneficial. I wouldn't be surprised to find some studies that support it either.

Your statement above is much more loose than the original claim about non-locality of consciousness. Personally, I think that if non-locality of consciousness could be proven through the careful use of certain drugs under safe, controlled, and voluntary conditions, that it would be worth exploring. In fact, you could sign me up. Personally, I also believe that people should have more legal freedom to explore their states of consciousness through the use of safe, quality controlled, regulated recreational drugs. It's our body. We should have significant ( not absolute ) freedom to decide for ourselves what goes into it. But those issues are separate from claims that the non-controlled recreational use of psychedelic drugs is sufficient for us to believe non-locality of consciousness is actually taking place during these experiences. Is that fair?

In fact, you could sign me up. Personally, I also believe that people should have more legal freedom to explore their states of consciousness through the use of safe, quality controlled, regulated recreational drugs. It's our body. We should have significant ( not absolute ) freedom to decide for ourselves what goes into it.

Good for you!

there is a Wikipedia entry . . . ;-)

Cognitive liberty - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An individual who enjoys cognitive liberty is free to alter the state of their consciousness using any method they choose, including but not limited to meditation, yoga, psychoactive drugs, prayer and so on. Such an individual would also never be forced to change their consciousness against their will. So, for example, a child who is forced to consume Ritalin as a prerequisite for attending public school, does not enjoy cognitive liberty, nor does an individual who is forced to take anti-psychotics in order to be fit to stand trial, nor an individual who faces criminal charges and punishment for changing the state of their consciousness by consuming a mind-altering drug.

 

[Randall]

I don't want to get into a re-examination of some of your posts and engage in a personal argument.

Then you shouldn't make unsubstantiated statements. On the other hand, it's well known here that I have no religious beliefs and don't have any personal God, yet this is what I get:

"Your faith in 'strict scientific protocols' is noted and your loyalty to the paradigm you've constructed in your mind is laudable. We should all be so loyal to ideas. This is your god, ufology. This is your religion that you proselytize to great effect - you have many followers in this religion of yours, but that's all it is."​

So you cite no evidence or reasons to support your position and you agree with the person who is actually doing it. Perhaps you might want to rethink that position.

I agree with Tyger's identification of your apparent belief that physical science is the only acceptable method of exploring the nature of reality,

You clearly haven't followed me here for long then. I'm primarily an advocate of critical thinking as outlined by the Foundation For Critical Thinking and have posted a link to them many times. I've also vigorously defended the position that firsthand experience is far more valuable than the skeptics usually give people credit for. Plus I was the one who started this thread, where we can use philosophy to explore ideas. You might want to check out these other examples:

• The One True Method | The Paracast Community Forums
• Acceptance of Reality - What's Your Number? | The Paracast Community Forums
• Natural and "Fortean Natural" | Page 4 | The Paracast Community Forums

... and with her recognition that you often use this narrow belief -- to which not all scientists subscribe -- to ridicule other approaches as 'woo' (thereby also ridiculing people who pursue those other approaches).

First off, when I use the word "woo", it may be in reference to when other people refer to various types of claims, or it may be that I'm in agreement with that assessment. When I'm in agreement with such an assessment, I'm more likely to call it nonsense. When I do that, I'm being critical of the idea, not the person with the idea, and I'm prepared to back it up with evidence and/or reason. On rare occasions I might be personally critical of someone, but again, I'll have supportable reasons. Lastly, if I'm wrong I'm not above apologizing and changing my views.

This next post of yours is a typical example:

"I think that the word "spiritual" is a Folk Psychology/New Age word that in a pinch is fine for convenience, but all too often gets mushed in with the concept of disembodied souls, reincarnation, and so on. So I don't really like to use it because of the ease of association with those religious concepts. Objectively, the word "spiritual" doesn't appear to be any different than the word "personal", and the word spirit seems indistinguishable from that of personality. For example we could just as easily say, "My personal well being ..." as easily as we could say, "My spiritual well being ..." and we could just as easily say, "She's a kind spirit." as we could say, "She has a kind personality." So with respect to meditation we might just as easily say it's concerned with our personal well being rather than including religious allusions that carry all the extra baggage."​

The example you mention ( above ) doesn't use the word "woo" once, and I see nothing wrong with the point I was trying to make. I suppose I could have included the word "mystical" along with the "Folk Psychology/New Age" description, but I think that the point is still reasonably well stated without it, and a reasonable response might be to take one of the examples ( e.g. We could just as easily say, "She's a kind spirit." as we could say, "She has a kind personality." ) and discuss how the words spirituality, personality, and personal work with the various concepts they embody. But instead of that, I get accused of using a word that's not even in the example to slight somebody. Really? Are you sure that's fair? How about we revisit that post and try again?

You clearly haven't investigated any of the subjects you refer to in that post and thus are in no position to critique them, much less dismiss them. And you're simply wrong in categorizing all of them as 'religion', another subject in itself that you seem not to have researched.

And exactly how would you know what I have or haven't investigated. I have over 4000 posts here alone, and a website, and a personal library with thousands of titles on the mystical, unexplained and UFOs. Perhaps that judgment was a little hasty?

 

[Constance]

Just let it go, ufology. It can't be the first time you've heard that you come across as dogmatic in some of your claims and gratuitously scornful of those who don't subscribe to your way of thinking.

 

[Constance]

Here's an interesting extract from a discussion of the mind/body problem on a philosophy forum:

"Ok, so is the "mind-body problem" not actually a problem because the mind is not separate to the body/brain you speak of, or is it not a problem because the mind IS separate to this body/brain? Personally, like yourself, I can't see a problem either and I also can't see how the body (with brain) can be seen as separate from mind."

"Yes, I also don't see the problem as one of separation as that adds other problems, I think. The problem as I see it, is understanding how something like the body/brain can "spit" out something like the mind/qualia/subjectivity (e.g. how technicolour phenomenology arises from soggy grey matter). As I understand the arguments by the authors linked above, the problem seems to be that the stuff the body/brain/matter is made of (e.g. at the micro/subatomic level) is not the stuff we once thought it was. In a sense, matter is becoming more and more "dematerialized" (witness modern physics/quantum mechanics: entanglement, non-locality, superposition, etc.) so it's not so much that modern science (particularly physics) has no room for the soul/mind/consciousness in a mechanistic or "material" world but that the material/mechanistic world does not really exist. Chomsky points this out here nicely:

'It has been common in recent years to ridicule Descartes's "ghost in the machine" in postulating mind as distinct from body. Well, Newton came along and he did not exorcise the ghost in the machine: he exorcised the machine and left the ghost intact. So now the ghost is left and the machine isn't there.'

But then the question becomes what further steps/revolutions/changes must we make in our conception of "matter" to understand how the "machine" can spit out the "ghost". And as Penrose points out this will require profound changes assuming that it is within our cognitive abilities. Of course, it may not be as we are cognitively or epistemically-limited just like every other animal:

'For physics to be able to accommodate something as foreign to our current physical picture as is the phenomenon of consciousness, we must expect a profound change-one that alters the very underpinnings of our philosophical viewpoint as to the nature of reality.'

And I do think the changes needed (assuming it can be done) will come from physics not biology or neuroscience as per Mcginn's argument. McGinn also offers an interesting comment:

'We might be reminded at this point of the big bang. That notable occurrence can be regarded as presenting an inverse space problem. For, on received views, it was at the moment of the big bang that space itself came into existence, there being nothing spatial antecedently to that. But how does space come from non-space? What kind of 'explosion' could create space ab initio? And this problem offers an even closer structural parallel to the consciousness problem if we assume, as I would argue is plausible, that the big bang was not the beginning (temporally or explanatorily) of all existence. Some prior independent state of things must have led to that early cataclysm, and this sequence of events itself must have some intelligible explanation - just as there must be an explanation for the sequence that led from matter-in-space to consciousness. The brain puts into reverse, as it were, what the big bang initiated: it erases spatial dimensions rather than creating them. It undoes the work of creating space, swallowing down matter and spitting out consciousness.'"

Can we solve the mind-body problem? • View topic • Philosophy Discussion Forums
​

 

[smcder]

The last two lines really caught my attention:

"The brain puts into reverse, as it were, what the big bang initiated: it erases spatial dimensions rather than creating them. It undoes the work of creating space, swallowing down matter and spitting out consciousness.'"

This is from John Michael Greer's blog: "The Archdruid Report" November 20th, 2013 and fits in with several ideas on this thread -

The Archdruid Report

the entries build on one another, and for full context you might want to read the entire entry from Nov. 13th and Nov. 20th:

"A more balanced and less binary approach allows human intelligence to be seen as a remarkable but fragile capacity, recently acquired in the evolutionary history of our species, and still full of bugs that the remorseless beta testing of natural selection hasn’t yet had time to find and fix. The three kinds of thinking I discussed in last week’s post—figuration, abstraction, and reflection—are at different stages in that Darwinian process, and a good many of the challenges of being human unfold from the complex interactions of older and more reliable kinds of thinking with newer and less reliable ones."

. . .

"Abstract concepts are simply mental models that more or less sum up certain characteristics of certain figurations in the universe of our experience. They aren’t the objective realities they seek to explain. The laws of nature so eagerly pursued by scientists, for example, are generalizations that explain how certain quantifiable measurements are likely to change when something happens in a certain context, and that’s all they are. It seems to be an inevitable habit of rationalists, though, to lose track of this crucial point, and convince themselves that their abstractions are more real than the raw sensory data on which they’re based—that the abstractions are the truth, in fact, behind the world of appearances we experience around us. It’s wholly reasonable to suppose that there is a reality behind the world of appearances, to be sure, but the problem comes in with the assumption that a favored set of abstract concepts is that reality, rather than merely a second- or third hand reflection of it in the less than flawless mirror of the human mind.

The laws of nature make a good example of this mistake in practice. To begin with, of course, the entire concept of “laws of nature” is a medieval Christian religious metaphor with the serial numbers filed off, ultimately derived from the notion of God as a feudal monarch promulgating laws for all his subjects to follow. We don’t actually know that nature has laws in any meaningful sense of the word—she could simply have habits or tendencies—but the concept of natural law is hardwired into the structure of contemporary science and forms a core presupposition that few ever think to question."

 

[smcder]

Here's an interesting extract from a discussion of the mind/body problem on a philosophy forum:

. . .
Can we solve the mind-body problem? • View topic • Philosophy Discussion Forums
​

And the very first post in this thread by the same poster you quote: "Bohm2" - covers a lot of the ground and then goes beyond the earlier discussion on the hard problem - worth reading for those interested - perhaps a capstone to that discussion.

 

[Tyger]

But then the question becomes what further steps/revolutions/changes must we make in our conception of "matter" to understand how the "machine" can spit out the "ghost". And as Penrose points out this will require profound changes assuming that it is within our cognitive abilities.

It's in orientation - trying to explain from the perspective of the physical is a blind-alley imo. The physical creates nothing of it's own - it is rather (the physical is) the creation of the spiritual universes. The physical is the final 'effect' of spiritual action. Now I am using the word 'spiritual' but these subtler realms can be referenced in any number of ways - and spiritual is a reasonable word to use here.

'We might be reminded at this point of the big bang. That notable occurrence can be regarded as presenting an inverse space problem. For, on received views, it was at the moment of the big bang that space itself came into existence, there being nothing spatial antecedently to that. But how does space come from non-space? What kind of 'explosion' could create space ab initio? And this problem offers an even closer structural parallel to the consciousness problem if we assume, as I would argue is plausible, that the big bang was not the beginning (temporally or explanatorily) of all existence. Some prior independent state of things must have led to that early cataclysm, and this sequence of events itself must have some intelligible explanation - just as there must be an explanation for the sequence that led from matter-in-space to consciousness. The brain puts into reverse, as it were, what the big bang initiated: it erases spatial dimensions rather than creating them. It undoes the work of creating space, swallowing down matter and spitting out consciousness.'"

Can we solve the mind-body problem? • View topic • Philosophy Discussion Forums
​

I love this - perfectly sums up the situation. Takes me back to the Sanskrit - and the concept of Pralaya - which the concept of the 'Big Bang' is in concert with. In fact, when the 'Big Bang' first was proposed, it made 'perfect sense' from out of ancient Hindu cosmology, where creation undergoes periods of 'non-existence'. There are posited both 'big' and 'little' pralayas. The 'Big Bang' (I believe) would be on the order of all of creation emerging from a 'big' pralaya, or period of non-existence.

LINK: Pralaya - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Pralaya, in Hindu cosmology, is an aeonic term for Dissolution, which specifies different periods of time during which a non-activity situation persists, as per different formats or contexts. The word Mahapralaya stands for Great Dissolution. During each pralaya, the lower ten realms (loka) are destroyed, while the higher four realms, including Satya-loka, Tapa-loka, Jana-loka, and Mahar-loka are preserved. During each Mahapralaya, all 14 realms are destroyed.

"In the Samkhya philosophy, one of the six schools of classical Indian philosophy, Pralaya means "non-existence, a state of matter achieved when the three gunas (principles of matter) are in perfect balance. The word pra-laya comes from Sanskrit meaning 'dissolution' or by extension 'reabsorption, destruction, annihilation or death'."

 

[Tyger]

The last two lines really caught my attention:"The brain puts into reverse, as it were, what the big bang initiated: it erases spatial dimensions rather than creating them. It undoes the work of creating space, swallowing down matter and spitting out consciousness.'"

"The brain puts into reverse, as it were, what the big bang initiated: it erases spatial dimensions rather than creating them. It undoes the work of creating space, swallowing down matter and spitting out consciousness.'"

I agree - I even believe it. Not that I 'believed' it before, I'd never thought of it that way - and it makes perfect sense to me. It resonates. Beautifully put.

The ideas in John Michael Greer's blog hearken me back to the ideas of Rupert Sheldrake and others - particularly the Quantum Physicist Arthur Zajonc - also discussed in the following thread - 'Science Set Free' -

LINK: Science Set Free | The Paracast Community Forums

The physicist Arthur Zajonc is particularly useful discussing the 'problem of mathematics'.

 

[smcder]

I agree - I even believe it. Not that I 'believed' it before, I'd never thought of it that way - and it makes perfect sense to me. It resonates. Beautifully put.

The ideas in John Michael Greer's blog hearken me back to the ideas of Rupert Sheldrake and others - particularly the Quantum Physicist Arthur Zajonc - also discussed in the following thread - 'Science Set Free' -

LINK: Science Set Free | The Paracast Community Forums

The physicist Arthur Zajonc is particularly useful discussing the 'problem of mathematics'.

Greer is an interesting fellow, extremely bright and I believe he identifies as being on the autism spectrum (that is another interesting topic) - there are a number of podcast interviews on the web with him - I've read The Long Descent and followed his blog for a while, it really develops over time and I appreciate the way he handles the comments on his blog.

I heard Zajonc on an episode of Speaking of Faith/On Being -

Arthur Zajonc on Holding Life Consciously | On Being

there is an unedited copy of the audio and a transcript (for those of you who like transcripts! ;-)

Transcript: Holding Life Consciously | On Being

 

[Tyger]

Greer is an interesting fellow, extremely bright and I believe he identifies as being on the autism spectrum (that is another interesting topic) - there are a number of podcast interviews on the web with him - I've read The Long Descent and followed his blog for a while, it really develops over time and I appreciate the way he handles the comments on his blog.

An interesting consideration in any on-line discussion.

I heard Zajonc on an episode of Speaking of Faith/On Being -

Arthur Zajonc on Holding Life Consciously | On Being

Great stuff - and as Zajonc states: People have a wrong idea about how science works, thinking that scientists calculate their way towards a discovery - but that is not the way it happens. Insight comes in a 'flash' - walking across a bridge in Dublin, Newton seeing the apple fall - the answer is seen intuitively - then the scientist gets busy with the math and the experiments [to prove the answer already divined]. Important to keep in mind - the insight is coming forth from 'higher realms' [beyond the discursive mind].

Nice phrase: 'the poetry at the heart of science' - knowledge is an ephemeral moment - insight happens in one instant. And that the scientist is not a passive observer - the observer is implicated in everything.

'Lived experience' is perhaps the single most important phrase I hear Zajonc using as well as other scientists, like Rupert Sheldrake.

 

[Tyger]

Can we solve the mind-body problem? • View topic • Philosophy Discussion Forums

Thank you for this link, Constance. I have joined up!

Listening to Zajonc - and the story of the sophistication of past scientists - and the sanity of the prevailing scientific process and thinking - is refreshing - and a reminder that genuine scientific discourse is liberating, and nourishing. A fresh breeze - thank you both.

In the Zajonc audio-link: At 57:00+ Zajonc talks about the 'spirituality' of light - light itself is invisible, it illuminates, we see it's effects, but never light itself. Important words about the 'world of light' after death.

 

[Randall]

Just let it go, ufology. It can't be the first time you've heard that you come across as dogmatic in some of your claims and gratuitously scornful of those who don't subscribe to your way of thinking.

So instead of looking at the evidence and discussing the issues with examples and reason, this is what I get? Simply because I defend my views doesn't mean I expect anyone to change to "my way of thinking". If you really think that you've completely missed what I'm all about here, and if you think I've been unfair, or just plain wrong, then by all means show me where and explain why. If your reasoning is sound I'll change my view and/or apologize. In the meantime if I doggedly ( not dogmatically ) maintain a position, it's because nobody has provided a more substantial reason for me to change my position than the reason I've already got. If you think that's not a reasonable position to take, then what would you suggest instead? Blind faith? Should I be a good sheep and just do what I'm told? Should I just be a good boy and stop arguing? Sorry Constance. That's just not me. Everyone here is free to state and support their points of view within the spirit of constructive discourse.

 

[Constance]

"...what would you suggest instead?"

Tolerance and respect.

 

[Constance]

Tyger, glad you enjoy the philosophy forum. It was Steve who found it. There's a lot to pursue in perspectives you've both presented and linked to today.

You planted a seed for me in quoting this observation by Zajonc which I'm compelled to pursue:

In the Zajonc audio-link: At 57:00+ Zajonc talks about the 'spirituality' of light - light itself is invisible, it illuminates, we see it's effects, but never light itself. Important words about the 'world of light' after death.

"Light itself is invisible, it illuminates, we see it's effects, but never light itself" triggered for me immediate recollection of one of Feininger's paintings that lodged in my consciousness when I was in high school, not the one linked below but one like it in what it expresses.

Last night I discovered a recent book in aesthetics that explores the way in which visual artists teach us how to see {i.e., re-cognize} our experience of seeing the visible world. The author of that book cites and examines Merleau-Ponty's exploration of the same insight, which I'd been reading about elsewhere. There are many pathways other than science (in its present state) to our apprehension and understanding of our 'lived reality' as the disclosure of the nature of our being {perspectival consciousness as a grounding of our existential being} and the world's being {insofar as we can understand it}.

paintings by Leonard Feininger - Bing Images

 

[Constance]

For anyone interested in the aesthetics book I cited, here's a link to it (which I found thanks to Steve' linking us to that website a week ago when calling attention to a new book on plant consciousness):

Miguel de Beistegui, “Aesthetics after Metaphysics: From Mimesis to Metaphor” (Routledge, 2009)

 

[Tyger]

You planted a seed for me in quoting this observation by Zajonc which I'm compelled to pursue: "Light itself is invisible, it illuminates, we see it's effects, but never light itself" triggered for me immediate recollection of one of Feininger's paintings that lodged in my consciousness when I was in high school, not the one linked below but one like it in what it expresses.

I think for certain you will appreciate Zajonc's exposition on the difference between Newton's theory and Goethe's theory of light within the audio-link supplied by Steve.

Here is a book you may enjoy - I will post the blurb as well within this post as it pertains to much discussed here (all emphasis my own) -
Catching the Light: the Entwined History of Light and Mind
LINK:
"In 1910, the surgeons Moreau and LePrince wrote about their successful operation on an eight-year-old boy who had been blind since birth because of cataracts. When the boy's eyes were healed they removed the bandages and, waving a hand in front of the child's physically perfect eyes, asked him what he saw. "I don't know," was his only reply. What he saw was only a varying brightness in front of him. However, when allowed to touch the hand as it began to move, he cried out in a voice of triumph, "It's moving!" He could feel it move, but he still needed laboriously to learn to see it move. Light and eyes were not enough to grant him sight. How, then, do we see? What's the difference between seeing and perception? What is light?

"From ancient times to the present, from philosophers to quantum physicists, nothing has so perplexed, so fascinated, so captivated the mind as the elusive definition of light. In Catching the Light, Arthur Zajonc takes us on an epic journey into history, tracing how humans have endeavored to understand the phenomenon of light. Blending mythology, religion, science, literature, and painting, Zajonc reveals in poetic detail the human struggle to identify the vital connection between the outer light of nature and the inner light of the human spirit. He explains the curiousness of the Greeks' blue and green "color blindness": Odysseus gazing longingly at the "wine-dark sea"; the use of chloros (green) as the color of honey in Homer's Odessey; and Euripides' use of the color green to describe the hue of tears and blood.

"He demonstrates the complexity of perception through the work of Paul Cézanne--the artist standing on the bank of a river, painting the same scene over and over again, the motifs multiplying before his eyes.

"For the ancient Egyptians the nature of light was clear--it simply was the gaze of God. In the hands of the ancient Greeks, light had become the luminous inner fire whose ethereal effluence brought sight. In our contemporary world of modern quantum physics, science plays the greatest part in our theories of light's origin--from scientific perspectives such as Sir Isaac Newton's "corpuscular theory of light" and Michael Faraday's "lines of force" to such revolutionary ideas as Max Planck's "discrete motion of a pendulum" (the basis of quantum mechanics), Albert Einstein's "particles of light" and "theory of relativity," and Niels Bohr's "quantum jumps." Yet the metaphysical aspects of the scientific search, Zajonc shows, still loom large. For the physicist Richard Feynman, a quantum particle travels all paths, eventually distilling to one path whose action is least--the most beautiful path of all. Whatever light is, here is where we will find it.

"With rare clarity and unmatched lyricism, Zajonc illuminates the profound implications of the relationships between the multifaceted strands of human experience and scientific endeavor. A fascinating search into our deepest scientific mystery, Catching the Light is a brilliant synthesis that will both entertain and inform."

It is all of that - light is the key to it all.

 

[smcder]

I think for certain you will appreciate Zajonc's exposition on the difference between Newton's theory and Goethe's theory of light.

Here is a book you may enjoy - I will post the blurb as well within this post as it pertains to much discussed here (all emphasis my own) -
Catching the Light: the Entwined History of Light and Mind
LINK:
It is all of that - light is the key to it all.

Terrance McKenna has a stunning piece of . . . well, I suppose blarney is the technical term for what McKenna produces - but it's about photons and their lack of anti-particles and the end of time and about a million other things too as all McKenna's talk raps are . . . I've been searching and may have to download some of his talks from the Psychedelic Salon and sift through for the quote, I can't find the right Google terms (and it's not in Wikipedia ;-) but it's a beautiful, beautiful vision of light from The Bard and why it is all that is left at the end . . . and fits in with the discussion of light above.

 

[Tyger]

Look forward to seeing it, Steve.

 

[Randall]

"...what would you suggest instead?"
Tolerance and respect.

You refuse to provide supportable examples or reasonable explanations for your criticism. Why should I respect that? Tolerating it is another matter, and your comments haven't come anywhere near testing my tolerance level. You're simply expressing your opinion and it hasn't really gotten nasty. I draw the line when accusations are not only unsupportable, but also show a clear intent to damage my character or reputation. When that happens, I ask for an apology, followed by moderator assistance and/or legal recourse. To date, I've only alerted the moderators here to one poster who had been flaming a thread for several days. I think in any reasonable person's book, such behavior demonstrates a fair-minded and reasonable level of tolerance.

 

[smcder]

Look forward to seeing it, Steve.

. . . still looking . . . ! ;-)